NOT THE LAST WALTZ

After a brief and soul-crushing hiatus, the Sunrise Theater in downtown Southern Pines will once again show the ultimate tryptophan antidote, The Last Waltz, on Thanksgiving night. The award-winning rock documentary of what was billed as The Band’s farewell performance was filmed on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 25, 1976, by director Martin Scorsese. Released in 1978, the film is so highly regarded it was selected by the Library of Congress for inclusion in the United States National Film Registry in 2019.

The members of The Band were Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson. At 87, Hudson is the only member still living. The venue was Bill Graham’s Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, where The Band debuted as a group in 1969. Starting at 5 p.m. the audience of some 5,000 was served turkey dinners. There was an orchestra for ballroom dancing, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti was among a group of poets who gave readings. The Band began performing around 9 p.m.

And what a concert it was.

When the idea of a farewell performance was hatched, mostly by Robertson, who wanted to quit the touring life, the idea was to invite Bob Dylan and Ronnie Hawkins — their original employers — to join them. The guest list exploded from there, eventually including both Dylan and Hawkins, Bobby Charles, Ronnie Wood, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Dr. John, Neil Diamond, Eric Clapton and more. They were backed by a large horn section. Later, sound stage work that included Emmylou Harris and the Staple Singers was added to the film.

The documentary begins with The Band performing what was, in fact, their last song of the night, “Don’t Do It.” From there the film progresses more or less in chronological order of play — songs like “Stage Fright,” “Up on Cripple Creek,” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” — mixed in with the studio sessions and interviews with the members of The Band, conducted by Scorsese.

In one anecdote, Robertson explains that the classically trained Hudson would join the group only if every member would pay him $10 a week for music lessons so that he could tell his parents back in Canada that he was a music teacher and not just a rock and roll musician.

The Last Waltz begins on Thursday, Nov. 28, at 7 p.m., and admission is free. The leftovers will keep until morning.