‘The Last Waltz’ Chronicles The Beginning And The End Of One Rock’s Greatest Bands

Chronicling the life and times and dissolution of influential ‘60s rockers The Band, Martin Scorsese’s 1978 film The Last Waltz is one of the most hallowed music documentaries of all time. Filmed at the original group’s “farewell concert appearance” in 1976, the movie is half-concert film, half-profile piece and features the group sharing the stage with some of the biggest names in singer-songwriter ‘60s rock, from Bob Dylan to Neil Young. It’s a mainstay in any list of essential rock docs, has been released and re-released in multiple formats, and just became available for streaming on Amazon Prime.

The myth of The Band can cast a distracting shadow over their career, but make no mistake: their influence on rock n’ roll is equal to their fable. Formed in the afterglow of rock’s birth, they initially came together as The Hawks, backing first generation rockabilly rabble-rouser Ronnie Hawkins. Like Hawkins, singing drummer Levon Helm hailed from Arkansas. The rest of the band — guitarist and principle songwriter Robbie Robertson, bassist/singer Rick Danko, keyboardist Garth Hudson, and piano player/singer Richard Manuel — were all Canadians, recruited on tours up north where Hawkins star continued to shine after real rock n’ roll went out of fashion in the lower 48 preceding The British Invasion.

After leaving Hawkins and trying to make it on their own, they were eventually hired as Bob Dylan’s backing band when he controversially “went electric.” They accompanied him on his polarizing 1966 tour and followed him to the artist’s colony of Woodstock, New York, where he retreated afterwards. Assuming the humble moniker townsfolk knew them by, “The Band” bunked together in a large pink house in the woods and set up their instruments in the basement, where they would jam and write with Dylan on new music that harkened back to a rustic ancient America. These informal sessions begat both The Basement Tapes — Dylan’s storied songwriter demos which were widely bootlegged and wouldn’t see complete release until 2014 via an exhaustive boxset containing 136 songs — and Music From Big Pink, The Band’s landmark 1968 debut album, whose title memorialized its point of creation.

The music The Band crafted flew in the face of the prevailing late psychedelia and emerging hard rock of the era. Hints of old time country, blues, and Appalachian folk wafted through the music like campfire smoke, while their keening imperfect vocal harmonies spoke to their collaborative musical ethic. They even looked like a sepia-toned photograph from the 1800s, all string ties, funny hats and facial hair, presaging the modern hipster-lumberjack look by 45 years. Anytime a group sequesters themselves in the country to make an album, or trades their electric guitars for mandolins and starts exploring America’s musical roots, they’re invoking The Band. The idea of Americana as a distinct musical genre pretty much begins at their barn door and their indelible stamp can still be heard today in alt country and neo-folk.

After years on the road, The Last Waltz was conceived by Robbie Robertson as a celebration of the group and a retirement party of sorts. Years of touring had taken its toll on band members, and he felt it was time to get off the road, even if his bandmates didn’t agree. The concert was to be their last live hurrah before they became strictly a recording entity in the mold of The Beatles. Symbolically scheduled for Thanksgiving night, 1976, a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings would be served to concertgoers, who would be treated to ballroom dancing and poetry readings before The Band performed two sets, one of their original material, another as the backing “band” with friends, fans and influences. The concert would be recorded and filmed, Robertson and Scorsese were friends, resulting in a movie and triple-LP soundtrack, an early example of integrated marketing, patterned after the hit Woodstock film and soundtrack earlier that decade.

The film opens with bassist Rick Danko splitting a rack of pool balls, coloring in Scorsese’s portrait of the band members as streetwise road dogs with a trick up their sleeve. It then segues into the final song The Band performed that night, a cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Don’t Do It,” performed at 2:15 on the morning after five marathon hours of playing music. The film thematically jumps from concert footage to interview footage, Levon Helm talking about the blues leads into Muddy Waters riveting performance of his classic “Mannish Boy,” one of the movies highlights. Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, and Dylan turn in memorable appearances as well. The film also includes several staged performances, most effectively, a beautiful version of their hit song “The Weight,” accompanied by soul-gospel greats The Staple Singers.

However, for all the talent of the group and their guests, many of the performances seem canned and stiff. This may of course have been the result of the cumulative pressure the group was under; playing your final concert, which has to be good enough to release as a record and film, and half the material being songs that aren’t your own, that you learned just for the show. Or it maybe it’s because the performances were heavily overdubbed after the fact. “Sweetening” live recordings was and is common practice, most often to accommodate tuning issues and off-key vocals. According to longtime Band producer John Simon, who worked with Robertson on the final live album, “Levon is the only honest, live element in The Last Waltz.” Another problem is that besides the animated Robertson, the rest of The Band seems evasive and standoffish in the interview segments. For his part, pianist Richard Manuel just seems dead drunk, a sad signpost of the addiction that has afflicted so many great musicians, and one that would lead Manuel to take his own life years later while on tour.

Sadly, the production of the concert and film would exacerbate simmering tensions within The Band over control and songwriting credits. In his excellent autobiography, The Wheel’s On Fire, Helm aired a litany of grievances against the film, calling it “the biggest f***kin’ rip-off that ever happened to The Band,” and dismissing it as a vanity project for Robertson by his buddy Scorsese. While it is a harsh and overly critical judgment, it is hard not to see things through the drummer’s eyes as the camera repeatedly hangs lovingly on Robertson singing into a mic that according to band members was never turned on. Ultimately, The Last Waltz was Robertson’s curtain call with The Band. They broke up soon after its 1978 release but reformed a scant few years later without their founding guitarist and writer of their most famous songs. Though the merits of the film may have been contested by band members up until Helm’s death in 2012, whatever its faults, The Last Waltz is a thorough portrait of a group whose musical legacy is beyond reproach.

[Watch The Last Waltz on Prime Video]

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician who wishes Robbie Robertson never stopped playing a Telecaster. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.