#17 The Last Waltz

The Last Waltz (1978)

directed by

Martin Scorsese

We have a small collection of music documentaries and video collections and we never watch them. One of this project's two-fold aims was simply to WATCH our DVDs, many of which we've bought and never put on.

In 1976, tired of the road and the attendant lifestyle, Robbie Robertson, main songwriter for the Band, decided it was time to get the group off the road for good. To commemorate this, the Band held a Thanksgiving Day concert at the Winterland Ballroom complete with dinners for 5,000 attendees. Accompanying the band was a host of their friends, including Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Muddy Waters, and, of course, Bob Dylan (among many more).

Scorcese serves as interviewer of the members of the Band before the show starts. He elicits some interesting bits about the group's history and that of its members. The best anecdote involves organist and saxophonist Garth Hudson. He was older and professionally trained. When he joined up, he told the other members they'd have to each pay him a little extra for lessons. Robbie Robertson, telling this story, laughs and says he though it was some sort of grift, until he understood Hudson's family would have been upset if he was using his education to just play in a rock band.

The live performances are fantastic. The Band had honed its live abilities to perfection, serving for years as Ronnie Hawkins' band and then as Bob Dylan's. Most of the guests are great too, especially Van Morrison and Muddy Waters. A little surprisingly, Neil Diamond, for whom Robertson had produced an album, is really good.

Unfortunately, problems filming meant some of the live footage was crap. So certain songs were refilmed later on soundstages. They're still really good, but lack that something a live performance with a loving audience has.

In his autobiography, Levon Helm, the Band's drummer (and only American - the rest were Canadian) claimed that the movie did a great disservice in the way it portrayed Robertson as the Band's leader and failed to show adequately the enormous musical contributions of Hudson and pianist/singer, Richard Manuel. I don't know, I wasn't there, but there's been a lot of talk over the years about tensions between the member at the end and how collaborative the song creation was among them.

Whatever the case was, live, the Band is smoking hot. If for nothing else, The Last Waltz is worth watching for the performances. Still, the talking heads stuff is pretty worthwhile, too. These were musicians swimming against the tide of pop music when they started recording and in doing so, with Music From Big Pink and The Band, created two of the greatest albums of the era and helped usher in a degree of respect for roots music.

Verdict: a keeper

Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, & Garth Hudson