Across the great divide : the Band and America

The Band was one of the most celebrated and influential groups to arrive on the music scene in the late 1960s.

The Band's members - Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm - fashioned something magically new out of musically traditional components: old-time country and gospel, Preservation Hall jazz, medicine-show vaudeville.

They started as The Hawks, a teenage backup group for the rockabilly renegade Ronnie Hawkins, touring the endless highways through the heart of the South.

Eventually they headed north, where they left Hawkins to become Bob Dylan's band on the revolutionary electric tours of 1965 and 1966.

From there they retreated to Woodstock, and, during a period of intense personal closeness and creativity, produced two of the hallmark albums of the era.

When The Band finally emerged from their Woodstock home they found themselves ill-equipped to deal with the realities of fame and the music business.

Stage fright, drug addictions and growing bad feelings within the group led them to quit with the star-studded farewell of "The Last Waltz" in 1976.

A few years later Richard Manuel hung himself in the bathroom of the Winter Park Quality Inn. This history captures the raw magic and complex personalities of these "musician's musicians".