"The Last Waltz"

A new DVD remembers when Martin Scorsese captured a beautiful moment before the Band -- along with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell -- ceased to matter at all.

By Bill Wyman

May 22, 2002 | More than 25 years on, it's a little hard to explain "The Last Waltz." Rock 'n' roll, pop and hip-hop permeate our lives. The music blasts from commercials; you can hear the Ramones in the bar of an expensive restaurant; Joni Mitchell songs anchor an episode of "Ally McBeal." More than that, you can see rock -- and see it well -- on a slew of cable channels; fans can find exquisitely filmed concert footage (and fake concert footage) of virtually any artist they're interested in. More than that, the rock video industry, unaccountably, has found itself frequently setting the standard for film technology and construction.

In that context, it seems like no big news that you can see some rock stars in "The Last Waltz," recently released in theaters and just out on DVD. Its technical claim to fame is based on the fact that it was shot in 35mm. The group the film is about -- a band called just the Band -- were once somewhat famous but dropped out of sight around the time the movie was filmed, in 1976, and haven't been heard much of since. And the music they made -- today you'd call it Americana, or alternative country -- is as unfashionable a genre as you can imagine, the success of the yuppie coffee-table CD that is the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack notwithstanding.

The film "Woodstock," which came out about eight years before "The Last Waltz," contains head-snapping performances by Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana and many others; it's a searchingly filmed and edited documentary of a larger-than-life event and remains a larger-than-life touchstone of an era of social upheaval and a landmark in documentary filmmaking. That film aside, however, "The Last Waltz," as the pristine DVD version attests, is the single best movie about rock 'n' roll and only rock 'n' roll ever made.

At the time "The Last Waltz" was created, the rock film was still a rarity, despite the magisterial "Woodstock" and the shockingly fun mid-1960s Beatles outings. You could see the occasional 16mm concert films -- "Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii," "Ladies and Gentlemen the Rolling Stones," "Ziggy Stardust" and so forth -- but only in theaters, and only in the cities that might have an offbeat movie house that would play such stuff. Rock appeared on TV only rarely (on cool shows like "The Midnight Special").

So, in 1976, when it was filmed, and 1978, when it was released, "The Last Waltz" had some striking features. The film chronicled a concert in which appeared not only the Band and Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Eric Clapton but also Bob Dylan and Van Morrison and Muddy Waters, many of these at something near their psychic best. The occasion of the show was the announced retirement from the road of the Band. Even back then, the group was a somewhat mysterious ensemble, Canadian save for an Arkansan drummer but uncompromisingly dedicated to the investigation of American music. After nearly a decade of tangential obscurity, the members found themselves Dylan's electric backup band in the mid-'60s. Later they would hole away with him to make rock's most famous bootleg, "The Basement Tapes," and release influential records on their own, most notably "Music From Big Pink" in 1968. At their peak, they revealed a Crazy Horse-style force and Stones-like libidinousness, both leavened by a predilection for drolly fatalist Americana populated with R. Crumb-like characters and romantic losers.

The group planned its farewell at Bill Graham's Winterland auditorium in San Francisco. The band's leader, Robbie Robertson, knew Martin Scorsese, who was then in Los Angeles finishing up his wan tribute to the American movie musical, "New York, New York." He was so late on that film, and so over budget, that he had to undertake preparations for "The Last Waltz" secretly. Once he took on the project, he decided to do what apparently had never been done for a serious rock movie -- film it in 35mm, under controlled conditions. That meant turning Winterland from a concert venue into a film studio, with an appropriate set; stationary and moving cameras; storyboarded songs; and an intense communications network to capture what was needed to be captured -- all of this for a complex show with an array of special guests, and in an era when "authenticity" was a rock byword and many musicians and concert production people were less than cooperative when it came to sacrificing spontaneity to decent filmmaking conditions.

Scorsese brought in Boris Leven, who had been production designer on "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music," to create a set; for cinematographers he had Vilmos Szigmond and Laszlo Kovacs, cameramen of choice for the "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" generation. When Winterland's floor proved shaky, the production sawed through it and anchored the cameras in the building's foundation. Behind the stage, Scorsese built a rolling track for a moving camera. The San Francisco Opera lent the production pieces of a set from a recent production to create a lush and attractive backdrop.

After logistical problems that must have been nightmarish, given the egos involved, the concept came off. One of the things we learn on the commentaries on the DVD is that the group sent emissaries to the invited guests to find out what songs they were going to perform, to allow the Band to rehearse and prepare the proper arrangements, which could then be used by Scorsese for storyboarding purposes -- the solos, the change in vocalists and so forth. Promoter Bill Graham served the 5,000 attendees a Thanksgiving dinner; then, tables were cleared to make room for ballroom dancers. The show began with performances by the Band ("Up on Cripple Creek," "It Makes No Difference," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, " Stage Fright," etc., etc.) alternating with tunes by the guests: Mitchell ("Coyote"), Young ("Helpless"), Muddy Waters ("Mannish Boy"), Neil Diamond ("Dry Your Eyes"), Clapton ("Further on up the Road"), Dr. John ("Such a Night"), Morrison ("Caravan") and finally Dylan ("Forever Young," "Baby Let Me Follow You Down"). There are two striking songs filmed later, on sound stages: "Evangeline," featuring Emmylou Harris, and "The Weight," with the Staple Singers. Then the show ends with an all-star ensemble singing "I Shall Be Released."

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