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April 20th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
“We lost Levon at 1:30 (local time) today surrounded by friends and
family and his musicians have visited him,” Campbell, who has played
with everyone from Bob Dylan to BB King,
told Rolling Stone.
“All his friends were there, and it seemed like Levon was waiting for
them.
“Ten minutes after they left we sat there and he just faded away. He did
it with dignity.
“It was even two days ago they thought it would happen within hours, but
he held on. It seems like he was Levon up to the end, doing it the way he
wanted to do it. He loved us, we loved him.”
He added: “As sad as this was, it was very peaceful. What I’m most proud
of is he called me his partner.
“For me to arrive at a place like that with a great man like him is the
ultimate.”
On Thursday night, fans took to Twitter and Facebook to pay tribute to the
musician. At one point his name was the fourth top “trending”
topic on Twitter.
His death came just days after his wife of 30 years Sandy, and daughter, Amy,
a vocalist and instrumentalist who recorded with her father, posted a
message on his official website saying that Helm was “in the final stages of
his battle with cancer”.
They
added on Tuesday: “Please send your prayers and love to him as he
makes his way through this part of his journey.
“Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and
celebration.
“He has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay
down the back beat and make the people dance. He did it every time he took
the stage.”
A number of artists took to Twitter
to pay tribute.
Helm was best known for his years with The Band, where he played drums, guitar
and mandolin and sang until the group’s 1976 “The Last Waltz”
farewell performance, which was filmed by director Martin Scorsese.
Levon Helm was born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, on May 26, 1940, the
son of a cotton farmer.
He grew up near the community of Turkey Scratch, outside Helena, Arkansas,
with the intention of being a musician. He was a teenager when he became the
drummer for another Arkansas native, rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins.
Hawkins took the group to Canada, where he added guitarist Robbie Robertson,
bassist Rick Danko and keyboardists Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson to The
Hawks. Eventually the four Canadians and Helm would split off.
Helm and his band mates were musical virtuosos who mined the roots of American
music in the late 1960s as other rockers veered into psychedelia, heavy
metal and jams.
The group’s 1968 debut, “Music From the Big Pink,” remains a
landmark album of the era.
Early on, The Band backed Dylan on his sensational and controversial electric
tours of 1965-66 and collaborated with him on the legendary “Basement
Tapes,” which produced “I Shall Be Released,” “Tears of
Rage” amongst others.
The group’s regular drummer, Helm was also among its lead vocalists, adding
his southern voice to songs including “Up on Cripple Creek” — which reached
No. 25 on the Billboard chart in 1970, making it The Band’s biggest hit.
Helm, who also toured with Ringo Starr’s All Star band in the 1980s and won a
Grammy Award last year had cancelled a series of gigs recently due to his
ill health.
“The Band, more than any other group, put rock and roll back in touch with its
roots,” wrote the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, which inducted
the group in 1994.
“With their ageless songs and solid grasp of musical idioms, The Band reached
across the decades, making connections for a generation that was, as an era
of violent cultural schisms wound down, in desperate search of them.”
Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1998. At one point, the musician, who
was born in Arkansas native lost his voice to cancer.
He underwent 28 radiation treatments, recovering to produce a Grammy
Award-winning album, “Dirt Farmer,” in 2007.
He fell on hard times as cancer took his voice and medical bills threatened
his house in Woodstock, New York home.
“You got to pick one – pay your medical bills or pay the mortgage. Most
people can’t do both, and I’m not different,”
he told CNN in 2010.
Instead, he turned his home, better known as The Barn, into a weekly concert
hall that attracted sell-out crowds, big names such as Emmylou Harris and
Kris Kristofferson and ended up both paying the mortgage and rejuvenating
Helm’s career.
For someone who played before packed out venues including Wembley Stadium and
New York’s Madison Square Garden, and Radio City Music Hall he found some of
his biggest success staging house concerts at his home.
“If I had my way about it, we’d probably do it every night,” Helm
said. “I never get tired of it.”
Helm also had a career
as an actor.
He made his film debut in Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), playing the father of
Loretta Lynn, and he performed Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky” on the
soundtrack. He also had roles in The Right Stuff (1983), The Three Burials
of Melquiades Estrada (2005), Shooter (2007) and In the Electric Mist
(2009).
Jane
Fonda was amongst his fans.
“I got to know Levon personally because he played my husband in the movie
The Dollmaker,” she wrote two days ago.
“He was kind and deep and devoted to music, as a singer and playing not
only drums, but harmonica, fiddle, mandolin, you name it.”
Earlier this week Robertson, 68, described how he set aside years of acrimony
to visit Helm in hospital.
“I am so grateful I got to see him one last time and will miss him and
love him forever,” he said.
Hudson has also expressed his sadness on Helm’s illness this week, posting a
video of Knocking on Heaven’s Door.
“I am too sad for words right now,” he wrote on his website.
“It hit me really hard because I thought he had beaten throat cancer and
had no idea that he was this ill. I spoke with his family and made
arrangements to go and see him.”
He died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.
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