Neil Young, ‘The Last Waltz’ and the “most expensive cocaine” mishap
When you think about the greatest concert films of all time, the first examples that people might come up with are Stop Making Sense, Gimme Shelter and The Last Waltz. While all three capture disparate yet iconic acts at pivotal moments in their career, putting in some of the most memorable live performances ever captured on camera, it’s more than just exceptional musicianship that the films have in common. The soundtracks and cinematography are incredible in each of these films, but you have to wonder just how different they’d all be if it weren’t for the excessive amounts of cocaine being consumed.
Sure, it’s pretty much a given that The Rolling Stones would have been high as kites during a major performance, but Gimme Shelter’s backdrop of the disastrous Altamont Free Concert, where drugs were rife and led to violence and bloodshed in the crowd, shows the negative side of how drug culture impacted the performance. On the other hand, while David Byrne would probably have been able to deliver a typically kooky turn on stage in Stop Making Sense, there are several shots where various Talking Heads and Parliament/Funkadelic members are visibly tweaking from having snorted a hefty amount of blow.
In the case of Martin Scorsese’s capturing of The Band’s final concert in The Last Waltz, there was an extortionate amount of the white stuff being passed around between the ensemble cast of performers and guests, and while not everyone there claims to have indulged in the drug-fuelled antics, one performer in particular certainly huffed a big chunk of gear up his snout.
The Band’s guitarist and principal songwriter Robbie Robertson claimed that the cocaine that had been supplied for their 1976 farewell “wasn’t very good” and that he wasn’t able to partake in it anyway due to the amount of responsibilities he had on the day. However, that didn’t stop fellow Canadian and guest performer Neil Young from doing so. Prior to him joining the group on stage for a rendition of ‘Helpless’, some backstage shenanigans had taken place, and in a moment of being rushed to perform his duties, he’d failed to clear all the residual coke from out of his nostril.
With a very visible rock of cocaine dangling from the singer’s beak, he stepped out onto the stage, where the film cameras only magnified the offending chunk. Scorsese was of the opinion that leaving it in place would be “rock and roll” and that nothing should be done to remove it from the footage, but Young’s manager believed otherwise. Hounding the director to apply special effects to his client’s nasal passage on every scene where it was visible, Scorsese eventually conceded and chose to edit it out.
The process of doing so, however, was a painstaking one, and due to the lack of technology available at the time of shooting, clearing up the shots with what was dubbed “the travelling booger matte” took the post-production team several hours to rectify. Robertson himself, despite having bemoaned the poor quality of the drug, would later joke that the cost of editing out Young’s powdery nose made it “the most expensive cocaine [he] ever bought.”
However, despite the costs that Young’s carelessness incurred, the overall success of the performance and subsequent film release more than made up for it, with The Last Waltz becoming one of the most beloved concert films of all time and one that forever highlights not just the long-lasting legacy of The Band, but the brilliance of all their esteemed guests.
