Written by Juli Weiner, encouraged by Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair plugged my book this week with an article called “The Book of Levon Celebrates the Man in the Band.” Very nice indeed. Thanks to one and all. Here’s how it reads:
“Nearly a year after the death of Levon Helm, the Band’s twangy and tender-hearted polymath, Spy alumnus Jamie Malanowski has published an e-single about, among other things, Helm’s combative relationship with Band guitarist Robbie Robertson, his dislike of Martin Scorsese’s (otherwise generally beloved) Band documentary The Last Waltz, and the singer and drummer’s magnetic, generous, and unpretentious character.
“The Book of Levon also includes a rather wrenching portrait of Helm’s fearsome, fearless counter-attack against a decade-long sentence of throat cancer. The disease took his singing voice, but Helm took it right back. Malanowski writes:
“[I]ittle by little, Levon Helm’s singing voice returned. Gone was his strong tenor, replaced by something raspy and ornery, different but still authentic, still compelling. At first he sang only a little, harmonizing mostly; “He was thrilled that his voice was coming back,” says [daughter] Amy Helm, “but at the same time, he had doubts. Once you’ve done your time on the oncology floor for head and neck, when you’ve done your radiation, and you’ve walked through those hallways and met other people who’ve gone through the same treatment as you, you don’t take anything for granted. He was happy it was back, but he knew it could be gone again.
“But it is not gone again: in recordings and in books and even in the film he so despised, Helm’s voice will long outlive its malignant adversary.”