I should have acknowledged the passing of the great Robbie Robertson - the late
composer and unofficial leader of The Band earlier - but there have been so many
nice tributes written about him already that I believed I had nothing pertinent
to add.
However, while looking around for something to say I discovered that the
mostly Canadian quintet never placed any of their singles in the top twenty of
the Hot 100 during their entire career. Their highest charting record was
the double sided hit "Up On Cripple Creek" / "The Night They Drove Old Dixie
Down" that fought its way to #25 in 1969.
I considered writing about one of those two songs, but instead I'm going to
discuss the first 45 RPM record the group released under the name of The Band. "The Weight," from their debut LP - Music From Big Pink - was very popular on FM, album oriented, rock radio stations, but it only managed to make it as
high as #63 on Billboard's weekly chart of the most popular singles.
The song - primarily composed by Robertson - tells the story of a traveler visiting the town of
Nazareth. Robertson named the town in the song after the Pennsylvania borough
that is home to the
Martin Guitar Company
because he happened to be playing one when he wrote it.
The characters in the story are all based on real people. Fanny was the owner
of a New York City bookstore that Robertson used to visit. Young Anna Lee is a
longtime friend of singer, composer and drummer, Levon Helm. Crazy Chester was
an eccentric resident of Fayetteville, Arkansas known to Canadian rocker Ronnie
Hawkins whose backing group, The Hawks, eventually became The
Band.
Robertson said "The Weight" was inspired by surrealistic filmmakerLuis Buñuel. He once said, "Buñuel did so many films on the impossibility of sainthood.
.............................In "The Weight" it's the same thing. People like Buñuel would make
films that had these religious connotations to them but it wasn't
necessarily a religious meaning. In Buñuel there were these people
trying to be good, and it's impossible to be good. In "The Weight" it was
this very simple thing. Someone says, "Listen, would you do me this
favour? When you get there will you say 'hello' to somebody or will you
give somebody this or will you pick up one of these for me? Oh? You're
going to Nazareth? .................................Do me a favour when
you're there." This is what it's all all about. So the guy goes and one
thing leads to another and it's like "Holy shit, what's this turned
into? I've only come here to say 'hello' for somebody and I've got
myself in this incredible predicament." It was very Buñuelish to me at
the time."
"The Weight" is considered one of the elite songs of the rock era by five musicians who are often considered to be the progenitors of the
Americana sub-genre. The Band was Americana before it was a
"thing" and before it had a name.
Although Helm and Robertson were good friends during the days of The Band disputes over songwriting credits arose after they went their separate ways. Helm claimed that Robertson wrote only 60% of the lyrics of "The Weight." He said that Rick Danko and Richard Manuel wrote the rest of the words with a little help from him. He also claimed a lot of the music was written by keyboard player Garth Hudson.
Here is a live version of "The Weight" featuring The Staple Singers from The Last Waltz, and you can find thelyrics here.
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Almost Hits is an occasional exploration into songs that failed to reach the top 20 on the American Billboard Hot 100. Many have become classics despite what their chart position may indicate.
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