Lost Classic – The Last Waltz
In San Francisco, on Thanksgiving Day 1976, the original members of The Band performed together for the last time. They were an effortlessly louche cast of musicians with implausibly good names; Rick Danko, the clean-cut, heart-throb bassist; Garth Hudson, the scholarly, dishevelled organist; Robbie Robertson, the slight, dapper guitar prodigy; Richard Manuel, the gentle, troubled pianist; and Levon Helm, the brooding drummer with an Arkansas drawl. All were dressed in finest gigolo chic and playing like their lives depended on it.
They played for five hours and were joined on stage by a who’s who of rock royalty. Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters and Dr. John were among those who paid tribute to the quintet and came together to celebrate a golden age in rock history that was coming to an end. Martin Scorsese filmed it all. The result, which has somehow slipped through the cracks of popular memory, is The Last Waltz, one of the greatest concert films of all time.
The American and four Canadians had started out as The Hawks, scraping a living by supporting rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins. But they grew tired of playing the same old songs with Hawkins, who banned them from taking drugs and enforced a gruelling rehearsal schedule. Well-respected and supremely talented, they caught the eye of Bob Dylan who recruited them for his first “electric” US tour in 1965. There followed two delirious years of sordid glamour and excess as they accompanied Dylan around the world.
In 1968, The Band moved to Woodstock, New York, taking up residence in a pink house in a 100-acre plot where Dylan and The Band would record The Basement Tapes. It was here that they produced their ground-breaking debut album, Music from Big Pink, on which Dylan also collaborated.
The Band’s music, image and ethos were counter-revolutionary. The record’s black-and-white inner panel shows them as rugged, 19th century outlaws. They rejected the contentious idealism of hippie culture and its mistrust of anyone over 30. The album’s sound stood in stark contrast to the psychedelia fashionable at the time and instead invoked old-time, rural America, traditional values and a sense of small-town community. It was a warped hybrid of blues, country, soul, rockabilly and gospel. The sound was authentic, imaginative and understated.
Their follow up album, The Band, was also a critical and commercial success. Over the next few years they would hone their sound on heroin-soaked tours. George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Roger Waters spoke of the influence The Band’s music was having on them. But by the mid-70s, Robertson, the group’s chief songwriter, had had enough after 16 years on the road and wanted The Band to call it a day.
The Last Waltz was his brainchild. When Robertson and promoter Bill Graham pitched the idea to a 35-year-old Scorsese, the director felt he didn’t have a choice. Scorsese was a rock & roll devotee. He had helped to edit Woodstock, the 1970 documentary chronicling the phenomenon. This new project was a chance to capture the sun setting on rock’s adolescence.
Scorsese gets the rhythm of the film spot on. The numbers are interspersed with quirky vignettes of the bandmates telling stories, jamming, and hanging out. The men open up about their worldview and backstory with a laid-back charm and the easy intimacy of close friends.
Visually, the film is glitzy and elegant. Scorsese borrowed the set from San Francisco Opera’s production of La Traviata for the show. The lavishly lit stage in the Winterland dance hall is decked out with three huge chandeliers and ornate maroon drapes. Instead of the 16mm handheld cameras that were normally used for music docs, Scorsese chose to film The Last Waltz in full 35mm splendour.
There’s isn’t a single cutaway to the audience throughout the entire film. Instead, the focus is purely on the alchemy between the five musicians and their illustrious guests. The bandmates feed off each another and operate as one slick unit, exchanging looks of quiet satisfaction or naked adulation.
It’s an incredibly tight gig. Eric Clapton, who had wanted to join The Band, trades bluesy solos with Robertson in Further On Up The Road. Muddie Waters quivers and jiggles in a feisty performance of Mannish Boy. Rick Danko breaks hearts with the reflective, mournful, It Makes No Difference. Joni Mitchell’s tender, witty rendition of Coyote is a treat. Another highlight is Stage Fright, a blistering, punchy number about Robertson’s crippling fear of performing in his early touring days.
The Staple Singers accompany The Band in a soulful, gospel version of The Weight, recorded later on an MGM soundstage and substituted for the concert performance. When Neil Young’s harmonica sweeps in at the start of Helpless, a sense of nostalgic melancholy and things coming to an end fills the room. The song ends with Danko, Robertson and Young belting out the refrain into a single microphone. Joni Mitchell sings offstage and her anonymous vocal soars above it all.
But the pick of the bunch is The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down – a first-person lament of a Confederate soldier written by Robertson and sung exquisitely by Helm who pours everything he has into the song. His drumming is clinical and his Southern twang makes it feel like he had personally witnessed the Union forces triumph. The horns lift the song to an almighty crescendo as Helm thunders out the final chorus. “His truth in that vocal could tear your heart out” said Robertson of Helm’s performance.
Even after 43 years, The Last Waltz hasn’t lost its impact. But it’s sad to watch the film knowing how The Band’s story would end. They resumed touring, minus Robertson, in 1983. But the circuit of small bars and seedy lounges they were playing in was a brutal comedown from the dizzying heights they had reached in their heyday. Richard Manuel took the fall especially hard. In the film’s interludes, Manuel is cheerful, gentle and laconic. The deep affection his old friends have for him is clear. But he’s so drunk that he misses his cue for the verse in I Shall Be Released and is shot a questioning look by Robertson.
It’s a sad hint at the alcoholism and drug abuse that would grip his life until his suicide 10 years later. Danko and Helm would be the ones to cut Manuel down from the shower rail he had hanged himself from in a Florida motel room. The tragedy of Manuel’s suicide and the impact it had on the music world is captured in Counting Crows’ beautiful song, If I Could Give All My Love.
Despite his magnificent performance, Helm hated The Last Waltz. He blamed Robertson for destroying the Band and saw the film as his personal vanity project, confirmed by, as Helm put it, the “long, loving close-ups of his heavily made-up face and expensive haircut”.
And he’s got a point. It’s not hard to tell that Robertson also produced the film and stayed up with Scorsese for months on end for coke-fuelled editing sessions. Robertson and the band’s manager, Albert Grossman, also enjoyed the lion’s share of the royalties. “It was a real scandal” wrote Helm in his memoirs.
But for all the bitterness and tragedy that followed, The Last Waltz is a glorious, uplifting and celebratory concert film. Scorsese captures an intriguing moment is rock history. He pays homage to a musical era that had reached its high-water mark. But he also manages to tell a poignant story about old friends taking a final bow together and saying goodbye.