Levon Helm put his heart and soul into every beat he played, every song he sang. He brought joy to people all over the world by sharing the unique blend of musical styles he grew up with in the Arkansas Delta. Along the way, he became a good actor, too! I’m glad his story is getting the telling it deserves.”
—President Bill Clinton
“I was honored to have performed with Levon Helm, a master musician who tapped into an astonishing array of genres within American music and possessed one of its greatest voices. In this captivating biography, Sandra B. Tooze channels the creativity, drive, and endurance of this iconic artist. Filled with fresh insights and anecdotes, Levon is a fascinating exploration of the man, his music, and his life.”
—Vince Gill, Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and musician
“This is a book about one of the great characters I have ever been privileged to know. Levon Helm was a brilliant actor, a wildly gifted musician, a hilarious and charming raconteur and, like me, an Arkansan with a mama named Nell. This book beautifully celebrates his exuberant and remarkable life.”
—Mary Steenburgen, Academy Award-winning actress
“Sandra B. Tooze succeeds in reinforcing all the threads that make up the tapestry of the late drummer’s creative life, even adding some previously unknown and forgotten periods to the record…. At the same time, his triumphs are rendered with a sensitivity and detail rare in rock biographies. Levon receives the attention here that his profound contribution to American-roots music deserves…. This is an essential read for fans of the Band and beyond.”
—Modern Drummer
“Sandra Tooze has not only written the definitive biography of Levon Helm, but she’s also written an outstanding life-story of modern American music, encompassing all of the colorful characters that Levon Helm met along the way. Levon embodied the evolution of blues, rockabilly, country and folk that meant so much to so many, defined the soundtrack of my life, and inspired a generation. Levon Helm was a musician’s musician. This book is a must-read musical odyssey of a true hero of rock and roll.”
―Steve Katz, founding member of Blood, Sweat, and Tears; author of Blood, Sweat, and My Rock ‘n’ Roll Years
“All true fans of Americana know that the late Levon Helm was a masterful drummer and one of our most distinctive singers. But author Sandra B. Tooze offers a brilliant road map covering how he became one of the towering figures in 20th century music. Ride shotgun as she follows Helm’s wild exploits—from early Sixties cult hero with the Hawks to playing stadiums with Bob Dylan and the Band. This is the story of rock and roll.”
—Brad Tolinski, author of Play It Loud: An Epic History of the Style, Sound and Revolution of the Electric Guitar and Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page
“Tooze keeps a steady beat in [this] chronicle of the life of Band musician Levon Helm (1940–2012). Drawing on interviews with Helms’s . . . close friends, and his music director Larry Campbell, Tooze traces Helm’s life from his Arkansas childhood where he grew up listening to soul, country, blues, and gospel on the radio . . . [and] the rapid rise to fame of the Band through perceptive and judicious summaries of each of the group’s albums…. [A] well-paced history.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Sandra B. Tooze succinctly zeroes in on how an untrained Helm developed as a drummer, from his influences to the way ‘he laid down his groove at the far end of the beat’ because that’s how you made the music more danceable…. While there’s plenty in the book for drum enthusiasts, Tooze doesn’t skimp on the main draw: the years between 1964 and 1977, when Helm and Canadians Robertson, Manuel, Rick Danko, and Garth Hudson set out on their own…. Levon achieves a clear picture of Helm’s magnetic personality with very little editorializing and no sycophancy. And despite more than a few unsavory stories of Helm’s drug use and treatment of women, he remains the definition of generosity and warmth.”
—Quill & Quire
“Levon Helm went from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, to Bob Dylan’s first electric tour, Woodstock, and the Last Waltz. And that’s only scratching the surface of where author Sandra Tooze takes us as she deftly tells the story of a modern music icon. Levon brilliantly puts readers behind the scenes of many of the most important moments in rock ‘n’ roll history with a man whose influence on them was immense.”
―John Glatt, author of Live at the Fillmore East and West: Getting Backstage and Personal with Rock's Greatest Legends
“I thought I knew a lot about my old friend Levon Helm, but Sandra Tooze has captured all the nitty-gritty details of the life and times of the man who was, arguably, the most soulful and beloved drummer/singer in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. From Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, to Woodstock, New York, this rollicking, raunchy, riveting account of Levon’s life and times takes us on a wild journey that is exhilarating and heartbreaking in equal measure.”
—Happy Traum, folk musician, Woodstock, New York
"The Band’s drummer Levon Helm always insisted he had 'the best seat in the house' and his views from that perch are recounted here. Tooze is a no-frills scribe—she’s done her homework and she straightforwardly tells Helm’s story. Kicking off with a vivid description of his youth, she reminds us that he came from the South that he brought to life in song."
—MOJO
"Tooze successfully captures Helm’s spirit, his relentless creativity, and his enduring love of playing and singing music. . . . Drawing on interviews with Helm’s daughter, Amy Helm, close friends, and his music director, Larry Campbell, among many others, Tooze traces Helm’s life from his Arkansas childhood, where he grew up listening to soul, country, blues, and gospel on the radio. . . . [Levon] gives us a chance to revisit Helm’s music and to recall his deep contributions to roots music. Most of all, it captures Helm’s personality."
—No Depression
"[Pulling] no punches, Sandra Tooze’s Levon is a love letter to one of the signature drummers and dynamic vocalists in rock history. . . . Not forgetting what is important, Tooze fills the book with observations and firsthand accounts of what made Helm worth writing and reading about, pointedly his preternatural musical talents that he never abandoned and continued to celebrate until his last breath."
—The Aquarian
"Tooze brings to the table an impressive heap of research [and] a sure grasp of Helm’s musical accomplishments . . . [Tooze] is particularly good on Helm’s childhood. . . . [O]ne of the great virtues of Tooze’s book [is that] she reminds us of the richness of Helm’s post-Band existence."
——Boston Globe
04/01/2020
For this full-length biography of musician and actor Levon Helm (1940–2012), Tooze (Muddy Waters) relies on extensive interviews with her subject and his friends and family, tracking his life from his upbringing in Turkey Scratch, AR, and his stint with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. The author follows the Hawks' various line ups until they coalesced with drummer Helm, guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, and keyboardists Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel. The group split with Hawkins, backed singer Bob Dylan, and rose to stardom as The Band, which ironically embodied Americana despite the Canadian backgrounds of all members except Helm. After describing Helm's growing animosity toward Robertson and the breakup of The Band, Tooze outlines Helm's solo albums, his acting career, the reformation of The Band without Robertson, and the drummer's death from throat cancer. VERDICT This meticulously researched book offers music fans a thorough introduction and adds to current material, including Helm's autobiography This Wheel's on Fire, Barney Hoskyns's Across the Great Divide, and the film Ain't in It for My Health.—David P. Szatmary, formerly with Univ. of Washington, Seattle
2020-02-17
A biography of the legendary drummer and pioneer of Americana.
Levon Helm (1940-2012) hailed from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, situated in a region where blacks and whites toiled side by side in the fields and shared songs as they did—and on Saturday nights, too, when nearby towns beckoned with their itinerant hucksters and song-and-dance players. “Today,” he remarked, “when folks ask me where rock ’n’ roll came from, I always think of our Southern medicine shows and that wild midnight ramble.” Helm mastered the guitar, mandolin, and other instruments early on, but it was as a drummer that he became known, playing in fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins’ Hawks, whose otherwise Canadian members eventually formed The Band. Tooze, previously a biographer of Helm’s hero, Muddy Waters, spins a story that is well known thanks to Helm’s own memoir This Wheel’s on Fire (1993) and band mate Robbie Robertson’s Testimony (2016). Tooze’s musical vocabulary is solid—“His drumming seems random here as he playfully intersperses parts on the ride and hi-hat with drags, all in an eighth-note groove”—and her reconstruction of The Band’s chronology is accurate, as when she notes that Levon came late to the sessions that would become the Bob Dylan/Band collaboration released as The Basement Tapes. She also notes that in its own day, The Band was not as beloved as it would become later; the group’s third release, Stage Fright, was its most commercially successful, for example, “even though the reviews were lukewarm.” A strong theme in the closing sections of the book, after the group broke up, was Helm’s animosity toward Robertson, whom he resented for controlling the publishing rights to The Band’s music and “cheating the remaining bandmates out of songwriting royalties.” As with the rest of the book, that story is well known—and still unresolved years after Helm’s death.
Tooze breaks little new ground, but the book is a reliable, readable life of an influential musician.
