Stage Fright (album)


Stage Fright is the third studio album by Canadian-American group the Band, released in 1970. It featured two of the group's best known songs, "The Shape I'm In" and "Stage Fright", both of which showcased inspired lead vocal performances and became staples in the group's live shows.
Stage Fright was a contradictory record, combining buoyant music and disenchanted lyrics, and exploring themes such as peace, escape and frivolity that revealed darker shades of melancholy, anxiety and fatigue. Writer Ross Johnson described it as "a cheerful-sounding record that unintentionally was confessional... a spirited romp through a dispirited period in the group's history." As a result, it received a somewhat mixed reception compared to its widely-praised predecessors, largely due to the ways that it departed from those records and, perhaps, frustrated expectations. Generally, critics agreed that the music was solid. They hailed aspects like Garth Hudson's diverse textural weavings, Robbie Robertson's incisive guitar work, and the funk of the Danko-Levon Helm rhythm section, but differed on the record's troubling tone and overall cohesiveness. In later years, on the occasion of reissue and remaster releases, many critics reappraised the album as showing "no drop-off in quality compared to the first two" and "evidence of a group still working at the top of their form."
Much more of a rock album than the group's previous efforts, Stage Fright had a more downcast, contemporary focus and less of the vocal harmony blend that had been a centerpiece of the first two albums. The tradition of switching instruments continued, however, with each musician contributing parts on at least two different instruments. The album included the last two songs composed by pianist Richard Manuel, both co-written with Robertson, who would continue to be the group's dominant songwriter until the group ceased touring in 1976.
Stage Fright peaked at #5 on Billboard, surpassing the group's first two albums, which reached #30 and #9, respectively. It was one of three albums by the group, including The Band and Rock of Ages, to be certified gold.

Production

Stage Fright was engineered by an up-and-coming Todd Rundgren and produced by the group themselves for the first time. Its cover featured a semi-abstract sunset designed by Bob Cato wrapped in a poster of a photograph by Norman Seeff, in his first major gig.
Initially, Robertson says that he intended to do a less serious "goof" or "good-time" record in contrast to The Band. The group's plan was to record the album live in their home base of Woodstock, New York at the Woodstock Playhouse. Ultimately, the town's council, fearing a Woodstock Festival-type stampede, vetoed the idea and the band simply used the playhouse as a makeshift studio. Upbeat, straightforward rockers like "Strawberry Wine", "Time to Kill" and "Just Another Whistle Stop", the funkier "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show", and Robertson's more prominent guitar work together suggest the record retained some of the early, good-time intention. However, Robertson gradually found the songs taking a darker turn: "this album Stage Fright started seeping through the floor. I found myself writing songs that I couldn't help but write." "The Shape I'm In" and "Stage Fright" grappled with dissipation and panic, while "The Rumor" and "Daniel and the Sacred Harp" addressed the malevolence of gossip and the loss of one's soul in pursuit of fame and fortune. Manuel's dreamy "Sleeping" walked an uncomfortable line between bliss and a too-close-to-home longing for final escape. Standing alone as a purely positive song was Robertson's delicate lullaby, "All La Glory", buoyed by one of Helm's most gentle, emotive vocals.
In a 2010 interview, Robertson described the recording atmosphere as tense, with the group contending with a tricky sound situation in the playhouse, an unfamiliar presence in Rundgren, and "distraction and a lot of drug experimenting." In This Wheel's On Fire, Helm concurred, describing a "dark mood that settled upon us" during the sessions. Helm also believed the record could have benefited from more time, saying, "for the first time we hadn't cut it to our standard... The days when we would live with the music were over."
Two different mixes were prepared, one by Rundgren and one by Glyn Johns, both in the UK. Some reports have suggested that the Johns mix was selected for the original LP release and all subsequent reissues on Capitol, while Rundgren's mix was eventually released on a 24k gold CD reissue of the album by the DCC Compact Classics label in 1994. However, there is considerable disagreement about this; Rundgren, in an interview with Relix magazine, said that a third version was created with the band back in the states, using tracks from both original mixes. Ultimately, he thinks that no one really knows which mixes were chosen for the original release. In his memoir, Sound Man, Johns seems to confirm Rundgren's memory, noting that each did their own set of mixes independently, without the band present, but that he never really knew whose mixes were used or in what quantity.

Reception

Upon its release, critics generally praised Stage Frights music. But several identified differences from the first two albums—themes of anxiety and vulnerability, fewer Americana character sketches, less of a communal feel—and suggested that something elusive was missing. Rolling Stone critic John Burks cited the group's "precision teamwork", but felt the lyrics didn't quite connect with the music and vocals; he wrote that the album was lacking "glory." Critic Robert Christgau thought that the "bright and doughty" tunes overmatched the words. He concluded, "Memorable as most of these songs are, they never hook in—never give up the musical-verbal phrase that might encapsulate their every-which-way power." Billboards Ed Ochs described it as "candid and confessional, genuinely comic and gently satiric," but noted a "relationship of music to message is noticeably off."
According to author Neil Minturn, Greil Marcus's take in Mystery Train became pivotal and permeated subsequent assessments. Marcus called it "an album of doubt, guilt, disenchantment and false optimism. The past no longer served them—the songs seemed trapped in the present, a jumble of desperation that was at once personal and social. The music was still special, but in every sense, the kind of unity that had given force... was missing. Now instead of hearing music that could not be really be broken down, one picked at parts for satisfaction."
Later reviewers, however, questioned whether some mid-1970s criticism was colored by a perceived decline in the group's output, post-Stage Fright. In Q, rock critic John Bauldie hailed the trademark vocal interplay on "The Rumor" and "Daniel and the Sacred Harp", the ballads "All La Glory" and "Sleeping", and "The Shape I'm In" as career highlights. He suggested Stage Fright "may well be the greatest of their records." Allmusic critic William Ruhlmann applauded the album's dense arrangements and instrumental work, and noting its "nakedly confessional" quality, wrote, "It was certainly different from their previous work... but it was hardly less compelling for that." Writer Paul Casey described Stage Fright as "heartfelt," "sublime," and the "most personal, and least enamored with the fictional history aesthetic" of the band's albums. He concluded that it was "in some important ways above the two previous records," and that while "a commentary on the problems that were beginning to become apparent, it is not compromised."

Track listing

Side one

Side two

2000 reissue bonus tracks

Personnel

The Band
Additional personnel
Album – Billboard
Singles – Billboard