Who do you love?
A belated recognition of greatness.

 
In 1976, I was nineteen years old. I remember hearing rumblings about this fantastic band giving their last concert calling it "The Last Waltz" and getting Martin Scorsese to put a film together. Everyone said it was great but being unfamiliar with their music, I took scant notice and let this event pass me by. The band that I missed was called "The Band". Twenty years later, I purchased a DVD of the film after learning that Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson who later with Levon Helm formed The Band were closely associated with Bob Dylan. They were his rock and roll band for the 1966 world tour. Snippets of imagery from this tour form an important part of Scorsese's documentary on Dylan called "No Direction Home", a line from his touchstone tune, "Like a Rolling Stone".

Interestingly, as Robbie Robertson says, "It was more than just a concert." It was their last performance. It was also the end of many other things besides the career of the group. It was the end of a particular era in popular music. I believe that it was also the end of a particular epoch in American culture. It seemed that a certain romantic idea of heroism disappeared.

The concert marked the period in the mid seventies when the attractions of the hippie lifestyle had begun to peter out from the popular imagination. Music then branched into new styles with soul based dance music for discotheques on one hand and punk on the other. It was also the beginning of the great commercialisation of musical styles that promoted transgression as a new lifestyle choice thus shifting the idea of sexual freedom and youthful rebellion into the mainstream of American culture. The buyers thought that they were being cool listening to a whole new style called the "New Wave", but in reality it was the recording industry which had become smart about packaging. Every new song began to be accompanyied by bright advertising style graphic images. The music video became the new thing: watching rather than listening to music. I'm not sure if The Band produced any video clips but they left the most indelibly compelling visual statement ever made in music, with a thundering performance. Again, as Robbie Robertson comments, "It was a celebration." The concert was memorable for the way guest performers were woven in throughout the evening. Ronnie Hawkins, Dr. John, Neil Young, Muddy Waters, Neil Diamond, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Paul Butterfield, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris and the Staple Singers, as Robertson says, were some of the greatest influences on music and "They helped to bring it home."

The music of these singers and songwriters was about soul searching, whether through the lyrics about pained and failed love affairs, journeys on trains, homesickness, or through the buzzing sopranos of the guitar riffs, they managed to reflect the feelings of young people at the time. These were the pioneers of the new age who had left their parental homes in droves in search of personal satisfaction and success. The music had roots in country, bluegrass and blues with the inevitable influence of jazz and early rock and roll. The drummer Levon Helm puts a geography to these influences in the southern states but the "songwriting capital" that gave it depth was the folk scene in New York in the early sixties that made popular music into a study of the new kind of loving.

The concert opened with "Cripple Creek", a song dedicated to a lover who is like a mother in everyway, forgiving, generous and necessary to compensate the inadequacies of the man. The Band, being very much a 'male' band, explores this masculine dichotomy: the fervent desire matched by an incapacity to take women for what they are. With the advent of female emancipation, heartbreak, that is, the effect of a loved woman leaving becomes not only a possible but a real event. "It makes no difference" will have to be the most painful love song of all time. "Don't do it" is a desperate plea for the woman to be kinder to the delicate male soul. With the splendid exception of Joni Mitchell, (and the post-edited studio features of Emmylou Harris and the Staple Singers) the concert is principally a male affair, and even Mitchell chooses to sing "Coyote" which is a delicate metaphor for a male sexual predator.

Myth has it that in those days, there were the notorious 'groupies': attractive young women who would make themselves available just to be near famous rock musicians. The stars had a certain status akin to pagan high priests, in that, it was as they seemed to have the keys to unlock the human soul. They were revered and every young boy played guitarwith tennis rackets dreaming of being this very powerful person. So the paradox is revealed in their songs. There were women to be had and yet this only seemed to intensify the longing for the female saviour to appear. The complexities of life on the road reveal themselves in the interview segments of the movie where the inner frailties of these simple men turned heroes surface. The stark contrast between the assured performer on stage and the rambling off-stage persona is probably the most curious thing that Scorsese captures on film.

However as artists The Band was supreme. They show how sensitive they are to what they are playing and saying on this night. Their first guest also happens to be their first employer, the man who gave them their chance, Ronnnie Hawkins. They started out as a backing band and never lost this ability which they masterfully demonstrate as they confidently plough through behind their illustrious guests, giving a new freshness to the well known songs all through the night. Ronnie Hawkins not only sets the tone but also seems to let out a challenge to the other performers who must give answers to the elementary question of his song title: "Who do you love?"

To me "The Last Waltz" works as a revelation, a certain kind of epic that will never be repeated in the annals of music. It takes me back to my own youth, but at the same time watching it as an older man, it gives me clues as to how to move forward. It is as if what they were doing could not be fully comprehended at the time. I had to discover it much later when I became more attuned to what music is actually doing and the ideas about how it is made had finally come into my sky. Just watching the sheer physical exertion of creating the music is instructive. The soul is that thing that joins mind and body, is it not? So it makes sense that learning to play music is also something that is very physical. You must dance the music. So "The Last Waltz" as a title is extremely suggestive. On contemplation it takes on a poignancy that is so touching, it is enough to make you cry.

 
Lucignano, 13 4 2007