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(film projector whirring)
(amplifier buzzing)
(strums a chord)
This guitar was the beginning of it all for me.
(plays guitar)
Robbie Robertson: I don't have much of a process of, like,
"I'm thinking about this,
and now I'm gonna write a song, and it's gonna be about that."
A lot of times,
the creative process is trying to catch yourself off guard.
♪ ("I Heard You Paint Houses" by Robbie Robertson plays) ♪
And you sit down, and you've got a blank canvas,
and you don't know what you're gonna do,
and you just see what happens.
How you doin', man?
When you talk about songs that are
reflective of your past,
It becomes a jigsaw puzzle,
because... you write about what you know.
You write about where you've been.
You write about who you know.
♪ ("Once Were Brothers" by Robbie Robertson plays) ♪
When I stumbled onto this song, "Once Were Brothers"...
it really did, for me,
zero in on The Band.
♪ Once were brothers ♪
♪ Brothers no more ♪
♪ We lost our connection ♪
♪ After the war... ♪
I don't know of any other group of musicians
with a story equivalent
to the story of The Band.
And it was a beautiful thing.
It was so beautiful, it went up in flames.
♪ Brothers no more ♪
♪ ("Up on Cripple Creek" by The Band plays) ♪
♪ When I get off of this mountain ♪
♪ You know where I want to go ♪
♪ Straight down the Mississippi River ♪
♪ To the Gulf of Mexico ♪
♪ To Lake George, Louisiana... ♪
Bruce Springsteen: There is no band that emphasizes
coming together and becoming
greater than the sum of their parts than The Band.
Simply their name, The Band, that was it.
♪ Up on Cripple Creek She sends me
♪ If I sprang a leak She'd mend me ♪
♪ I don't have to speak She defends me ♪
♪ A drunkard's dream If I ever did see one ♪
♪ Good luck had just stung me ♪
♪ And to the racetrack I did go ♪
♪ I bet on one horse to win ♪
♪ And she bet On another to show ♪
Eric Clapton: I've never been in a band that long. (laughs)
I ran away, usually, and would move on
to the next thing that was attractive to me,
or that was missing in the band I was in. So I didn't
have a sense of brotherhood,
so I was in great awe of their brotherhood.
It was the soul of The Band.
♪ She mends me I don't have to speak ♪
♪ She defends me A drunkard's dream ♪
♪ If I ever did see one ♪
Springsteen: Not only did they have the incredible writing,
you know, Robbie's writing, but they had three
of the greatest white singers in rock history.
To have any one of those guys would be the foundation
for a great band. To have three of them in one group,
that was... just loaded for bear.
♪ That's when That little love of mine ♪
♪ Dips her doughnut in my tea ♪
♪ Up on Cripple Creek... ♪
Martin Scorsese: This music drew upon country music,
English, Scotch, Irish, the choral sounds
of the Welsh. At the same time,
Mississippi Delta, the blues. And there was so much imagery.
This... just didn't seem like anything else.
Taj Mahal: No one sounded like those guys. You know,
they came in, and they played. And I just loved
that about them, you know, they were about the music.
♪ She defends me A drunkard's dream ♪
♪ If I ever did see one ♪
(yodeling)
Robbie: I think about Levon,
Richard, Rick, and Garth
all the time. We went through things together you could
never replace. You can never give enough credit
to something that special. I was an only child,
so this brotherhood was so powerful.
♪ Oh, I could get you with my yodel, I go ♪
(yodeling)
♪ No, no, no, no, no ♪
Levon Helm: I think we're warmed up.
(film projector whirring)
(birds chirping)
♪ ("Coyote Dance" by Robbie Robertson plays) ♪
Robbie: Since I was a kid, I see stories
in a different way. I don't see them like fairy tales.
These stories are powerful,
and some of them are dangerous and big.
Maybe that's because my upbringing was
a little bit scattered and not normal in some ways.
My mother was born and raised
in the Six Nation Indian reserve.
Her name was Dolly.
When she was around 16 years old,
she was sent to live with an aunt in Toronto.
- (streetcar clanking) - (vehicles honking)
When we would go back to visit
the relatives in the Indian reserve,
I thought this was a magical place.
It seemed like every day,
when the sun started to go down,
the instruments would come out.
And I could sit in the middle of this,
and hear the fingers on the strings,
and the hands rubbing on the skins of the drum.
My parents got me a little guitar
with a cowboy painted on it.
I already know
a couple of chords on the guitar
that my relatives at Six Nations have taught me.
I would practice
and practice.
This is where I belong.
This is calling me.
I don't know for sure
whether I would ever have found my way to music
without this experience,
and that's why I have
such a deep appreciation
for that place.
♪ ("Coyote Dance" continues) ♪
And then we crossed into a time zone
when I was 13 years old.
♪ ("Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry plays) ♪
Overnight, out of nowhere,
this new music came pouring out.
♪ Deep down in Louisiana Close to New Orleans ♪
♪ Way back up in the woods Among the evergreens ♪
♪ There stood a log cabin made Of earth and wood ♪
♪ Where lived a country boy Named Johnny B. Goode ♪
♪ Who never ever learned To read or write so well ♪
♪ But he could play a guitar Just like a-ringin' a bell ♪
For guys my age, it was a life-altering moment.
Like, it just cut against the grain
of the mundaneness of entertainment at that time.
Jann Wenner: You know, it's raw, it's loud,
it's raucous, it's tough.
You know, the guitar sound is loud and thrilling.
Springsteen: It immediately
imparted to you this entire new way
of living, of looking,
of walking, of talking, of being,
of the possibility of what you might be able to do
with your life. It was a revolutionary moment, you know.
Robbie: I thought of it
as my own personal big bang.
Little Richard: ♪ Lucille ♪
♪ You won't do Your sister's will ♪
♪ Lucille ♪
♪ You won't do Your sister's will ♪
I thought, "That's it. I don't know
what all you people are gonna do,
but I know what I'm gonna do."
(Little Richard screams)
Within weeks,
I was in my first band.
We were off and running.
Fats Domino: ♪ I'm walkin', yes indeed ♪
♪ And I'm talkin' About you and me, I'm hopin' ♪
♪ That you come back to me... ♪
Robbie: My schoolmates, they're like,
"One of these days, I wanna have my own bowling alley."
I'd be like, "Oh, my God, your own bowling...
You could bowl for free all you wanted, right?"
I don't have that vision.
I saw something else, and the lights
were really bright.
Within a couple years, we were getting somewhere,
booking different shows around Toronto.
A local DJ booked us to open
for Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks.
♪ ("Baby Jean" by Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks plays) ♪
♪ Well, I had a little woman ♪
♪ And her name was Baby Jean ♪
Robbie: Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks had
a reputation to be the best
rockabilly band around.
- ♪ Baby Jean, Baby Jean ♪ - ♪ Baby Jean ♪
- ♪ Don't be mean ♪
These guys were up there
with Jerry Lee Lewis, Conway Twitty,
Carl Perkins, they were in that league.
♪ My baby ♪
♪ Well, I learned To lose my mind ♪
Ronnie Hawkins: We didn't know anything about Canada.
We figured, Canada is the wilderness, they've still got
mountain men, you know, eating each other,
stuff like that. (laughs)
We didn't know nothing about Canada. Boy, and Canada is
the promised land compared to where we came from.
Robbie: We played our hearts out.
Then Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks take
the stage. Oh, my God. They took flight.
♪ ...back home ♪
♪ I'm gonna call up A gypsy woman ♪
♪ On the telephone ♪
♪ I'm gonna send out A worldwide hoo-doo ♪
♪ That'd be the very thing That'd suit you ♪
♪ I'm gonna see to it She will be back home ♪
♪ In 40 days ♪
- ♪ Oh, 40 days ♪ - ♪ 40 days ♪
Robbie: Ronnie Hawkins was
over here. Boom, he was over there.
He was singing just in time.
The piano player would be
playing a solo, keys would be flying off
the piano, he was hitting it so hard.
There was a guy playing drums
who looked like he was 15 years old,
with white-blonde hair,
and he was twirling sticks, and he was laughing,
and smiling,
and he just seemed to glow in the dark,
and his name was Levon Helm.
Helm: Well, I started with Ronnie when I was trying
to get out of high school back in Arkansas.
Ronnie was putting a band together.
I got into it to play drums.
We hit the road, played around for years,
and ended up playing up in Canada.
♪ That'd be the very thing That'd suit you... ♪
This is it. This is the most amazing thing
on the planet Earth.
(audience applauds and cheers)
After they played, I just stood around.
I wanted to help out in any way I could,
to have this rub off on me,
this music, this talent,
this southern-ness.
I stuck to them like glue.
♪ ("Boba Lou" by Robbie Robertson plays) ♪
Hawkins: I knew right off the bat
Robbie had something special. I don't know,
he must've been 15 or 16 years old.
♪ Boba Lou... ♪
Hawkins: But he was hip. Robbie was street hip.
He was a hell of a young man.
Robbie: One day, I heard Ronnie Hawkins
saying to the other guys, "I gotta cut a new record.
I need some songs."
I scampered home, went to my room,
and never came out until I wrote two songs.
♪ I will love her Till my dying day ♪
♪ Don't know why she left ♪
♪ Left me this way ♪
♪ Left me here all alone ♪
♪ To sit and cry on my own... ♪
Hawkins: Robbie was writing songs when he was 15 years old.
I recorded two of said songs on my album
before anybody ever thought about Robbie Robertson.
At that time, Robbie dropped out of school.
His mother, Dolly,
she was worried about him.
♪ Boba Lou... ♪
Robbie: There had been quite a period
where my parents weren't getting along.
My father, Jim Robertson,
was being quite abusive with my mother,
and with me.
And one day she said to me,
"Sit down, I... I need
to tell you something.
And maybe I should've told you this before,
but he's not your real father."
"What?
I... What do you mean, he's not my real father?"
Robbie's real daddy was a Hebrew gangster.
Yeah, they killed him, they shot him on...
Yonge Street, I think.
♪ ("Robbie's Blues" by Robbie Robertson plays) ♪
Robbie: My mother says,
"Your blood father, his name was
Alexander Klegerman.
He got killed before you were born.
He's Jewish."
And she introduced me
to the relatives of my blood father,
Natie Klegerman and Morrie Klegerman.
They bring me into their world
with tremendous love and affection.
I met his uncle who'd been in the penitentiary
ten years. He was a gangster too.
Robbie: Through these relatives of mine,
I'm understanding what's been stirring
inside of me all this time.
They understand vision.
They understand ambition.
When I told the Klegermans
I had musical ambitions, they were like,
"rock 'n' roll? You don't wanna be
in furs and diamonds, you wanna be in that...?"
And then they were like, "Oh, you mean, show business."
♪ ("Robbie's Blues" continues) ♪
I'm 16 years old now.
Ronnie Hawkins says, "I want you to come down to Arkansas
and try out to become one of the Hawks."
If I didn't go down there and try out for this,
I would be sorry the rest of my life.
I sold my '56 Stratocaster,
I got the money to take a train from Toronto
to Fayetteville, Arkansas.
♪ ("Help Me" by Sonny Boy Williamson II plays) ♪
I'm going to the Mississippi Delta,
to the fountainhead of rock 'n' roll.
"This is it, this is it. I've gotta make this work."
♪ I can't do it all by myself ♪
Robbie: So many amazing music people came out of there.
♪ You got to help me, baby ♪
♪ I can't do it all by myself ♪
♪ You know If you don't help me, darling ♪
Robbie: This music
is down and dirty.
And it's heavy,
just like the air.
Helm: Growin' up there in the Delta,
just in the Memphis, West Memphis area there,
we had as good a radio as you could find.
Our jukeboxes and radios
weren't running short of good songs.
I consider myself fortunate to have
grown up there and heard the kind of music that I did.
Hawkins: Robbie was
a hell of a gifted musician, I can tell you that.
But what made him better than anybody else is
he worked twice as hard.
Robbie: Finally, Ronnie says,
"I'm gonna offer you the job."
I say, "You'll never have to tell me to work harder."
He said, "I know." So I say, "Great.
How much will I get paid working for you?"
And I said, "Well, don't worry about the money, kid.
You ain't gonna make much money,
but you'll be gettin' more pussy than Frank Sinatra."
And he did.
♪ ("Bo Diddley" by Ronnie Hawkins plays) ♪
♪ Hey, Bo Diddley ♪
♪ Hey, Bo Diddley... ♪
Robbie: I depended on Levon to show me the road.
He had grown,
in my eyes,
bigger than life. When he laughed,
everybody laughed.
Hawkins: They were the best friends you could ever be.
They were like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
It was a hell of a combination, I thought,
because Levon could put the arrangements and stuff together
and do all that, and Robbie could write the songs.
George Semkiw: When I saw Robbie play guitar,
it just blew my mind.
Every guitar player in Toronto learned from Robbie.
Grant Smith: He changed the whole ballgame up here.
I can remember people discussing,
"How does Robbie make that guitar sound?"
Semkiw: That was the big mystery.
There was, like, stories going around
that, oh, he slashed his speakers,
broke a couple of tubes in the amp.
Every guitar player I met after that was doing the same thing.
I watched them all change from their old style of playing
to the new Robbie style of playing,
and I was... I was one of the pack.
Robbie: Ronnie depends on Levon and I
to help him choose musicians
that have potential.
♪ ("You Know I Love You" by Ronnie Hawkins plays) ♪
Ronnie wants to have the best band in the land.
Hawkins: Have you ever heard me sing?
I'll better have a good band.
The Arkansas boys would quit
and Ronnie would replace
with a Canadian musician.
Within a fairly short time, we had
Richard, Rick, and when Garth
finally joined the outfit, I think that gave us a leg up.
Robbie: We didn't know a musician
that could do what he could do.
Garth understood Muddy Waters
and Bach in the same sentence.
Richard was an incredibly beautiful soul.
You couldn't help but just love the guy.
Richard Manuel: It was kind of like boot camp.
I mean, we drove ourselves
to as near perfection as we could get, you know?
To the point where we'd really thrill each other.
Robbie: Rick was one of these people that was like,
"Trombone, bass, tuba,
violin, whatever it is, I can do it."
Rick Danko: We were kids playing in bars
that you were supposed to be 21 to play in.
We were 17, 18, 19. It can
get pretty outrageous when you're out there that young.
♪ Further on up the road ♪
♪ Someone gonna hurt you Like you hurt me ♪
♪ Further on up the road ♪
Hawkins: Robbie's mom, Dolly,
she helped The Band out more than anybody.
She would give them places to stay cheap,
fed 'em, cooked. She did everything.
She was somethin' else.
♪ Baby, just you wait and see ♪
Hawkins: We played six days a week and we practiced five.
That's how come they got good.
They were probably the best white rhythm and blues band
in the world at that time. When they were young,
they were absorbing all that knowledge quick.
They shot by me musically like a bolt of lightning.
Robbie: We were outgrowing the past
and the music that we were playing with Ronnie.
- (film projector whirring) - (distant siren blaring)
Robbie: When we left Ronnie, we ended up
playing at a club in New York,
and one day my friend, John Hammond,
a great musician, blues singer,
he came and picked me up at the hotel,
and we're going to the Columbia Records Building,
to one of the studios.
We go in. I see over in the corner
this guy with dark glasses on
and frizzly hair, and John says,
"This is Bob Dylan."
♪ ("Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan plays) ♪
♪ Once upon a time You dressed so fine ♪
♪ Threw the bums a dime ♪
♪ In your prime, didn't you? ♪
Robbie: Bob Dylan's a really respected songwriter.
He was best known to me as a folk singer
with a guitar and he has a harmonica.
And he sings his beautiful songs.
Folk music, from what we knew,
was happening over by a university somewhere,
and people were sipping cappuccinos,
listening to folk music.
Where we're playing,
on the other side of the tracks,
there ain't nobody sipping cappuccinos over there.
I didn't know a whole lot about Bob.
We were more into R&B
and blues music.
Robbie: When we left Ronnie,
I wanna be something original,
I don't wanna be a bar band.
I've gotta come back to writing.
I'm having dreams
about finding a sanctuary,
finding a place that we can go,
and we can hone these skills, and we're just not
on the road driving to the next gig.
John Hammond: They were playing these gigs,
trying to get a recording deal. I said, "Well, gee, you know,
how about we make a record together?
And I was signed to Vanguard Records.
And they gave us, like, a three-hour window to record.
I invited my friend Bob Dylan to the recording day.
So I introduced them to Dylan.
And... and Dylan flipped out, I mean,
he thought these guys were phenomenal.
Robbie: What we didn't know
is that Bob's already doing
the rock 'n' roll thing.
♪ ("Maggie's Farm" by Bob Dylan plays) ♪
He wanted to hire an amazing band
that he could take on tour with him.
So he hired the guys.
♪ ("Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" by Bob Dylan and The Band) ♪
♪ When you're lost In the rain ♪
♪ In Juarez ♪
♪ And it's Easter time too ♪
Robbie: Bob Dylan's thing was like a detour.
We're hooking up with this guy,
and he's changing the course of music.
He's like...
the king of the folk movement
who now wants a rock 'n' roll band.
Huh! That's not a bad thing
to experience along the way too.
We thought, "Let's take that detour."
♪ They got Some hungry women there ♪
♪ And they really make a mess ♪
♪ Out of you ♪
We hook up with him, and have no idea
that he's the only one
that thinks this is a good idea.
The rest of the world hates this idea.
We play with him and they boo us every night.
- (audience boos) - It is weird that people could
be this upset about this guy
just wanting to expand
his musical horizon
and play with other musicians.
♪ ("Tell Me, Momma" by Bob Dylan and The Band plays) ♪
♪ Ol' black Bascom Don't break no mirrors ♪
♪ Cold black water dog Make no tears ♪
We'd go somewhere, we set up our equipment,
we play.
People come, they boo us,
sometimes throw things. We'd pack up our equipment,
go on to the next place,
set up, play, they boo us.
I think, "What a strange way to make a buck."
Helm: Kids would break for the stage,
cops were making open-field tackles...
out in front of the stage.
And Bob had told us, you know,
whatever happens, just don't stop playing.
♪ Tell me, Momma ♪
♪ Tell me, Momma, what is it? ♪
♪ What's wrong with you ♪
♪ This time? ♪
Bob Dylan: Cool car!
Get the bass in with Robbie. Let's go.
Let's go, we have to go now. Hey, tell them we have to go.
Hey, don't pull my fingers!
So long. So long, don't boo me anymore!
When they yell in this weird nasal tone.
Oh. Jesus, you know, I don't understand why they...
how can they buy the tickets up so fast?
Let's get that light off.
Robbie: Levon expressed to me that there was
something in this whole world
that we had entered into that just didn't feel right to him.
And the idea that we would
go out and play and people would boo us,
he thought that was just ridiculous.
And I... I was
much closer to Bob
than the other guys were.
I don't think Levon felt good about that, either.
♪ I bet you might ♪
♪ Think it's foolish To be this way ♪
♪ And am I sane? To who? ♪
One night, Levon comes
to my hotel room and he says,
"I don't like this music. I don't like these people.
I don't wanna be here.
And I don't wanna be in anybody's band.
I wanna go."
He didn't go anywhere without me.
He said, "I'm gonna go down to New Orleans
and maybe work on an oil rig
in the Gulf of Mexico. " And I said,
"Have you told the other guys?"
He said, "No, I haven't spoke to the other guys.
I'd like you to do that for me."
♪ Sometimes, you know ♪
"Tell them I wish them well,
and I'll see them down the line."
So I walked him down the street,
and I put my arm around his shoulders
as we were walking along.
He felt beat up to me.
And I knew that he was really in pain.
My heart was breaking.
My partner, my brother...
has left, has gone.
I don't know how to do this
without Levon...
but I'm gonna have to figure it out.
♪ Well, she hit a wall ♪
♪ Back when I was young ♪
♪ But you're headed out ♪
♪ But I'll be here ♪
♪ She knows she's the one ♪
After Levon left,
we had to get another drummer.
Mickey Jones was his name
and he was a terrific guy,
but, boy, they were tough shoes to fill.
Levon left a big hole.
♪ ("Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" by Bob Dylan plays) ♪
We play all over Europe,
and it just gets worse.
We were thinking, "Maybe they don't like it here,
but when we go there, they'll probably feel differently."
- No. - ♪ Let me follow you down ♪
Wenner: Being in the trenches with Bob on this fight
probably reinforced their relationship.
I think they became closer under fire.
It's fun to revolt. Robbie's young,
and you know, throwin' it in the faces
of all these like, pissant,
you know, people that are in tweeds, or whatever.
George Harrison: I remember it well. The show was
in two halves. In the first half, Bob came out and did
his usual thing with the guitar and the harmonica.
In the second half, he came out with the band.
All through that second half, people were getting up
and walking out, shouting,
and Bob just came out and he said, "Well, you know,
"you all may know this song. Um, remember how
it goes? Well, here's how it goes now." You know?
♪ ("Ballad of A Thin Man" by Bob Dylan and The Band plays) ♪
Robbie: I remember saying to the other guys,
"This is good. They're wrong.
This is good."
And then you realize,
you're in a musical revolution.
There is something going on here,
and you have nothing to compare it to.
It just made us
feel like flexing our musical muscles.
We're gonna play this music in your face.
Bob Dylan: The guys that were with me on that tour,
you know, we were all in it together.
We were puttin' our heads in the lion's mouth.
I had to admire them for sticking it out with me,
just for doing it, in my book they were,
you know... gallant knights
for even, you know, standing behind me.
♪ Mr. Jones ♪
(audience applauds and cheers)
♪ ("Amour Secours" by Claire Monchon plays) ♪
♪ (singing in French) ♪
Robbie: One day, we were just taking a walk
and looking in stores.
I see two really pretty girls.
Dominique Robertson: We're taking a wonderful walk. It was
the springtime in Paris. There was a gathering of people
somewhere around the corner
who began to talk to us, and asked us what we were doing.
Robbie: In broken English,
they say they’re journalists from Montreal.
I'm like, "Wow!
I'm from Canada too.
I'm from Toronto."
And they look like, "Oh, that's too bad."
And this whole thing at the time
between English-speaking and the French-speaking,
they were in a revolutionary spirit. This is when they were
putting bombs in mailboxes,
and it was rough going.
I'm on neutral territory, I'm in Paris.
He looked like family to me from the beginning.
It was like... I recognized him.
♪ ("Je T'aime Moi Non Plus" by Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin) ♪
Robbie: I am fancy dancing
the best I can
to charm Dominique
into thinking I'm not a bad person,
I'm not the enemy.
And we've got to spend
some time together.
Dominique: We went to the concert at the Olympia,
and the crowd was roaring
in anger about electric guitars.
Robbie: I didn't even realize
people were booing anymore. There was something
about her spirit.
There was something about her eyes and her smile,
and it was a fire inside her.
♪ (singing in French) ♪
Even though I didn't speak his language,
I spoke a language that touched him.
I was definitely falling in love with Robbie.
Robbie: When we got back to New York City,
I invited her to come and join me there,
and eventually she did.
The other guys in the Hawks and myself
were trying to find a place
where we could start working on our music.
Albert Grossman, Bob's manager,
he had a place up in Woodstock, New York.
John Simon: Albert was
an anomaly in the world of the record business people.
He didn't wear a suit.
His had his hair tied back in a ponytail.
He looked like an overweight Benjamin Franklin.
Albert took very good care of his artists.
But as far as dealing with other people, he was shrewd.
Robbie: Bob had moved up to Woodstock,
got a house.
Albert would go up there on the weekends.
So Albert says, "Come up to Woodstock.
There's so much room up there.
You can get a place.
You can make all the sounds you want."
♪ ("Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" by Bob Dylan) ♪
It was a very welcoming possibility.
♪ He sits in your room ♪
♪ His tomb With a fistful of tacks ♪
Rick found us
this ugly pink house.
This is just what I've been
dreaming about all these years...
a sanctuary that we could
go and write and create.
♪ ("Words and Numbers" by The Band plays) ♪
Oh, my god, I mean, a...
pretty corny house, you know?
But it was perfect.
Robbie: So we moved up to Woodstock.
We built a little studio
in the basement, just for writing purposes.
Garth, Richard, and Rick
moved into this house.
I called Bob, and I drive him out there
to show him the place.
And he comes in and he looks at this basement,
and he sees all the instruments set up there,
a little tape recorder, some microphones.
He says, "Can you record music in this place?"
And I was like, "Yeah, we've got that little tape recorder.
It's not... you know, a recording studio,
but it's pretty good for writing and stuff."
He said, "Listen, I've got a couple of song ideas
I've been kicking around. Maybe we could try them here."
Great! That's the spirit.
♪ Now look here, Dear Sue ♪
♪ You best feed the cats ♪
♪ The cats need feeding ♪
♪ You're the one to do it ♪
♪ Get your head ♪
♪ Feed the cats ♪
♪ You ain't going nowhere ♪
Danko: Bob would come by, you know,
every day for about a six, seven-month period,
and we'd... we'd get together every afternoon
six to seven days a week. And just from us
getting together and applying ourselves,
- a lot does come out of that. - Robbie: In the living room,
there was a couple of typewriters,
because Bob wrote songs on a typewriter.
And he'd say, "Guys, let's go, let's go.
I think I got something. Let's go." We'd all go downstairs,
we would record it.
Dylan: No, not any harmony,
but harmony in the background like, ooh!
- Helm: ♪ Whoa-oh... ♪ - Yeah, right. ♪ Why, why? ♪
- You know, just... (chuckles) - Helm: ♪ Oh, why... ♪
Dylan: ♪ Every time I go to town ♪
♪ The bars keep Kicking my dog around ♪
♪ I don't know why I'm going to town ♪
♪ I don't know Why they kick my dog around ♪
- Let me hear you now! - The Band: ♪ Dog, dog, dog ♪
♪ Dog, dog, dog ♪
Robbie: Working with Bob, I saw a door opening.
He was making the possibility
of using poetry in songwriting
like I had never quite seen before.
It gave you a sense of liberty.
You used to think, "I don't know if you can do that.
I don't know, is it all right to say that?
Can you express things in that kind of way?"
Boom, no rules.
♪ Well, that big, dumb blonde ♪
♪ With her wheel gorged ♪
♪ Turtle, that friend of hers ♪
♪ With his checks all forged And his cheeks in a chunk ♪
♪ With his cheese in the cash ♪
♪ They're all gonna be there ♪
♪ At that million-dollar bash ♪
Robbie is a real artist.
He is an amazing creative force.
I never saw him
without a little pad of paper and a pencil,
writing notes about everything.
Some thought, some idea
that he could use later in a song.
♪ She reads the leaves ♪
♪ And she leads the life ♪
♪ That she learned so well ♪
♪ From the old wives ♪
♪ It's so strange To arrange... ♪
Robbie: When Dominique was becoming my girlfriend,
her connection to French literature,
poetry, music,
was rubbing off on me.
The path that I was on intellectually,
boom, she altered it,
and I was being highly inspired
by what she was bringing
to the table as well.
♪ I can't get to you... ♪
Robbie: Albert Grossman
was thinking about getting
the Hawks a record deal.
So he said, "You need to record
a couple of your tunes so I can play them
for some record companies."
So we went into a studio,
and we got a session drummer.
I was really not satisfied
with what we did.
If you have a... a table and one of the legs is missing,
it doesn't sit steady.
This was the sign,
it's time for him to come back. We gotta find Levon.
♪ Ain't no more cane ♪
♪ On the Brazos ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪
Robbie: We tracked him down and we told him
about the place we had and that we were
gonna get a record deal and all of this,
and you could hear
the joy in his voice.
♪ You should've Been on the river ♪
♪ In 1910 ♪
Dominique: I remember meeting him
and he was such a nice guy. He was such a charming person.
There was a sense of relief
in the band that he was back,
and hopefully he would stay.
Moved into the house there, there was an extra spot for me,
and uh, started gettin' together,
and just putting songs together.
Simon: I had the sense that Levon realized
he was coming back to a good thing.
They were on a salary,
they were able to make their own music.
Woodstock was full of young people and lots of girls.
It was better than being on an oil rig in the middle
of the Gulf of Mexico. Robbie played the tapes
that they had made, "The Basement Tapes".
♪ Katie's been gone ♪
♪ Since the springtime ♪
♪ She wrote one time And sent her love ♪
♪ Katie's been gone ♪
♪ For such a long time now... ♪
Robbie: Levon's reaction was
so extraordinary. He was blown away.
Helm: We had never that kind of time
on our hands, and there we are in the...
in the Catskills, and we don't have a show to play that night,
so we were enjoying it, just sitting around, you know,
the freedom to go down and play some music,
or go outside and throw a football around at each other.
That was just part of a...
a lifestyle that we got to love
in Woodstock, you know, just being able to chop wood,
or hit your thumb with a hammer.
We'd be concerned with fixing the tape recorder
and getting the songs together.
♪ We can talk about it now ♪
♪ It's that same old riddle ♪
♪ Only starting From the middle ♪
♪ I'd fix it But I don't know how ♪
Robbie: We had come out with a different sound,
a different sensibility. The music didn't
sound anything like what we did
with Ronnie Hawkins, like anything we did
as Levon and the Hawks.
It didn't sound like anything we did
with Bob Dylan on the infamous tour, so having
a new name felt natural as well.
♪ Pulling that eternal plough ♪
♪ We've got to find A sharper blade ♪
♪ Or have a new one made ♪
Robbie: In the town, people'd say,
"Oh, those guys, they play with Bob. They're in the band."
And we kept hearing,
"the band, " "the band, " "the band."
And it felt unpretentious,
un-jivy,
un-cute.
Just strictly The Band.
We had done a lot of pre-production work, of course,
at Big Pink. Robbie was doing a lot of the songwriting,
you know, and doing a lot more homework likely
than the rest of us. It was just a question of us
arranging them, and putting them together,
and making them as strong as possible
and working together.
♪ We can talk about it now ♪
Robbie: I came back to the house one evening.
I thought, "I gotta do some writing
for this record that we're working on."
And I'm thinking, "What am I gonna write about?"
And I'm sitting there with a guitar,
noodling around.
I look in the guitar, and inside,
on Martin Guitars,
it talks about where they're made.
And they're made in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.
♪ I pulled into Nazareth... ♪
And it just, it was all coming to me.
Going from Canada
down to the Mississippi Delta
when I was 16 years old,
characters and circumstances,
all of it started to come back to me.
And when I got to this chorus...
(humming and playing tune)
And I could hear these voices...
♪ And... ♪ - voices: ♪ And, and, and ♪
♪ You put the load Right on me ♪
And the whole thing just blended together.
♪ ("The Weight" by The Band plays) ♪
♪ I pulled into Nazareth ♪
♪ Was feelin' 'Bout half-past dead ♪
♪ I just need some place ♪
♪ Where I can lay my head ♪
♪ Hey, mister, Can you tell me ♪
♪ Where a man might Find a bed? ♪
♪ He just grinned And shook my hand ♪
♪ "No, " was all he said ♪
♪ Take a load off, Fanny Take a load for free ♪
Manuel: We discovered a whole
vocal thing that we weren't aware that we even had.
♪ And... and... and... ♪
♪ You put the load Right on me ♪
Manuel: I remember listening to playbacks
after the sessions of songs and thinking,
"I really like this stuff.
And... I don't have anything to compare it to,
but I really like it, and I hope everybody else does
'cause I really think this is strong."
♪ I said, "Hey, Carmen Come on, let's go downtown" ♪
♪ She said, "I gotta go, but my Friend can stick around" ♪
♪ Take a load off, Fanny ♪
♪ Take a load for free ♪
♪ Take a load off, Fanny ♪
♪ And... and... and... ♪
♪ You put the load Right on me ♪
Robbie: I was very excited
playing this record for Bob.
He hadn't heard a note of it.
"The Weight" comes on.
He's like, "Wait a minute. Who wrote that?"
And I said, "I... I wrote that."
He said, "You wrote that?" And I could just see
the pride in his eyes.
♪ He said "Do me a favor, son, ♪
♪ Won't you stay And keep Anna Lee company?" ♪
♪ Take a load off, Fanny ♪
♪ Take a load for free ♪
♪ Take a load off, Fanny ♪
♪ And... and... and... ♪
♪ You put the load ♪
♪ Right on me ♪
Springsteen: I think I was in a little coffee shop
in Redbank, New Jersey. Kid came in
with Music From Big Pink and put it on the sound system.
It was late at night, after...
after the place was about to close down,
which was a fantastic moment
to be introduced to that music, you know?
And suddenly this music comes on and everything changes.
♪ Fought for the party To kingdom come ♪
♪ Sadly told his only son ♪
♪ Just be careful what you do ♪
♪ It all comes back on you ♪
Clapton: When I heard Big Pink, it was as if someone
had like, nailed me through the chest to the wall.
I was just immediately converted.
That was when Cream was in its sort of, uh, mid-stage
and pretty much severed my connection with the other two
in the band. And I thought, "This is what I wanna do."
- It changed my life. - Taj Mahal: They weren't
reading out of the modern book of music.
They went to the source.
You'd say in the Caribbean, "They was musical
to the core, to the bone".
If there was any American musicians
that were comparable to what The Beatles were,
- it would've been them. - ♪ We've been sitting here ♪
♪ For so darn long, waiting for The end to come along ♪
♪ Holy roaster on the brink ♪
♪ I'd take a choice Swim or sink ♪
Springsteen: This is the middle
of psychedelic era
in popular music, so something comes along
that is the antithesis of where music had been moving.
Here come all these voices that sound
like you've never heard them before,
and like they've always been there, forever and ever.
♪ Oh, to be home again ♪
♪ Down in old Virginny ♪
♪ With my very best friend ♪
♪ They call him Ragtime Willie ♪
♪ We're gonna soothe away The rest of our years ♪
♪ We're gonna put away All of our tears ♪
♪ That big rockin' chair Won't go nowhere ♪
Elliot Landy: It was very clear the moment I met them
who they were and what they were about.
They were very grounded.
They were very strong. They were very secure.
They were gracious, like country people
are gracious, and they were totally in love
with their music, and they were in love with each other.
I never saw any jealousy, I never saw any arguments,
I never saw them disagree. It was always
supporting each other. They were five brothers,
very clearly five brothers who loved each other,
and I never saw anything but that. In the '60s,
part of the rebellion
was rejecting one's elders, rejecting one's parents.
The guys in The Band wanted to say,
"Hey, that's not right. We love our parents.
"They worked very hard to bring us up
and care for us. " And so
they wanted to have a picture of their families in the album.
♪ Would've been nice Just to see the folks ♪
♪ Listen once again To the stale old jokes ♪
♪ That big rockin' chair Won't go nowhere ♪
Robbie: It was a magical time
within this group.
We're getting somewhere.
They made Big Pink and then Robbie said, "We wanna go out
on the road. " But then Rick drove his car into a ditch...
(car crashing)
...and broke his neck.
Dominique: It was a terrible car accident.
Rick was found wandering in the woods,
which is pretty extraordinary for someone who has
just broken his neck. He was
taken to the hospital and put in traction for
the longest time. We were all
quite scared as to whether he would recover.
Robbie: We're canceling everything.
Everything just stopped.
Music from Big Pink becomes this thing,
and we don't show up. We never play a concert.
They're like, "Who are these guys?"
We were becoming the most mysterious people
in the music business.
After we recorded Big Pink,
there is that thing of like,
"Whoa, what do we do now? Can we follow that up?"
♪ ("Rag Mama Rag" by The Band plays) ♪
I was working day and night on musical ideas.
Rick got out of the hospital, and then
boom, we were back in the studio.
♪ Rag Mama rag ♪
♪ I can't believe it's true ♪
♪ Rag Mama rag ♪
Peter Gabriel: You hear timeless songwriting,
painting pictures and telling stories,
a cohesion
which is greater than the sum of the parts.
They were the very first band
who got it together in a country house,
which became a big thing.
When you shut out the rest of the world
and the city, and just concentrate on...
music-making and performing and each other,
you get a different sort of result.
♪ Up on Cripple Creek She sends me ♪
Jonathan Taplin: Taking some of that roots music,
a little bit of Muddy Waters, a little bit of Hank Williams,
no long guitar solos, it was
just simple, straightforward music.
Nowadays we call it Americana.
(yodeling)
Van Morrison: I was in Boston.
I was sleeping on a couch,
and it was "I Shall Be Released"
was what came on.
I thought, "Oh yeah, there's... there's something. I'm
connecting with something here." That's what I thought.
I got an impression there was a lot of mythology going on.
♪ Standin' by your window In pain ♪
♪ A pistol in your hand ♪
Scorsese: You'd never really heard a sound like that.
It also it reminded me greatly
of 19th Century literature, American literature.
♪ Try and understand your man The best you can ♪
♪ Across the great divide ♪
♪ Just grab your hat ♪
♪ And take that ride ♪
Particularly Melville. There's something
about the Melville stories, and the sense of...
searching The Band brings to mind for me.
Jimmy Vivino: Each song is like a little John Steinbeck novel.
Steinbeck also
gives you these images of America,
of dustbowl America.
♪ ("Unfaithful Servant" by The Band plays) ♪
♪ Unfaithful servant ♪
♪ I hear you ♪
Harrison: I spent quite a bit of time
with The Band, and one of the things that Robbie said to me
was the fact that when he wrote a tune, he had
all these different singers who could sing the song.
And he could write lyrics, like, to write a song
knowing that Levon was gonna sing it.
You know, you could be... you could write much different
to knowing if you were gonna have to do it yourself.
♪ Did you do it Just for the glory? ♪
Springsteen: When they came together, something happened
that could not have occurred on their own
or individually. You know, something...
miraculous occurred.
♪ She really cared ♪
♪ The time she spared ♪
Robbie: We were booked to play our first job
as The Band at Winterland, in San Francisco,
with Bill Graham presenting.
Taplin: We went up to San Francisco, like,
two days early. Robbie is
sick as a dog.
Robbie: I'm completely drained
and it hits me: the last time we played together,
everybody boos us everywhere we go, right?
Am I having some kind of stage fright thing?
Taplin: He's got a fever of 103.
I'm saying to Bill Graham, "We've gotta cancel. I'm sorry."
Robbie: Bill Graham says, "Impossible. There is
no way in the world that we can cancel this."
And finally Bill says,
"What do you think about the idea
of us bringing in a hypnotist?"
Taplin: A little guy, about 5'8",
black suit, white carnation, shows up,
and he puts him under.
And he's saying, "Your stomach will feel
as calm as a lake.
Your head feels as cool as a winter breeze."
Robbie: The next thing I know, my head doesn't feel
so bad. And I'm thinking,
"I'll be damned, I'm actually feeling
stronger and better than I was before."
He says,
"Any time you start to feel too weak,
you look over at me
and I'm gonna say to you, 'Grow."'
♪ ("Chest Fever" by The Band plays) ♪
(audience applauds and cheers)
And the crowd is yelling and we're playing.
And I look over at him and he goes,
"Grow."
Bill Scheele: This guy had to be onstage with Robbie.
This was the first concert I'd ever experienced with them,
so... what did I know? But I did,
I know that usually there's not a hypnotist onstage.
♪ Any scarlet would back her ♪
Everybody got their own starring moment.
Rick had his songs.
Garth got to do "Chest Fever, "
and Richard was brilliant.
So in those first year and a half,
- it was amazing. - ♪ Can't be here no more ♪
♪ And as my mind unweaves ♪
♪ I feel the freeze Down in my knees ♪
♪ But just before she leaves ♪
♪ She receives ♪
Bill: Well, when we first went out on tour,
they were famous because of their relationship
with Bob Dylan, but here they were now as themselves.
This was The Band. That brought about a fame
to them that they had never had before.
- Announcer: Folks, The Band. - (audience applauds and cheers)
♪ ("Slippin' and Slidin" ' by The Band plays) ♪
♪ Slippin' and slidin' Peekin' and hidin' ♪
♪ Been told a long time ago ♪
Clapton: And I got the chance to go and meet Robbie.
And I went up to Woodstock to hang with him.
And the reason I went up there was to pluck up the nerve
to ask him if I could join The Band.
Maybe they needed a rhythm guitar player!
And I was wearing pink boots
and I had curly hair,
just psychedelic. And they were
kinda really earthy.
And I was saying, "Well, let’s jam."
And he said, "We don't jam."
So it was a songwriting outfit.
♪ I work for the union ♪
Clapton: Robbie's listening to the way
that each of them play, but the way they worked
as a unit was, like, incredible.
Rick was pretty dynamic,
and he was a very powerful energy.
Garth was shy,
and I fell in love with Richard.
He was the most mournful, soulful thing I'd ever heard.
♪ Last year this time Wasn't no joke ♪
♪ My whole barn Went up in smoke ♪
♪ And our horse, Jethro ♪
♪ He went mad ♪
♪ And I can't ever remember ♪
♪ Things being that bad ♪
Dominique: God, Richard was
such a sensitive man.
Like a wounded bird.
But a beautiful, beautiful soul.
Clapton: He was very fragile,
and we liked to drink together.
When you put us together, there was an instant bond.
Robbie, in a way, was kind of outside of that
because I saw Robbie as the straight guy.
He was a guy who we could drink with,
but at some point, he would lose interest in that,
you know, whereas me and Richard were the kind of people
that we would like to drink together,
but we'd drink... we'd like drinking even more on our own.
Taplin: Just when The Band was really hitting,
the difference between Robbie and the rest of the band was
his family was incredibly important to him.
He already had a baby.
Dominique was this incredibly vital,
smart woman that he liked hanging with.
She was incredibly beautiful. And the rest of the guys
were still trying to figure out did they want a family or not?
And they were consuming a lot of drugs,
playing a lot,
drinking too much, you know, everything else.
Dominique: In Woodstock, it was...
at one point, car accidents. And the phone ringing
in the middle of the night to say this one or that one
had totaled the car or was in the ditch.
Rick, he was lucky, you know,
but it became far too
often that there were situations like that.
I had this Mustang
that Robbie had bought,
and Richard wanted to drive it.
I said, "Really, can you do it?"
And he said, "Well, I sober up behind the wheel."
And I said, "Please, don't go so fast,
you know, can you see? Can you see?"
And he said, "Oh, I can see like a lynx."
You know, and I was naive, frankly.
We hit this curve,
and it was like every...
hit every cement pole in the curve.
- (car crashes) - (glass shattering)
We ended up in the ditch.
Then Richard lit a match.
And I thought, "You're gonna blow the car.
We have to get out." Push. "Get out. Get out."
Simon: We were at Big Pink and somebody
came rushing up and said...
"Richard's just had an accident and he's crashed a new car."
Levon you know, jumps into his Corvette
and rushes to the scene,
and accidentally crashes into the police car.
- (tires screeching) - (car crashes)
Dominique: The cop threw Levon on the back of a car.
I think they handcuffed him. I don't know how long
it took me, you know, to really absorb the shock.
Robbie: Richard could've killed Dominique.
What do you say?
It pissed me off.
But it was something that we weren't educated in
at the time, of dealing with alcoholism.
And all the things that you think you should do
is mostly the things that you should absolutely not do.
♪ My biggest mistake was Loving you too much ♪
♪ And letting you know ♪
♪ Now you've got me Where you want me ♪
♪ And you won't let me go ♪
♪ If my heart was Made of glass ♪
♪ Well, then you'd surely see ♪
And after that, there was a whole period
where he didn't hardly drink at all.
So we were holding it at bay.
(audience applauds and cheers)
By this point, there was an experimenting going on
that led to heroin.
And I was confused that the guys wanted
to play with that fire.
Dominique: That was devastating. Nobody had
any understanding of addiction,
that it's a mental disorder. And at the time,
it felt very much like a betrayal.
Robbie might've used,
he might've drank, he might've tried different things,
but he did not have that gene
that would cause him to become an addict.
He had a vision,
and nothing was gonna get in the way
of the vision.
Taplin: If you think about the summer of 1969 into 1970,
Music from Big Pink, I think Robbie wrote
less than half the songs. By the Brown Album,
he wrote maybe two thirds of the songs.
By Stage Fright, he was writing all of the songs.
And it wasn't that he wanted to do that.
Robbie would start writing, like,
at ten in the morning. And to be honest,
Levon, and Rick, and Richard, were still asleep.
Robbie: I loved writing with Richard.
Richard had a beautiful, melodic ear,
and he would come up with chord changes
I would never find,
but somehow it just wasn't happening for him,
and if I pushed too hard, it made him feel bad.
John: With Richard, it was really poignant.
I very clearly remember Robbie
pleading with Richard, asking him, do you have anything?
Anything to add to the song? Richard just didn't have it.
He didn't have anything to offer.
It was up to Robbie and Garth, primarily,
to keep driving the basic creative force,
and hoping that their friends would keep on.
John: During the recording of Stage Fright,
heroin was being used.
It had an effect on their energy, their ability
to be present. Levon would sometimes be
nodded out upstairs, and it was a little sad, you know,
because he would come down, and you could still see a look
in his eye that was a little strange,
and it was-- it was difficult.
Bill: This is very different from the very energetic Levon
that I used to know, who was always very wiry,
always up for action,
up for going after it, whatever it may be,
and now it was like sleepy time. That's not easy to deal with.
Dominique: It's hard to connect with somebody
who's doing that, it's hard to trust,
it's hard to really keep a friendship going.
It was beginning to feel like a real fracture.
Robbie: One day I said to Levon,
"I can see what's going on. I know you."
And he was doing the junkie denial
and explaining and making excuses
and laughing and slapping me on the back,
and I'd never had this kind of an encounter with him before.
We don't do that. We don't lie to one another.
I still loved him,
but something got broken in that.
And it was like glass,
it was hard to put back together again.
Dominique: It was not just an exasperation,
it was a feeling that Robbie could lose everything.
That brotherhood, that friendship,
that bond, that love that they had for each other.
They were terrific guys,
I loved them myself, all of them,
but when you begin to function out of fear
of losing something, it's maddening.
I think I wanted something that I couldn't have,
which was normalcy and a regular schedule.
After the children were born, my focus changed entirely.
♪ ("All La Glory" by The Band playing) ♪
♪ Climb up your ladder now ♪
♪ It's time for you ♪
♪ To dream away ♪
♪ For what a big day You've been through ♪
Robbie: Our children were elevating my life,
they were making everything
have a beautiful aura around it,
except when I had to go to work,
and then this darkness, this cloud came back overhead.
My family was my saving grace.
♪ And keep the little one Safe and warm ♪
♪ 'Cause to her It's just a fantasy ♪
♪ And to me It's all a mystery ♪
Robbie: I had to go
from Woodstock out to Los Angeles,
and while I was out there, I got a message
that this guy who had a record company
wanted to meet with me, and his name was David Geffen.
♪ ("Free Man In Paris" by Joni Mitchell playing) ♪
♪ The way I see it, he said ♪
♪ You just can't win it ♪
In every band, there is someone
who ends up being the leader one way or the other.
Usually, the star is the lead singer.
In The Band, it wasn't.
Robbie's a star. You put him in any group,
Robbie'll start talking, and telling stories,
and performing, and he's a star.
Taplin: David Geffen was a manager, a record executive.
He thought if he could get Bob Dylan to his record company,
that would cement him as the king of the music business.
David saw Robbie as a way to make that happen.
He started romancing Robbie.
David was incredibly candid,
incredibly straightforward,
and back in Woodstock, in the world
of Albert Grossman, and of Bob Dylan,
a lot was left unsaid.
There was something about meeting with David
that was so open.
David Geffen: I remember saying to Robbie,
of all the places you could live, why pick Woodstock?
Because Albert Grossman lives here?
I thought it was a shithole, I mean, I hated it.
I suggested to Robbie that he move to Malibu.
♪ I was a free man in Paris ♪
♪ I felt unfettered and alive ♪
♪ There was nobody Calling me up for favors ♪
♪ And no one's future To decide ♪
If you could imagine, that move to Malibu, sight unseen,
it was another Twilight Zone experiment.
You know? For me.
- I guess for all of us. - Robbie loved it.
♪ (song continues playing) ♪
Robbie: It did feel like something fresh.
Geffen: He woke up every morning at the ocean,
his kids loved it,
his wife loved it. You know, I remember Robbie saying to me,
what the fuck was I doing in Woodstock?
I was like, I'm gonna call the guys, tell 'em to come out here.
♪ (song continues playing) ♪
Geffen: I thought it would be very stimulating for Robbie,
I thought it would be stimulating for The Band,
and Bob was there.
Robbie was the one who suggested I meet him.
Robbie: The next thing,
David Geffen is saying, you know,
it might be a great idea for Bob Dylan and The Band
to play together again, and do a tour.
♪ ("Endless Highway" by Bob Dylan and The Band) ♪
Bob had basically been in hiding in Woodstock
since the tour of '66.
David somehow managed to convince Bob
to come out on the road.
Geffen: No one had seen Bob for years.
It created quite a stir.
Taplin: It was what David Geffen wanted,
but David was just pure, unleashed ambition.
♪ You're gonna walk That endless highway ♪
♪ Walk that highway Till you die ♪
Robbie: The last time we played together,
in 1966, it wasn't very well received.
Now we go out, it was embraced
like the second coming.
♪ ("Knockin' on Heaven's Door" by Bob Dylan playing) ♪
Robbie: We didn't change a thing; the world changed.
It was kind of a good feeling.
♪ Mama, take this badge Off of me ♪
(cheers and applause)
♪ I can't use it anymore ♪
Geffen: I had signed The Band
and Bob Dylan to Asylum Records.
I had a handshake agreement with them,
because Bob Dylan said to me,
"Is my word good for you?" And I thought, Bob Dylan,
he wrote "Blowin' in the Wind", "The Times They Are a-Changin'."
Yeah, I'll take your word.
♪ Knock, knock, knockin' On heaven's door ♪
Bill: What I remember very clearly,
after the tour of '74, they went on tour as The Band,
and not with Bob Dylan.
♪ ("The Shape I'm In" by The Band playing) ♪
♪ Go out yonder Peace in the valley ♪
♪ Come downtown Have to rumble in the alley ♪
♪ Oh, you don't know ♪
♪ The shape I'm in ♪
Bill: After a while touring, it was very noticeable
that there was change afoot.
♪ Oh, you don't know The shape I'm in ♪
Bill: We played a gig in Cleveland...
(cheers and applause)
...Richard had been doing heroin,
and apparently he lost his stash.
Bill Graham: Sorry about the delay,
Richard Manuel, the pianist,
has taken ill, he's being taken care of backstage.
The Band is gonna go on in a few minutes without Richard.
Hopefully he'll be fine.
Bill: They actually played the concert
as a quartet, without Richard, and it sounded so strange.
I kept seeing a lot of looks between everybody.
Obviously very uncomfortable with this.
♪ ("Twilight" by The Band playing) ♪
♪ Over by the wildwood ♪
♪ Hot summer night ♪
Robbie: These guys were soldiers,
but Richard Manuel had a disease.
This band was a real band.
All those spark plugs needed to be ignited, or it didn't work.
♪ But a young man Serves his country ♪
♪ And an old man Guards the home ♪
Hawkins: At first it was Richard holding everybody back,
he wasn't able to play,
and that's why they called me out there,
to try to scare Richard straight.
Everybody, all of them
was good, young, honest, solid guys, all of 'em.
Two or three years later, they were different personalities.
♪ Don't leave me alone In the twilight ♪
Bill: The rhythm section had definitely fallen into
heavier drugs. And once again,
it was up to Robbie and Garth, primarily.
Levon was doing things he'd never done in a million years
if it hadn't been for drugs.
♪ (song continues playing) ♪
Robbie: Levon often complained about our lawyer,
about our manager, and it was a kind of paranoia.
I would often say, "Don't worry,
if anybody is taking advantage of us,
we are gonna stop that immediately."
But a bitterness set in with him.
Vivino: Levon felt something was being taken away,
you know? But families, man, nobody can feud like a family.
Families can go to the grave feuding.
Dominique: If a person is getting
a little more attention,
resentment can set in, you know, and jealousy.
Robbie kept moving forward, and not everybody could follow.
♪ (song continues playing) ♪
Robbie: This is different now. This is hard.
This is kinda painful.
This could be tragic.
♪ Don't leave me alone ♪
♪ In the twilight ♪
Robbie: I don't know why we're doing this.
Simon: Robbie told me he just didn't wanna
go on the road with a suitcase full of heroin.
Robbie was planning the next step in his life.
I've always had that sense, way back
from when we cut the first album and we knew we had something,
and he said he wanted to work with Ingmar Bergman.
That's not the usual thing that a rock n' roller would say.
"I wanna work with Ingmar Bergman."
(waves crashing)
Robbie: There were many elements that brought this to a head.
It wasn't only because of drugs,
after you've been together for 16 years, you think,
"We need to be able to catch our breath."
- (fire crackling) - Robbie: I thought,
"If we could get off the treadmill,
if we can go and take care of ourselves,
we might be able to come to our senses."
My solution was,
let's bring it to a culmination in the name of music.
That's how we fight back on this.
♪ ("Stage Fright" by The Band playing) ♪
Robbie: And we did.
(song continues)
Taplin: The concert came together so quickly
it was almost shocking.
I think we started planning a month before we did it.
♪ Now deep in the heart Of a lonely kid ♪
♪ Who suffered so much For what he did ♪
♪ They gave this poor boy His fortune and fame ♪
♪ Since that day He ain't been the same ♪
Robbie: We decided to do it with our friends.
And that's why we felt comfortable
with the idea of doing "The Last Waltz".
♪ But when we get to the end ♪
♪ He wants to start All over again ♪
♪ Just let him take it From the top ♪
Robbie: I'm thinking, we should document it properly.
Let's think of some filmmaker
who could tell this story.
Scorsese: Robbie called me one day,
and he said, "These are some of the names in the lineup:
Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters,
Eric Clapton."
Worse comes to worse, the Library of Congress
will have 35mm footage of these extraordinary people,
performers and artists, and that would be it.
What it became, really, it was a celebration.
It was a celebration. It was all the influences of The Band.
♪ (music playing) ♪
Woo! Big time, Bill!
Big time! Big time!
Robbie: Ronnie Hawkins,
when I was 17 years old with him, I would play
and he would come over and fan the guitar
like it's gonna go up in flames if I don't cool it down.
It was just, it was so heartwarming.
Aaaah!
Hawkins: I went out with the boys a month early
just to see the rehearsals because I didn't know
a lot of these people, I'd never met 'em. I knew who they were,
big stars.
You see a lot of weird things out there,
and they paid 35,000 cash
right in front of me for a little ole bit of cocaine.
I snorted a couple lines and I said, "Boys,
there's enough flour and sugar in this shit
you'll sneeze biscuits
for three fuckin' months after you snort this."
And they ended up buying another one.
♪ ("Caravan" by Van Morrison playing) ♪
♪ Yeah, the caravan Is on its way ♪
All I remember is that it was more of a celebration
than feeling sad.
If I didn't know all these great-- all these people,
and that was a good gig, it was fun.
There was no pondering it.
It was only gonna happen once. You know, hey, presto.
♪ La la la la, la la la ♪
♪ La la la la La la la ♪
♪ Yeah, the caravan is painted Red and white ♪
Scorsese: It was a crazy idea, but we prepared so well.
I remember doing charts as to how to shoot, where to shoot,
which camera picks up which performer,
which lyric, which verse, the chorus, what instrument.
I said, "We shouldn't show the audience
reacting during songs.
We've seen it, so we stay on the stage."
We had hoped to get the way The Band works,
the looks, the glances, the moves.
So I decided to stay onstage
with the performers, and how they relate to each other.
And that was the key to the whole piece.
♪ ("Further On Up the Road" by Eric Clapton playing) ♪
Clapton: When I found out who was on the bill,
I thought, "My god,
this is huge," you know?
(song continues)
Clapton: The main memory I have of that thing
is obviously my strap coming off.
Whoa!
Robbie: His strap broke, so I jumped in.
You've gotta cover his back, he was our guest!
(song continues)
Robbie: And then he's like, "Wait a minute, pal,
let's not get too fancy over there."
(song continues)
♪ Further on up the road ♪
Clapton: What I remember about it, it was just...
so free, it was...
and I mean, nobody knew what was gonna happen next.
And I loved it, I loved it.
I didn't want it to ever end.
♪ ("I Shall Be Released" by Bob Dylan playing) ♪
♪ I see my light ♪
♪ Come shining ♪
♪ From the west Down to the east ♪
♪ Any day now ♪
♪ I shall be released ♪
Robbie: "The Last Waltz"
was such a beautiful thank-you
to this wonderful journey that we'd been on,
and the amazing experiences we had.
The whole thing was so moving.
♪ Any day now ♪
♪ I shall be released... ♪
(cheers and applause)
Thank you very much.
- Thank you. - Thank you very much.
♪ (music playing) ♪
♪ When that curtain Comes down ♪
♪ We let go of the past ♪
♪ Tomorrow's another day ♪
♪ Some things weren't Meant to last ♪
We need a little bit more of the harp
in the intro and in the first turnaround.
You want a little bit more, like, grit on it, or...
Yeah, just a little more atmosphere. Not so dry.
Yeah, got it.
♪ Some things weren't Meant to last ♪
Robbie: We did "The Last Waltz"
with the idea that we would put that away,
take care of one another a bit,
and really come back together again
and make music like we had never made before.
That was our dream. That was the idea.
Everybody just forgot to come back.
(song continues)
♪ There'll be no revival ♪
♪ There'll be no encore ♪
♪ Once were brothers ♪
♪ Were brothers no more ♪
Dominique: I was the first one
who was heartbroken, in a way,
because I loved The Band so much,
you know, and it felt like
it's closing this book, this chapter.
Robbie: If somebody had said,
I've got a couple of tunes started,
we're dying to go in and create some music,
I would've said yes in a minute.
Helm: By that time
I don't think you could've kept The Band together.
Everybody had something they wanted to do,
and after "The Last Waltz, "
we started chasing those dreams.
Robbie: Some years later,
Levon was having a tough time.
And out of that,
his anger was aimed at me.
♪ ("It Makes No Difference" by The Band playing) ♪
Taplin: In the end, Levon contended that somehow
he should've gotten a lot of the songwriting revenue.
And he just got more and more pissed off.
Hawkins: I can see why
Levon might say something like that,
because he was really good at helping arrange.
But Robbie wrote all the songs.
Robbie was writing songs when he was 15 years old.
And the rest of the boys helped arrange the songs,
which is a little bit different.
Larry Campbell: Levon's point was that these were five guys
that all played a role
in making The Band what it was.
I mean, the combination of those five guys was so unique,
and so he felt as though Robbie
were claiming all the credit for himself.
You could kinda see in Levon, through this bitterness,
that because of his interpretation of what happened,
he was really hurting, you know?
He just let it chew him up.
♪ And the sun ♪
♪ Don't shine ♪
♪ Anymore ♪
Hawkins: When Levon ran out of money,
that's when he went crazy,
because he had been living high.
But Levon's kind of like me, he gets mad
and says things he shouldn't say, and goes crazy.
Levon and Robbie were best friends,
were brothers, I mean, Levon showed him the ropes.
So it was very sad
that that's how he felt
and that, you know, that's what he believed.
Robbie: Years later, I got a message
that Levon was in the hospital
and he was dying.
I got on a plane and I went to the hospital.
Levon wasn't conscious anymore.
His daughter was there and she took me into the room,
I sat with him and I held his hand
and I thought about
the amazing times that we had had together.
We'd been on the front lines
of two or three musical revolutions.
And now we're just left with these memories.
So I sat with my brother,
and held his hand.
You know, I said,
Levon, I'll meet you on the other end.
♪ ("The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band) ♪
♪ Virgil Caine is the name ♪
♪ And I served On the Danville train ♪
♪ 'Til Stoneman's cavalry came ♪
♪ And they tore up The tracks again ♪
♪ In the winter of '65, We were hungry ♪
♪ Just barely alive ♪
♪ By May the tenth, Richmond had fell ♪
♪ It's a time I remember ♪
♪ Oh so well ♪
♪ The night they drove Old Dixie down ♪
♪ When all the bells Were ringing ♪
♪ The night they drove Old Dixie down ♪
♪ And all the people Were singing, they went ♪
♪ Na, la, la, la, na, na ♪
♪ La la, na, na La, la, la, la, la ♪
♪ Back with my wife In Tennessee ♪
♪ When one day She called to me ♪
♪ Said "Virgil, quick, Come and see ♪
♪ There goes The Robert E. Lee" ♪
♪ Now I don't mind Choppin' wood ♪
♪ And I don't care If the money's no good ♪
♪ You take what you need And you leave the rest ♪
♪ But they should never Have taken ♪
♪ The very best ♪
♪ The night they drove Old Dixie down ♪
♪ When all the bells Were ringing ♪
♪ The night they drove Old Dixie down ♪
♪ And all the people Were singing ♪
♪ They went, "Na, la, la La, na, na ♪
♪ La la, na, na La, la, la, na, na" ♪
♪ Like my father before me ♪
♪ I will work the land ♪
♪ And like my brother above me ♪
♪ Who took a rebel stand ♪
♪ He was just eighteen Proud and brave ♪
♪ But a Yankee laid him In his grave ♪
♪ And I swear by the mud Below my feet ♪
♪ You can't raise A Caine back up ♪
♪ When he's in defeat ♪
♪ The night they drove Old Dixie down ♪
♪ When all the bells Were ringing ♪
♪ The night they drove Old Dixie down ♪
♪ And all the people Were singing, they went ♪
♪ "Na, la, la, la, na, na ♪
♪ La la, na, na La, la, la, na, na" ♪
♪ The night they drove Old Dixie down ♪
♪ The bells were ringing ♪
♪ The night they drove Old Dixie down ♪
♪ And all the people Were singing ♪
♪ They went, "Na, la, la La, na, na, na ♪
♪ La la, na, na La, la, la, na, na" ♪
(cheers and applause)
♪ ("Ophelia" by the Band playing) ♪
♪ Boards on the window, Mail by the door ♪
♪ What would anybody leave So quickly for? ♪
♪ Ophelia ♪
♪ Where have you gone? ♪
♪ The old neighborhood Just ain't the same ♪
♪ Nobody knows Just what became of ♪
♪ Ophelia ♪
♪ Tell me, what went wrong? ♪
♪ Was it somethin' That somebody said? ♪
♪ Mama, I know We broke the rules ♪
♪ Was somebody up Against the law? ♪
♪ Honey, you know I'd die for you ♪
♪ Ashes of laughter, The coast is clear ♪
♪ Why do the best things Always disappear ♪
♪ Like Ophelia ♪
♪ Please darken my door ♪
♪ Was it somethin' That somebody said? ♪
♪ Honey, you know We broke the rules ♪
♪ Was somebody up Against the law? ♪
♪ Honey, you know I'd die for you ♪
♪ They got your number ♪
♪ Scared and runnin' ♪
♪ But I'm still waitin' For the second comin' ♪
♪ Of Ophelia ♪
♪ Come back home ♪