“The Weight”
Single by The Band
from the album Music from Big Pink
B-side	“I Shall Be Released“
Released	June 24, 1968
Format	45′
Recorded	January 1968 A&R Recorders (studio A), New York City
Genre	Folk rock, roots rock
Length	4:34
Label	Capitol
Writer(s)	Robbie Robertson
Producer	John Simon
Music sample “The Weight”

“The Weight”
Single by Diana Ross & the Supremes and The Temptations
from the album Together
B-side	“For Better or Worse”
Released	August 21, 1969
Format	Vinyl record (7″, 45 RPM)
Recorded	Hitsville U.S.A. (Studios A & B); 1969
Genre	Funk, pop, soul
Length	3:00
Label	Motown M 1153
Writer(s)	Robbie Robertson
Producer	Frank Wilson
Diana Ross & the Supremes singles chronology
“No Matter What Sign You Are” (1969) “The Weight” (1969) “I Second That Emotion” (1969) Together track listing   [show]10 tracks Side one “Stubborn Kind of Fellow“ “I’ll Be Doggone“ “The Weight“ “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing“ “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)“ Side two “Sing a Simple Song“ “My Guy, My Girl” (medley of both songs) “For Better or Worse” “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You“ “Why (Must We Fall in Love)“
The Temptations singles chronology “I Can’t Get Next to You” (1969) “The Weight” (1969) “Psychedelic Shack” (1969) Music sample “The Weight” Alternative cover

“The Weight” is a song written by Robbie Robertson. It was released by The Band as Capitol Records single 2269 in 1968, and appeared one week later on the group’s debut album Music from Big Pink. The song is listed as #41 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time published in 2004,^[1] and Pitchfork Media named it the thirteenth best song of the Sixties.^[2] The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame named it one of the 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.^[3]

[edit] Composition

“The Weight” takes the folk music motif of a traveler, who in the first line arrives in Nazareth in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. (The band Nazareth took its name from this line.) Once there, he encounters various residents of the town, the song being a story of these encounters. Nazareth is the hometown of the guitar manufacturer C. F. Martin & Company.^[4]

The residents include a man who cannot direct the traveler to any lodging, Carmen and the Devil walking side by side, “Crazy Chester”, and Luke “waiting on Judgment Day” while leaving his young bride behind and alone.

Musically, the song shows the blending of folk parlour song (harmonies) in the chorus, where the voices come in: “and, (and, and), you put the load right on me (you put the load right on me)”.

In his autobiography This Wheel’s on Fire, Levon Helm explains that the people mentioned in the song were based on real people The Band knew. The “Miss Anna Lee” mentioned in the lyric is Helm’s longtime friend Anna Lee Amsden.^[5][6]

On August 17, 1969, The Band played “The Weight” as the 10th song in their set at Woodstock.

[edit] Robertson on “The Weight”

According to songwriter Robertson, “The Weight” was inspired by the films of Luis Buñuel, about which Robertson once said:

(Buñuel) did so many films on the impossibility of sainthood. People trying to be good in Viridiana and Nazarin, people trying to do their thing. 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, that’s where the Martin guitar factory is. Do me a favour when you’re there.” This is what it’s 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.^[7]

[edit] Reception

“The Weight” is one of the group’s best known songs and among the most popular songs of the late 1960s counterculture. However, the song was not a significant mainstream hit for The Band in the U.S., peaking at only #63, though it fared better on some radio stations (e.g., #3 on KHJ^[8]). The Band’s record fared much better in Canada and the UK – in those countries, the single was a top 40 hit, peaking at #35 in Canada and #21 in the UK in 1968. Three cover versions of “The Weight” charted higher on the US pop charts in 1968/69 than The Band’s original recording:

• 1968: Jackie DeShannon, whose version debuted on the Hot 100 one week before The Band’s, took the song to #55 US, #35 Canada.
• 1969: Aretha Franklin‘s version (from This Girl’s in Love with You) was the highest charting recording in both the U.S. and Canada, peaking at #19 US, #12 Canada.
• 1969: The final joint single in North America released by Diana Ross & the Supremes and The Temptations, hit #46 US, #36 Canada.

None of these cover versions charted in the UK, where The Band’s version remains the only version to chart. The label credit on The Band’s version mentions the names of the band’s five members but not The Band per se. The lyrics on The Band’s and DeShannon’s versions never mention the title.

[edit] Other cover versions

“The Weight” has become a modern standard, and hence has been covered in concert by many other acts, most prominently Little Feat, Stoney LaRue, Aaron Pritchett, The Staple Singers, Waylon Jennings, Joe Cocker, Travis, Grateful Dead, The New Riders of the Purple Sage, O.A.R., Edwin McCain, The Black Crowes, Spooky Tooth, Hanson, Old Crow Medicine Show, Shannon Curfman, Panic! at the Disco, Aretha Franklin, Joan Osborne, John Denver, Cassandra Wilson, Miranda Lambert, Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield, Deana Carter, New Madrid, and Dionne Warwick. Ratdog and Bob Weir are also known to cover this song from time to time. Additional notable versions are by Lee Ann Womack, the band Smith, Weezer, The Allman Brothers Band, The Marshall Tucker Band, Jimmy Barnes with The Badloves, Free Wild and Aaron Pritchett.^[9] At the end of the documentary It Might Get Loud Jack White, Jimmy Page and The Edge play The Weight acoustically while The Edge and White swap vocals.

On record, folk singer Michelle Shocked covers the song as part of her 2007 gospel album ToHeavenURide. Charly Garcia covered the song in Spanish under the title “El Peso,” and Czech singer Marie Rottrová covered the song with the band Flamingo in 1970. Jeff Healey covered it on his album Mess of Blues in 2008.

[edit] Film and commercial play

“The Weight” has been featured in a number of films and television shows – films featuring the song include Easy Rider; Hope Floats; Igby Goes Down (a cover version by Travis); The Big Chill; Girl, Interrupted; Patch Adams; 1408; and Starsky & Hutch (as a parody of the scene in Easy Rider). Television shows which have featured “The Weight” include Californication, My Name Is Earl, Sports Night, Cold Case, Chuck, and Saturday Night Live. The song has also been used in commercials for Diet Coke and Cingular/AT&T Wireless. “The Weight” was also covered by Sherie Rene Scott in the Broadway musical Everyday Rapture.

Due to contractual problems, The Band’s version was used in the movie, but not the soundtrack for Easy Rider – included instead on the film’s soundtrack was a cover (very closely resembling The Band’s original) by Smith. In The Band’s concert film, The Last Waltz, The Band perform the song with the The Staple Singers. The song is also featured in two other of The Band’s concert videos: The Band Is Back (1984) and The Band Live At The New Orleans Jazz Festival (1998). “The Weight” was one of three songs The Band’s 1990s lineup performed for Let It Rock!, a birthday concert/tribute for Ronnie Hawkins. “The Weight” is one of three songs performed by The Band featured in the 2003 documentary film, Festival Express.

An acoustic rendition of the song appears in the 2009 documentary It Might Get Loud, performed by guitarists Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White.

[edit] Personnel

• Levon Helm — vocals, drums
• Rick Danko — vocals, bass
• Garth Hudson — piano
• Richard Manuel — Lowrey organ, backing vocal
• Robbie Robertson — guitar
• From Woodstock in 1969

“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
Single by The Band
from the album The Band
A-side	“Up on Cripple Creek“
Released	September 22, 1969
Recorded	1969
Genre	Roots rock, Southern rock, Americana
Length	3:33
Label	Capitol
Writer(s)	Robbie Robertson
Producer	John Simon

The Band also released a live album named for and featuring the song.

“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is a song written by Canadian musician Robbie Robertson, first recorded by The Band in 1969 and released on their self-titled second album. Joan Baez‘ cover of the song was a top-five chart hit in late 1971.

[edit] Meaning of song

Confederate use of rail during the Siege of Petersburg.

The lyrics tell of the last days of the American Civil War and the suffering of the South.^[1] Dixie is a nickname for the Southern Confederate states. Confederate soldier Virgil Caine “served on the Danville train” (the Richmond and Danville Railroad, a main supply line into the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia from Danville, Virginia, and by connection, the rest of the South). Union cavalry regularly tore up Confederate rail lines to prevent the movement of men and material to the front where Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was besieged at Siege of Petersburg. As part of the offensive campaign, Union Army General George Stoneman‘s forces “tore up the track again”.

The song’s lyric refers to conditions in the Southern states in the winter of early 1865 (“We were hungry / Just barely alive”); the Confederacy is starving and on the verge of defeat. Reference is made to the date May 10, 1865, by which time the Confederate capital of Richmond had long since fallen (in April); May 10 marked the capture of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the definitive end of the Confederacy.

There is some poetic license in the song’s dates and events, for instance the reference to Virgil Caine being home with his wife in Tennessee and seeing Robert E. Lee (Later performances, including the Joan Baez recording and some live versions by The Band themselves, added “the” before “Robert E. Lee”, making it seem to relate to the post-war Mississippi riverboat paddlewheeler the Robert E. Lee (steamboat), and not the person, passing by).^[2] Virgil also relates and mourns the loss of his brother: “He was just eighteen, proud and brave / But a Yankee laid him in his grave”.

Robertson claimed that he had the music to the song in his head but had no idea what it was to be about: “At some point [the concept] blurted out to me. Then I went and I did some research and I wrote the lyrics to the song.” Robertson continued:

When I first went down South, I remember that a quite common expression would be, “Well don’t worry, the South’s gonna rise again.” At one point when I heard it I thought it was kind of a funny statement and then I heard it another time and I was really touched by it. I thought, “God, because I keep hearing this, there’s pain here, there is a sadness here.” In Americana land, it’s a kind of a beautiful sadness.^[3]

[edit] Context within the album and The Band’s history

According to Rob Bowman’s liner notes to the 2000 reissue of The Band’s second album, The Band, it has been viewed as a concept album, with the songs focusing on peoples, places and traditions associated with an older version of Americana. Though never a major hit, “Dixie” was the centerpiece of the record, and, along with “The Weight” from Music From Big Pink, remains one of the songs most identified with the group.

The Band frequently performed the song in concert, and it can be found on the group’s live albums Rock of Ages (1972) and Before the Flood (1974). It was also a highlight of their “farewell” concert on Thanksgiving Day 1976, and is featured in the documentary film about the concert, The Last Waltz, as well as the soundtrack album from the film.

It was #245 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.^[4]

Pitchfork Media named it the forty-second best song of the Sixties.^[5] The song is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll” and Time Magazine’s All-Time 100.^[6][7]

The last time the song was performed by Levon Helm, The Band’s lead singer, was in The Last Waltz (1976). Helm, a native of Arkansas, has stated that he assisted in the research for the lyrics.^[4] In his 1993 book This Wheel’s on Fire, Helm writes “Robbie and I worked on ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ up in Woodstock. I remember taking him to the library so he could research the history and geography of the era and make General Robert E. Lee come out with all due respect.”

Helm refused to play the song after 1976 even though he held concerts, which he called “Midnight Rambles”, several times a month at his private residence in Woodstock, New York.

[edit] Reception

Ralph J. Gleason (in the review in Rolling Stone (US edition only) of October 1969) explains why this song has such an impact on listeners:

Nothing I have read … has brought home the overwhelming human sense of history that this song does. The only thing I can relate it to at all is The Red Badge of Courage. It’s a remarkable song, the rhythmic structure, the voice of Levon and the bass line with the drum accents and then the heavy close harmony of Levon, Richard and Rick in the theme, make it seem impossible that this isn’t some traditional material handed down from father to son straight from that winter of 1865 to today. It has that ring of truth and the whole aura of authenticity.

[edit] Covers of the song

The most successful English-language cover of the song was a version by Joan Baez released in 1971, which peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US in October that year and spent five weeks atop the easy listening chart.^[8] Baez’s version made some changes to the song lyric; The second line “Till Stoneman’s cavalry came”. Baez sings “Till so much cavalry came”. She also changed “May the tenth” to “I took the train”. In addition, the line “like my father before me, I will work the land” was changed to “like my father before me, I’m a working man”, changing the narrator from a farmer to a laborer. In the last verse she changed “the mud below my feet” to “the blood below my feet”. Baez later told Rolling Stone‘s Kurt Loder that she initially learned the song by listening to the recording on the Band’s album, and had never seen the printed lyrics at the time she recorded it, and thus sang the lyrics as she’d (mis)heard them. In more recent years in her concerts, Baez has performed the song as originally written by Robertson.^[9] The song became the highest charting U.S. single of Baez’ career, and has remained a staple of her concert set list, from that point forward.

Johnny Cash covered the song on his 1975 album John R. Cash. Old-time musician Jimmy Arnold recorded the song on his album “Southern Soul,” which was composed of songs associated with the Southern side of the Civil War. Don Rich and the Buckaroos covered the track. Steve Young recorded the song on his 1975 album Honky Tonk Man. The song also appears on the album Whose Garden Was This by John Denver, released in 1970. It was also included in his 2001 release, John Denver The Greatest Collection. The Allman Brothers Band covered the song for the 2007 album Endless Highway: The Music of The Band. The Jerry Garcia Band also covered the song live for over 20 years and it is still held as a fan favorite today.

In 1972, a cover of the song called “Am Tag als Conny Kramer starb” (translation: “On the Day that Conny Kramer Died”) was a number-one hit in West Germany for singer Juliane Werding. For this version, the lyrics were not translated but rather changed completely to an anti-drug anthem about a young man dying because of his drug addiction – an extremely hot topic in that year, when heroin was making the first big inroads in Germany. In 1986, the German band Die Goldenen Zitronen made a parody version of this song with the title “Am Tag als Thomas Anders starb” (“On the Day that Thomas Anders Died”).

A fairly large-scale orchestrated version of the song appears on the little-known 1971 concept album California ’99 (ABC Records, ABC728) by composer/arranger/producer Jimmie Haskell, with lead vocal by Jimmy Witherspoon.

Irish folk musician Derek Warfield and his new band the Young Wolfe Tones, included a version of the song on their 2008 album “The Night Is Young”.

Charlie Daniels Band, Big Country, Dave Brockie, Richie Havens, Black Crowes and Zac Brown Band have included covers on live albums.

[edit] Use in Film

The Band’s version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” was used in the 1977 film “The Shadow of Chikara” (also titled “Curse Of Demon Mountain” and several other titles).^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Personnel on The Band version

• Rick Danko – Bass guitar, backing vocals
• Levon Helm – Lead vocals, drums
• Garth Hudson – Melodica, slide trumpet
• Richard Manuel – Piano, backing vocals
• Robbie Robertson – Acoustic guitar