2009 was a hinge year. Robbie Robertson had just published his memoir Testimony in draft form online; Levon Helm was in the midst of his late-career Grammy-winning revival; and Richard Manuel and Rick Danko were a decade dead. The 2009 reissue stripped away the orchestral overdubs that had sweetened the original Rock of Ages (1972). In their place was the sound of five men playing in a small room: Helm’s snare drum cracking like a rifle, Garth Hudson’s Lowrey organ humming with electrical menace, and Manuel’s voice cracking on “I Shall Be Released” as if he were already a ghost.