The Band's Last Waltz

That Train Don't Stop Here Anymore

by Greil Marcus

THE LATE JUNIOR PARKER made the original recording of ‘Mystery Train’ in 1953, taking the first lines

Train I ride
Sixteen coaches long

from the Carter Family’s "Worried Man Blues," which dates from the Twenties, though no one knows exactly when the Carter Family got it. It is a very old song. When the Band went after the tune an hour or so into their farewell concert at Winterland Thanksgiving night, the song sounded new. I had heard Parker sing it, and Elvis, and Paul Butterfield, and I had heard the Band’s version, with new lyrics, on Moondog Matinee, their oldies album; this was something else entirely new. Both Levon Helm, singing lead, and Richard Manuel played drums; Paul Rutterfield played harp; and together they began a jumping beat that kicked with greater force each time the tune turned a corner. I have never heard Butterfield play with such strength: his harp was a hoodoo night call hovering over the crowd, cutting through the "event" of the Band’s last performance to show why such a performance could have become an "event" in the first place. The Band held nothing back; they played with an intensity I’ve seen them attain only occasionally over the years -- behind Dylan in 1965, on the second night of their debut performances at Winterlandin 1969, with Dylan in 1974 on "Highway 61 Revisited" and "All Along the Watchtower" -- an intensity I’ve never forgotten.

Come down to the station meet my baby at the gate
Ask the stationmaster if the train’s runnin’ late
He said if you’re a-waitin’ on the old 44
I hate to tell you son that train don’s stop here anymore

Levon sang as if he were pleading for mercy -- from God or from the devil, you couldn’t tell.

THE CONCERT WAS BILLED as "The Last Waltz"; the Band came up with a song of the same name, written mostly the day before the show and rehearsed backstage during the only break they took in their five-hour performance. As an event the affair was overblown, but the Band escaped the pretensions that surrounded them.

Bill Graham produced the show, and in some ways created it. Originally, the Band intended a long concert, at a medium-to-large hall with numerous guests: Bob Dylan, Ronnie Hawkins, Join Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Dr.John, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, a horn section starring the great tuba player Howard Johnson -- all of whom appeared, along with Bobby Charles, Ron Wood, Ringo Starr, Steven Stills and Carl Radle. Allen Toussaint, who wrote the horn charts for the performance that was made into Rock of Ages, was on hand to work with the hornmen, and John Simon, who collaborated with the Band on their first two albums, played piano on some tunes and occasionally conducted the entire group with wonderful aplomb. Even Albert Grossman, the Band’s former manager, was in evidence, and he didn’t look as if he’d aged a day or changed a hair since Woodstock. What the Band did not intend, and what they at first seriously resisted, but eventually thanks to Graham’s persuasion wholeheartedly agreed to, was a $25-a-ticket affair including a complete Thanksgiving dinner (with dancing to the Berkeley Promenade Orchestra, who were superb).

The last concert was held in San Francisco for these reasons: (1) the Band respects Bill Graham’s abilities as a producer and probably did not even consider allowing anyone else to handle the show; (2) the Band played their first concert at Winterland; (3) the Band has a good feeling about Bay Area audiences (although no specifically Bay Area musicians -- say, the Grateful Dead or the Jefferson Starship -- performed for the obvious reason that none of them have any particular affinity with the Band, either musically or personally; in addition, the concert was simply an allstar revue, or was so only at its weakest). But it was turned into a grand, expensive foofaraw by Bill Graham, and it took a great deal of effort on his part to sell the Band on the idea: a dinner catered by a good restaurant; chandeliers imported from Hollywood; red bunting; etc. "Without the dinner and the ambiance it’d be just a musical event," one of Graham’s people told me, "and when Bill gets excited about a challenge, money just doesn’t matter to him."

Personally, I wanted to see the Band, and whomever they might have along with them; so did the 2500 people who had already bought $5.50-to-$7.50 tickets for the scheduled Band concert, sans guests, that "The Last Waltz" replaced. What troubled me, and what troubles me now despite a satisfying show, is that many of these people, to whom the absence of the Band will represent a real loss, could not afford the concert that took place -- could not afford to even think about going -- and that includes almost everyone I know. Fifty dollars represents more than one percent of the annual income of some couples. I made these objections to people involved in planning the affair, and in every case I was told the same thing: "Look -- if a couple went to the Fairmont (San Francisco’s biggest-deal hotel] for Thanksgiving dinner and a show, it’d cost a lot more than $50." That’s true, but how many of the Band’s fans were going to the Fairmont? Take your pick between one and zero.

Anyway, I doubt very much if Bill Graham made any money off "The Last Waltz," and I hope that if he lost anything he is repaid off the top with proceeds from the live album and the film (directed by Martin Scorsese, who shot the concert with his crew in between shooting and editing New York, New York) that will result. This was an expensive show to produce: performers had to be flown in and housed, dinner had to be prepared and served, lighting and sound had to be extra special, and so on. That is not, I think, the point. Rock & roll bands cut deep and wide, and they create the sort of audiences that cannot pay $25 to see them -- the price of the ticket automatically excluded a great proportion of the Band’s audience -- including people who have listened to the Band’s music, cared about it, lived by it, for as long as the Band has been playing under that name, people who have bought the Band’s albums as if their lives depended on them. Without the dinner, without the chandeliers and all the decoorations that simply made Winterland look bizarre-tacky instead of pure tacky, tickets might have been $15; that’s $20 less for a couple, and a figure that a lot more people could have contemplated without panicking. It is a difference, and a significant one. It’s not a matter of whether the night was "worth it"; and it wasn’t a matter of choices, or priorities, except on the part of Bill Graham and ultimately the Band, and in those cases the choices and the priorities were wrong.

THIS SAID THERE WERE NO problems that I noticed. More than 4000 people ate a good dinner, and they ate it with relative ease, the lines were quick, walkie-talkies were placed on food tables to make sure nothing ran out, and you could come back for more as many times as you wanted. The dinner entertainment, which included blues pianist Dave Alexander along with the waltz orchrestra, was excellent. People enjoyed themselves enormously. Many danced. The mood was fine, it was a friendly crowd. To be fair, this may not have been unrelated to the $25 ticket and the fancy trimmings. "When you treat people in a special way, in a civilized manner, it may be they respond in kind," said a friend of mine. "There were no hassles from Graham’s end and that might be why there were none from ours."

Over the years, the Band has become identified with a set of songs in a manner that distinguishes them, for good or ill, from all other rock groups: they are less their mystique, or their faces, than they are "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and other tunes from Music from Big Pink and The Band. The Band opened the show with such songs and they played them with greater precision and flair than I have seen in a long time. They came out of themselves; Rick Danko bopped across the stage, Robbie took extravagant solos, Garth Hudson roamed his organ like a tracker, his hair flying, and both Richard Manuel and Levon Helm seemed to sing with a special conviction. As I listened to their first number, "Up on Cripple Creek," it struck me that I might never hear them play the song again; they had been playing it since that first night in San Francisco eight years ago, and I had never seen them perform without its inclusion. I had carped that the Band never changed their stage material, but suddenly the song seemed permanent, rightfully unchanging: not just a number, but no more transitory than a personality. At that moment, it made no sense that they would not be playing the tune as long as they lived. I was caught up in the song; I couldn’t deal with it as a last anything, because it was a long way from wearing out.

They moved through various tunes, bringing on their horn section and a fiddler, peaking at the end of "This Wheel’s on Fire," always one of their high points (with Howard Johnson, who looks a little like Louis Armstrong, a little like Flip Wilson and a lot like Roy Campanella, singing along, puffing his cheeks to sing just as he does with his tuba). They sang their recent single, "Georgia on My Mind," recorded as their contribution to Jimmy Carter’s campaign (he was sent the master, and liked it -- "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was the appropriate flip). Garth provided an intro straight out of "Song of the South," while Manuel sang crooner-style, away from the piano. But the Band’s solo set broke open with "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." They simply bore down harder on this song than I have ever seen them do before; there was a lot of love in the performance, and a certain desperation as well. The set also included "The Shape I’m In" (sluggish, as it’s always been on-stage), "It Makes No Difference," "Life Is a Carnival," "Ophelia" and "Stage Fright"; they closed with "Rag Mama Rag."

Damned if someone didn’t yell for "Free Bird."

Then the Band brought Ronnie Hawkins, the Arkansas rockabilly singer who recruited them as the hHwks in Toronto in the early Sixties. Hawkins is no bigger than any two members of the Band together; he is one’s ultimate fantasy of the unreconstructed rocker. He wore a huge, straw snap-brim hat, a black suit, a big beard, flashing eyes, a scarred face and a grin. The Band hit as tough a Bo Diddley beat as you’d ever want to hear and Hawkins commenced to prowl the stage, aiming "Who Do You Love" at the Band ("Take it easy, Garth, dontcha gimme no lip"), who had backed him on his classic recording of the song in 1963. Hawkins howled, wailed, screamed, storming across the boards to fan Robbie’s guitar with his hat ("Cool it down, boy!"), a riff from the act the six men had shared 13 years ago, and my favorite moment of the night.

Dr. John, dressed as a Fifties hipster -- gold shoes, sparkling jacket, beret pulled down over his head -- followed, with "Such a Night." Bobby Charles, another New Orleans singer, then came on for a rewrite of "Liza Jane": Rebenack, Charles, Danko, Robertson, Manuel and Helm put across as modest and perfect a piece of New Orleans music as a place like Winterland could contain. Dr. John’s own tune had broken the mood, as the songs of most guests, when unidentified with the Band, would subsequently do, but singing as part of the group he brought it back.

Then came "Mystery Train," and then, with Butterfield still on the stage, Muddy Waters, with his own guitarist and piano player. He sang a weak version of "Caldonia"; he is, after all, 61. It was nice of the Band to invite him; most of them had played on his Woodstock album, and as Levon and the Hawks they had recorded Muddy’s "She’s 19" back in ‘63. It made sense. One conceived apologies, and then heard the Band and Muddy tear into "Manish Boy," a tune close to "I’m a Man." Muddy first cut it in 1955, when he was a mere 40, barely younger than Hawkins is now, and suddenly the idea of aging, of over-the-hill, was satirized. Butterfield seemed to hold one dark note throughout the entire performance, Myddy danced, jumped up and down, the Band smoked.

It went on and on: "I’m man...I’m a hootchie-kootchie man...I’m a rollin’ stone..." They went for everything the song had to give, and when Muddy left the stage, there was nothing left. "The Last Waltz" had been carefully worked out; there were two nights of rehearsals in San Francisco, weeks of rehearsals in L.A., and every number was literally scripted, line by line, for camera angles and setups. "Manish Boy" might have been run through, but as Muddy and the Band played it, it could hardly have been rehearsed. It was a titanic performance. Waters was followed by Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Neil Diamond, and for me the show lost its shape with their performances. Clapton played poorly, if spectacularly; neither Young’s tunes ("Helpless" and Ian Tyson’s "Four Strong Winds") nor Mitchell’s (three from her new album, including "Coyote") nor Diamond’s ("Tired Eyes") seemed to have anything to do with the Band musically; here, the concert slipped toward mere star-gazing. (It was at this point that speculation about additional guests began; one fan predicted that Buddy Holly would appear precisely at midnight, while another claimed to have seen Murray Wilson tuning up backstage.)

AS DIAMOND LEFT THE stage Manuel turned the piano over to John Simon and began "Tura Lura," a song about an Irish lullaby; just as Manuel finished the first verse, Van Morrison made his entrance and he turned the show around. I had seen him not many minutes before prowling the balconies, dressed nondescriptly in a shirt and jeans, scowling; but there he was onstage, in an absurd maroon suit and a green top, singing to the rafters. They cut into "Caravan" -- with John Simon waving the Band’s volume up and down, and the horns at their most effective -- while Van burned holes in the floor. He was magic, and I thought, Why didn’t he join the Band years ago? More than any other singer, he fit in, his music and theirs made sense together. It was a triumph, and as the song ended Van began to kick his leg into the air out of sheer exuberance, and he kicked his way right offstage like a Rockette. The crowd had given him a fine welcome and they cheered wildly when he left.

The Band headed into an intermission -- during which poets, including Emmett Grogan, Michael McClure and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, read -- with "Acadian Driftwood." Neil Young and Joni Mitchell were brought back to sing harmony, since they are Canadians, and it is a Canadian song. It did not really hold together. The concert began again, some 40 minutes later, with Garth’s long intro to "Chest Fever" -- this time, it was more stately than playful -- followed by the song itself, and then "The Last Waltz," which has something of the feel of "Long Black Veil" to it. The next tune was "The Weight." I have heard the Band perform this song a dozen times, and never, until this night, did it ever seem to come off. Garth plays piano on "The Weight," and there has always been something so crazed, so country-time about his notes, that it has made it impossible for the rest of the group to follow him. But here, he played with some semblance of order, and the song shone.

Immediately, Bob dylan came on, plugged in, and hit the first notes of "Baby let me follow you down." His rhythm guitar was turned up, or mixed up, so loudly that everyone else was drowned out; the sound was rougher, shriller, faster and harder than it had been all night. Dylan rocked out. He danced across the stage, striding off-mike after every verse. His guitar was ringing. He shouted into the mike, tearing off a song he and the Hawks had used as a centerpiece for their shows in 1965 and ‘66, slowed the pact with "Hazel," from Planet Waves, an cut back into "I Don’t Believe You," also one of the finest numbers from the Dylan-Hawks shows of ten years ago. It was powerful, lyrical piece then; it was this night as well. Dylan swaggered; there was a great urgency in his performance, and unlike those of some other singers, no solemnity and no reverence. He was noisy. and he never stood still. After "Forever Young" he segued without a break -- in fact, there hadn’t been a break in time of so much as a note between his songs -- back into "Baby Let Me Follow You Down." He was on, some said, for 25 minutes; I would have bet on seven.

The concert reached a formal end with "I Shall Be Released" ("Well," said a friend, "at least they didn’t do ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken’ ") -- and predictably, everyone, plus Ringo Starr and Ronnie Wood, came back to sing the finale. That over and the stage cleared, Levon and Ringo laid down a vamp until more musicians -- Dr. John, Clapton, Wood, Carl Radle, Neil Young, Steve Stills, and various members of the Band -- came back for long and rather typical jams. After 30 minutes, the Band returned alone and punched out "Don’t Do It." That done, they did. They left.

It was a long night, and until the appearance of Ringo-Wood-Stills (plus Jerry Brown, not dressed in a suit, who waved), there was no sense of supersession. In the main, the people who played together made music only they would have made together; they pushed each other past their limits, and they broke through the nostalgia that was built into the show.

Exactly what is "over" is not easy to tell. No one expects that the Band’s farewell will turn out to be much like Smokey Robinson’s goodbye or any of David Bowie’s retirements. Perhaps what is over is simply a set of songs, those songs the Band has been playing, and not escaping, for so long; it may be that part of the reason they decided to end their time as a public band was that their own music had driven them into a corner; perhaps they needed to orchestrate an end in order to start over, as individuals, and as a group. Certainly there will be more solo projects; the official line is that the Band will continue to record as The Band, but save for the live album of "The Last Waltz", I wonder how long it will be before their name appears on another LP.

The fact is that the Band has never been, to their fans or to their detractors, just another top-flight rock & roll band; they have always been special, and it was the very idea of a group of men sticking together over the years that along with their music made them special -- it was that, no doubt, that made the music unique. I’m not truly ready to deal with the likelihood that the songs the Band put into the American tradition now exist only on record, nor am I able to lay to rest my doubts that the Band has, whatever their intentions, closed only one door.

Weeks ago, I asked Robbie Robertson if a last concert meant the Band was breaking up, and he seemed both surprised and amused at the idea. "The Band will never break up," he said. "It’s too late to break up." Well, I hope so. But that line from "Mystery Train" stays in my mind, as does the performance the Band and Butterfield gave to the song, as does a thought from Emmett Grogan’s autobiography, where he wrote that his encounters with the Band taught him that if anything really good were to happen, it would be a long time coming. A long time coming, and a long time gone.