"The passion for the unreleased material hasn't surprised me, because when I heard it I got very excited myself," says Robbie Robertson of the thirty-seven previously unavailable tracks on the Band's critically acclaimed new box set, A Musical History. The five-CD (plus DVD) career-spanning collection includes early Levon and the Hawks tunes, live tracks from a 1971 Royal Albert Hall gig and alternate takes from the Music From Big Pink sessions -- in addition to most of the music Robertson, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel officially released. "That's one of the things that prompted me to do this now," says Robertson, who spent more than two years working on the box. "A lot of tracks I thought were lost were found."

The 111-song set touches on the historic 1965-66 period when the Band doubled as Bob Dylan's backing group just as Dylan was going electric -- with live versions of "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and "Tell Me Mama." "We had no idea how traumatic that would be, that we were joining a musical revolution," Robertson says. "I don't know how many other people out there have been booed all over the world, but it's true what they say -- it builds character." Among Robertson's personal favorites is an alternate take of "4% Pantomime," a trippy 1971 collaboration between the Band and Van Morrison. "That version is just one of those moments -- it's otherworldly to me," says Robertson. "I wrote the song that afternoon, and we recorded it that night. I remember Richard Manuel nearly ran over Van in the snow in his car." Beyond the audio, the set's DVD features concert footage from a Wembley Stadium gig, a jam filmed in the studio in 1970 and a 1976 stop on Saturday Night Live shortly before The Last Waltz.

Robertson even likes the alternate versions and "song sketches," where the picture gets a little blurry. "One of the things I'm enjoying about this journey is that it has those valleys as well as those hills," he says. "There are a couple of songs where I thought I was on to something for a minute, then after the weed wore off it didn't sound as good."

Robertson -- who's now working on a musical about the Native American experience with director David Leveaux and playwright David Henry Hwang -- remains proud of the Band's legacy: "I hear all the time how that music touched a nerve, and it's something to be grateful for. I played at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with Bo Diddley, and I felt the same way about him that guys today feel about the Band's music."

[From Issue 987 — November 17, 2005]