Martin Scorsese breaks down the structure of ‘The Last Waltz’
On November 25th, 1976, The Band played their “farewell concert”, The Last Waltz, at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. The band had been on the road for what seemed like forever, and guitarist Robbie Robertson suggested that they call it a day. To celebrate their career, The Band invited several high-profile musicians to join them onstage, including Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell.
Martin Scorsese was brought in to document the show, and he created one of the best music documentaries of all time. Discussing the film, the legendary director said: “The Last Waltz was something that was an experiment at first, and that was structured musically,” Scorsese noted. “That was structured like a musical tapestry. The music of The Band being influenced by different strains of music throughout America.”
He added: “Each section was influenced either by Mississippi Delta blues or the Brill Building when Neil Diamond came out. It’s all that, and that was an interesting experiment that way.” The Brill Building is known for housing a number of music industry offices in New York City and is considered the epicentre of the American music industry.
Scorsese then opened up on what filmmaking really is. “Filmmaking is what you do with the footage, and how one image precedes the other and one follows and what piece of sound is being heard,” he said. “Really, that’s what it is. The editing is the filmmaking itself. And so I’ve always been involved in the editing from the very beginning.”
He added: “It had to be just felt; sometimes, we couldn’t really express it in words. It just felt more comfortable or felt that it flowed better visually or moved in tone. It’s something I can’t define, but it’s nerve-wracking, and it’s anxiety-producing, and it’s what we like to do.”
Robbie Robertson later expressed his relief following the end of the show, thanking the film’s producer Bill Graham, saying: “I remember seeing Bill and I was thinking, ‘God, you did it, Bill. Well, everybody did it.’ But Bill did it. We did it in his home. Like, ‘Whose house are we going to shoot at? Bill’s house.'”
“Because it was his house,” he added. “I felt in my heart like he had really done this thing. He was proud of it. and I was proud of him for being proud of it.” Reportedly all the cameramen hugged one another at the end of the production because they knew that they had just recorded one of the greatest musical documentaries of all time.
