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Today is the 60th anniversary of Bob Dylan plugging in his guitar at the Newport Folk Festival, an event blown up into the book Dylan Goes Electric! The Night That Split the Sixties which, in turn, inspired the recent film A Complete Unknown. While much is made of Dylan’s now mythical July 25, 1965 appearance with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the pairing pales in comparison with the huge role that Toronto’s Levon & the Hawks (later The Band) played in transforming the folk icon into a rock trailblazer.  It began quietly one night that September when Dylan flew up to Toronto to check out a super-tight rock group at Friar’s Tavern recommended to him by Mary Martin, ...

In early 1965, Toronto's Levon & the Hawks were having a hard time with the law. Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel, along with their road manager Bill Avis, were charged with possession of marijuana, after being arrested at Toronto's airport by RCMP officers. With bail set at $10,000 apiece and a court case likely to drag on for months, the pot bust threatened to detrail the momentum of the group that would soon become world famous as the Band. The charges were all a set up. A jealous boyfriend of a girl Danko was seeing told the cops that the group was smuggling in a trunkful of pot into Canada. In fact, Danko had an ounce of Panama Red in his jac...