Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson, three of the five members of The Band, are sitting on leather couches, playing ‘Old Time Religion’, a spiritual that dates back to at least 1873. Roberston is smoking and strumming a guitar, Manuel blows into a harmonica, Danko sings and plays the fiddle. There’s another voice, so maybe Levon Helm is just off screen. When they are done, Robertson says wryly, “It’s not like it used to be,” and they all laugh.
This relaxed moment in the 1978 documentary, The Last
Waltz, has an underlying sadness. It really wasn’t like it used to be, in
1976, when The Band decided to play a farewell concert at Winterland Ballroom
in San Francisco, US, and get Martin Scorsese to shoot it. Their best work was
behind them—Music From Big Pink (1968), The Band (1968) and The
Basement Tapes (1975) with Bob Dylan, timeless albums which fused blues,
folk, ragtime, country and half a dozen other genres with rock ‘n’ roll. Live
performances and assorted addictions had debilitated them and the group was
fracturing. They would only record one more album with the original line-up of
Robertson, Danko, Helm and Garth Hudson.
Robertson died last week, at the age of 80. He was a
brilliant guitarist whose riffs and fills blended with, rather than
overwhelmed, the incredible playing of the rest of The Band. He was the group’s
resident songwriter, his allusive, complex lyrics drawing inspiration from
scripture, literature, even Akira Kurosawa’s films. He died of cancer, the same
disease that took Helm. Hudson is the only surviving member; Danko died of
heart failure and Manuel by suicide. Scorsese’s documentary is an eerie thing
to watch because the band members look ravaged—in Manuel’s case, scarily so.
The Band’s resident pianist, he had a voice that ranged from a lewd growl to an
ethereal falsetto. Yet he was also the one most gripped by addiction. Eyes
glazed, he wobbles through the film, struggling to construct sentences. When he
sings “Oh, you don’t know, the shape I’m in”, it’s sadly ironic, because it’s
clear what shape he’s in.
By 1978, when The Last Waltz came out, Scorsese was
the internationally renowned director of Taxi Driver. The performances
by The Band and guest stars from the 1976 concert make up the body of the film,
in addition to which Scorsese filmed a couple of numbers on the MGM soundstage
(including a famous version of ‘The Weight’ with The Staple Singers) and interviews
with the quintet at their Shangri-La studio. The conversations are fascinating,
if a bit sad, with everyone but Robertson clearly strung out.
There’s a scene with Danko and Scorsese sitting at a
recording console. Scorsese asks the bassist with the unique catch in his voice
what he plans to do now that The Last Waltz is over. Danko hesitates,
turns a knob, finally says, “Just making music, you know. Trying to stay busy,
man.” Scorsese, who had his own demons, smiles in acknowledgement and says,
“It’s good.” “It’s healthy,” Danko adds.
The Last Waltz is probably their most famous
recording but it’s not The Band at their live best. The 1966 “Royal Albert
Hall” concert, where they backed Dylan as The Hawks (minus Helm), captures
their electrifying early sound, Rock Of Ages is a richer live document
of their own oeuvre. The 1976 concert is diluted by the guest spots, many of
whom—Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Eric Clapton—have little in common with The
Band’s sound. Yet there’s also a transported Van Morrison, kicking his legs in
time with the horn blasts in ‘Caravan’, and Muddy Waters, whose performance of
‘Mannish Boy’ was made even more intense by a fully alert and charged Band.
A gaggle of legendary camerapersons worked on the film,
including Michael Chapman (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull), Vilmos Zsigmond (McCabe
& Mrs. Miller) and László Kovács (Easy Rider). It has a rich,
burnished look and there are great little details like the silhouette of Joni
Mitchell backstage singing backing vocals on ‘Helpless’. Yet, I have always
felt the many claims of it being the greatest-ever concert film are misplaced. Jazz
On A Summer’s Day has a sophisticated sheen and better performances. Gimme
Shelter has more depth. Monterey Pop and Stop Making Sense have
infinitely more invention. Next to something like the feverish Moroccan
documentary Trances (which Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation helped
restore), The Last Waltz looks posh and self-satisfied.
Luckily, the film doesn’t end with the concert finale, a
supremely dull all-star jam of ‘I Shall Be Released’. Instead, we see The Band
on a soundstage, the rest of the room in darkness. They have switched
instruments, as they often did: Manuel is playing a stringed thing on his lap,
Danko an upright bass, Helm a mandolin; only Robertson and Hudson play their
regular guitar and organ. They play a courtly waltz specially written for the
film by Robertson. It’s a sound that could have emanated from a 19th century
Old West saloon. The camera is up close at first, winding around the players.
But as the credits roll, it pulls away until the band is swallowed by the
darkness. It ends on a freeze-frame: a formal goodbye in a film that is
conceived as one.
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