The Band The Last Waltz 1978 Warner Bros Records 3 x Vinyl 1st US Pressing VG+

$

32

The Band – The Last Waltz

Label: Warner Bros. Records – 3WS 3146

3 x Vinyl, LP, Album

US, 1978

Vinyl: VG+ All three records are clean, glossy shine with light surface wear under glare of light. Visual inspection only. Not play tested.

Sleeve: VG+ The sleeve is clean, no split edges, no writing, no stains, light visible surface wear from age, use, and storage. Inner book present with light handling wear.

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The Last Waltz  was a  concert  by the Canadian-American rock group  the Band, held on American  Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, at  Winterland Ballroom  in  San Francisco.  The Last Waltz  was advertised as the Band's "farewell concert appearance", and the concert had the Band joined by more than a dozen special guests, including their previous employers  Ronnie Hawkins  and  Bob Dylan, as well as  Paul Butterfield,  Bobby Charles,  Eric Clapton,  Neil Diamond,  Emmylou Harris,  Dr. John,  Joni Mitchell,  Van Morrison,  Ringo Starr,  Muddy Waters,  Ronnie Wood, and  Neil Young. The musical director for the concert was the Band's original record producer,  John Simon.

The concert was produced and managed by  Bill Graham  and was filmed by director  Martin Scorsese, who made it into a  documentary  of the same title, released in 1978.  Jonathan Taplin, who was the Band's tour manager from 1969 to 1972 and later produced Scorsese's film  Mean Streets, suggested that Scorsese would be the ideal director for the project, and Rock Brynner introduced  Robbie Robertson  and Scorsese. Taplin served as executive producer. The film features concert performances, intermittent song renditions shot on a studio soundstage, and interviews by Scorsese with members of the Band. The soundtrack and DVD were later released. The Last Waltz  is hailed as one of the greatest documentary  concert films  ever made. In 2019, the film was selected by the  Library of Congress  for preservation in the United States  National Film Registry  for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

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The Band  was a Canadian-American  rock  band formed in  Toronto, Ontario, in 1967. It consisted of Canadians  Rick Danko  (bass, guitar, vocals, fiddle),  Garth Hudson  (organ, keyboards, accordion, saxophone),  Richard Manuel  (piano, drums, vocals),  Robbie Robertson  (guitar, vocals, piano, percussion), and American  Levon Helm  (drums, vocals, mandolin, guitar, bass). The Band's music combined elements of  Americana,  folk, rock,  jazz  and  country, which influenced artists such as  George Harrison,  Elton John,  the Grateful Dead,  Eric Clapton  and  Wilco. Between 1958 and 1963, the group was known as the Hawks, a backing band for  rockabilly  singer  Ronnie Hawkins. In the mid-1960s, they gained recognition for being the backing group for  Bob Dylan, with his  1966 concert tour  being notable as Dylan's first with an electric band. After leaving Dylan and changing their name to The Band, they released several records to critical and popular acclaim, most notably their 1968 debut,  Music from Big Pink  and its succeeding album, 1969's  The Band. According to  AllMusic,  Music from Big Pink's influence on several generations of musicians has been substantial:  Pink Floyd  member  Roger Waters  deemed it the "second-most influential record in the history of rock and roll",[2]  and music journalist  Al Aronowitz  called it "country soul ... a sound never heard before".  Their most popular songs included "The Weight" (1968), "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" (1969), and "Up on Cripple Creek" (1969). 

The Band performed their farewell concert on November 25, 1976. Footage from the event was released in 1978 as the  concert film  The Last Waltz, directed by  Martin Scorsese. It would be the last performance of the original five members. After five years apart, Danko, Hudson, Helm, and Manuel reunited in 1983 for a reunion tour without Robertson, as he had taken up a new career as a producer and composer for film soundtracks. Manuel died in 1986, but the remaining three members would continue to tour and occasionally release new albums of studio material until 1999, when, upon the death of Danko, the remaining members decided to break up for good. Helm would go on to have a successful solo career, winning multiple  Grammy Awards  in the folk and Americana categories until his 2012 death, while Hudson worked as a featured session musician. Robertson died in 2023, leaving Hudson as the only living member of the original lineup. Music critic Bruce Eder described The Band as "one of the most popular and influential rock groups in the world, their music embraced by critics ... as seriously as the music of  the Beatles  and  the Rolling Stones."  The Band was inducted into the  Canadian Music Hall of Fame  in 1989 and the  Rock and Roll Hall of Fame  in 1994.  In 2004,  Rolling Stone  ranked them 50th on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and ranked "The Weight" 41st on its list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".  In 2008, the group received the  Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.  In 2014, they were inducted into  Canada's Walk of Fame.