The Band – the cocky hotshots called themselves “The Band,” although they explain it away in a Canadianly self-effacing way in the documentary – began their career first as the backing group for Ronnie Hawkins and then Bob Dylan, before becoming acclaimed headliners themselves after the release of 1968’s Music from Big Pink and ‘69’s self-titled album.
On Thanksgiving Day in 1976, after 16 years on the road, they decided to call it quits by throwing themselves a concert blowout featuring their heroes (Muddy Waters), contemporaries (Paul Butterfield, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris), old bosses (Hawkins and Dylan), and some oddballs who must’ve been good hangs (Ringo Starr and Ron Wood are totally inessential to the show, but The Band must’ve wanted a Beatle and a Stone). And then they got Martin Scorsese, hot off of directing Taxi Driver, and deep into a relationship with cocaine, to film the shindig. They called it The Last Waltz.
The Last Waltz is one of the best concert documentaries of all time because its all star cast is a who’s who of 1970s roots rockers – and they all seem pretty gacked.
While the documentary is a celebration, it’s also a funeral, not just for The Band (whose members would die at a rate of one-a-decade until the final member’s passing, Garth Hudson’s, earlier this year) but also of a type of music.
In the late 1960s, the Beatles grew beards, and bands like the Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Grateful Dead, Van Morrison, and The Band drew inspiration from pre-rock music: blues, folk, jazz, and country. They took olde timey music, but played it with new timey instruments and amplification. Today we call it Americana.
And, after The Last Waltz, it wouldn’t be popular again until the release of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack in 2000.
After the show nearly every featured performer suffered some type of downturn in their career. Waters died in 1983. Young got lost genre-hopping. Dylan became a Born Again Christian (still one of fame’s biggest WTFs). Synthesizers overtook guitars. The Band’s music went from celebrating stuffy classics to feeling pretty damn stuffy themselves.
Play “The Weight” for a 20-year-old. I’ll bet they won’t guess it was written in the late 1960s.
But that in itself should be celebrated. When he moved to Greenwich Village in the 1960s, Bob Dylan sought to write new folk standards instead of rehashing “Stagger Lee” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” Now The Last Waltz’s closer, Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” stands alongside those timeless tunes.
But enough table setting, let’s talk some shit. Here are all the things I found interesting or funny while watching The Last Waltz:
Drummer Levon Helm criticized Scorsese for focusing too much attention on guitarist Robbie Robertson at the expense of the other four Band members, but Robertson is the only one who understood the assignment. While the other Band-mates play themselves as understated Canadians (and one Southerner), Robertson knew to lean in as a rock star blowhard. He waxes about the difficulty of life on the road, the deathly toll of rock, and getting more pussy than Frank Sinatra. (Robertson walked so you could run, Bono.) He also mugs the best, struts around like he owns the place, and sings his backup vocals like he’s Whitney Houston. Helm later dropped the bomb that Robertson’s mic wasn’t even plugged in. What’s funny is that despite being the star of the show (and a damn fine songwriter), Robertson may overall be the worst musician in the band. While everyone else swaps instruments, Robertson clings to his guitar. While Helm, Richard Manuel, and Rick Danko have soulful singing voices, Robertson wasn’t allowed to have his mic plugged in
Rock musicians age weird. Some smoke cigarettes, shoot smack, and dine on pussy in lieu of hot food for forty years straight, and still have ropy arms, flat tummies, and jet black hair, and then some look like the portrait of Dorian Gray. Van Morrison, who during the recording of The Last Waltz, was only thirty-one, looks like hadn’t turned down anything in the last decade – including the spangled maroon onesie he wears onstage with The Band. His voice, though, on “Caravan” is gorgeous. This is peak male performance.
But Morrison isn’t the only one looking a little worn out…although everyone involved is in their thirties, it’s an old thirties. The 1970s hair and clothing isn’t making anyone look fresh, but no one looks well-rested, well-fed, or sober. The Band probably called it quits at exactly the right time.
Joni Mitchell throws a welcome changeup with her performance. Her bubbling phrasing and unique guitar tuning makes “Coyote” sound unlike anything else onstage that night, even as the guys try to rawk it up. Reportedly the song was written about Sam Shepard, with whom Mitchell had a dalliance during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1975. “He’s got a woman at home, another woman down the hall, but he seems to want me anyway.” That Shepard must’ve been a hall of fame pussy-getter.
The film gives us Garth Hudson’s glorious intro to “Chest Fever,” but cuts off the rest of the song. Hudson is one of my favorite keyboard players, and the type of special weapon any band would be lucky to have. In a band of musical ringers, he is the biggest. Speaking of biggest – check out that bearded pumpkin on his shoulders!
Richard Danko has one of the ugliest looking bass techniques I’ve ever seen. His weird minimal strummy pick thing works perfectly in the context of the band, though. Anything busier would’ve been too much.
Speaking of ugly…look, every band has a homeliest member, and the poor singing piano player Manuel is struck with that role in The Band. It doesn’t help that he spends his brief interview segment talking about all the pussy he was thankful to slay over the past decade. What a lucky guy. The only way a guy who looked like that got that much tail is because he sang falsetto in one of the biggest bands of the 1970s.
Robertson must’ve been feeling himself to go mano-a-mano in a guitar duel with Eric Clapton, especially because he has one move: hit a note, bend it a bit and then hit it harder and harder. What’s remarkable, though, is that I think Robertson beats the guitar “god.” Clapton has a good tone, but his pentatonic slop isn’t anything special.
Hell, even uncle Bob gets a little shreddy, going for a half-baked solo at the end of of a rocking version of “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.”
Young famously had to have his coke booger rotoscoped out of the film. But he looks like he’s having the time of his life, trying to grab Dr. John, Danko, and Mitchell into a big hug while singing backup on “I Shall Be Released.” “Hey, Rob,” Young says to Robertson when he takes the stage, “thanks for letting me do this.” That must’ve been some bomb blow.
What the fuck is Neil Diamond doing there? Couldn’t we have another song with The Staple Singers instead?
