Rock Of Ages

The last member of The Band, Garth Hudson, left us on January 21. Friends and collaborators remember him as, “genius, eccentric, cool.”

Grayson Haver Currin

IN THE WANING days of the 1960s, Benmont Tench went to see B.B. King at a three-day rock festival at a Miami racetrack. The enthusiastic piano player had turned 16 three months earlier and was just beginning to experiment with the Farfisa organ. When he started to leave his festival seat for a drink that day, a new sound stopped him where he stood: the tone and technique of organist Garth Hudson, during an uncanny performance of The Band’s I Shall Be Released. “In the second verse, Garth draws up a sound, a swell, and moves between a few chords. It riveted me,” remembers Tench, who joined Tom Petty in Mudcrutch three years later. “The way he plays against the melody, against that miraculous voice of Richard Manuel, it was…

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MOJO (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2025

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