THIS FILM SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD!

"The Last Waltz" was a concert by the Canadian 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 end of the Band's illustrious touring career, and the concert saw the Band joined by more than a dozen special guests, including Paul Butterfield, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Ronnie Hawkins, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood and Neil Young. The event was filmed by director Martin Scorsese and made into a documentary of the same name, released in 1978. The film features concert performances, scenes shot on a studio soundstage and interviews by Scorsese with members of the Band.

Beginning with a title card saying "This film should be played loud!" the concert documentary is an essay on the Band's influences and their career. The group – Rick Danko (died 1999, December 10) on bass, violin and vocals, Levon Helm on drums, mandolin and vocals, Garth Hudson on keyboards and saxophone, Richard Manuel (died 1986, March 4) on keyboards, percussion and vocals, and guitarist-songwriter Robbie Robertson – started out in the late 1950s as a rock and roll band led by Ronnie Hawkins, and Hawkins himself appears as the first guest. The group backed Bob Dylan in the 1960s, and Dylan performs with the Band towards the end of the concert.

The idea for a farewell concert came about early in 1976 after Richard Manuel was seriously injured in a boating accident. Robbie Robertson then began giving thought to leaving the road, envisioning the Band becoming a studio-only band, similar to the Beatles' decision to stop playing live shows in 1966. Though the other band members did not agree with Robertson's decision, the concert was set at Bill Graham's Winterland Ballroom, where the Band had made its debut as a group in 1969. Originally, the Band was to perform on its own, but then the notion of inviting Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan was hatched and the guest list grew to include other performers.

Promoted and organized by Bill Graham, who had a long association with the Band, the concert was an elaborate affair. Starting at 5:00 p.m., the audience of 5,000 was served turkey dinners. There was ballroom dancing with music by the Berkeley Promenade Orchestra. Poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Michael McClure gave readings. The concert began with the Band performing its more popular songs an lasted more than 9 hours with all those special guests playing with the group. At around 2:15 a.m. the Band came to perform an encore, "Don't Do It". It was the last time the group performed with its classic lineup.

The original soundtrack album was a three-LP album released on April 16, 1978 (later as a two-disc CD). It has many songs not in the film, including "Down South in New Orleans" with Bobby Charles and Dr. John on guitar, "Tura Lura Lural (That's an Irish Lullaby)" by Van Morrison, "Life is a Carnival" by the Band, and "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" by Bob Dylan. In 2002, this four-CD box set was released, as was a DVD-Audio edition. Robbie Robertson produced the album, remastering all the songs. The set includes 16 previously unreleased songs from the concert, as well as takes from rehearsals.

He Was Just a Solitary Man...

His first concerts saw him open up for everyone from Herman's Hermits to The Who. In a short time Neil Diamond began to feel restricted by Bang! Records, and wanted to record more ambitious, introspective music. Finding a loophole in his contract, Diamond tried to sign with a new record label, but the result was a series of lawsuits that coincided with a dip in his professional success. Diamond eventually triumphed in court, and secured ownership of his Bang-era master recording in 1977. After signing a deal with MCA Records (then called Uni Records) in the late 1960s, he moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1970. His sound mellowed, with such songs as "'Cracklin' Rosie", "Sweet Caroline" and the country-and-western tinged "Song Sung Blue." "Sweet Caroline" was Diamond's first major hit after his slump. In 1973, Diamond hopped labels again, this time to Columbia Records, where he recorded the soundtrack to "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" (which grossed more than the film itself). On Thanksgiving night, 1976, Neil made an appearance at The Band's farewell concert, "The Last Waltz" (already posted in RR). He performed one song, "Dry Your Eyes", which he had written with The Band's Robbie Robertson. As usual, like so many other singers that went on through the 80's and beyond, these years are the years that matters! So, this collection is about the golden age of Neil's career (maybe with one or another exception). Enjoy it!

NEIL DIAMOND's Brother Love

Original released on LP UNI 73047

(US, May 1969)

Neil Diamond's second album for UNI offered the typical strengths and weaknesses of his LPs for the label. The strengths? A good single (the title track) and a rather remarkable stylistic diversity. The weaknesses? The failure of any of the other tracks to stand out nearly as much as the single, and the feeling that sometimes Diamond was doing something just to prove he could do it, without the quality material to justify the experimentation. Although taken by itself almost any track sounds normal, running all together the record sounds kind of weird. There's a rather respectable Dion-esque bluesy groove on "Dig In" (cool stuttering organ on this one); "River Runs, New Grown Plums" has the stop-start rhythm and crisp AM production of earlier singles like "Kentucky Woman," but isn't as strong a tune. Less impressively, "Long Gone" is tinged with country-rock; "And the Grass Won't Pay No Mind" and "Juliet" are above-average MOR pop; "Hurtin' You Don't Come Easy" is introspective singer/songwriting; and "You're So Sweet Horseflies Keep Hangin' 'Round Your Face" is dumb country satire. At other points, it just sounds like his late-'60s singles, without being strong enough to justify inclusion on a 45. The album was improved considerably when the hit "Sweet Caroline" was added after its initial release, and the title changed to "Sweet Caroline: Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show". (Richie Unterberger in AllMusic)

JUST FOR YOU

 Original released on LP Bang BLPS 217

(US, September 1967)

Neil Diamond was on the cusp of discovering a new genre with his second album, which perfectly straddled early- and mid-'60s Brill Building teen pop and the as-yet-unidentified (and unnamed) singer/songwriter genre. The production is as smooth and crisp (and solidly commercial) as anything ever to come from the renowned hit factory at 49th and Broadway by way of the Monkees, Little Eva, the Raindrops, et al. But unlike his debut LP, this time out every song (including two carried over from his debut) is a Diamond original, and his voice and delivery are a lot more sophisticated - on "The Long Way Home," "Red, Red Wine," etc., he sounds like he's living the lyrics, but in a more personal manner than, say, Tom Jones or Engelbert Humperdinck - and as they are Diamond's lyrics, the effect is natural rather than any performing artifice. Some of the slickness obviously flattens out what might have been some more personal edges to the songs: it would have been (and still would be) interesting to hear Diamond take the best of these songs and reinterpret them in the studio later in his career, when he had more to say and more control over how they were treated. And to be fair, a few, such as "You'll Forget," are a bit on the generic and trivial side (but are still eminently listenable, and solid pop/rock). 

Oddly enough, Diamond's then-current big hit "Kentucky Woman" isn't present here, though a pair of successes from the previous year, "Cherry Cherry" and "Solitary Man" (probably getting a second go-round because its serious emotions fit in this setting better than they did on the debut album), are aboard. But somewhat eclipsing them and everything else here, for the attentive listener, is a song and a performance that show Diamond rising to a new level as a musician and composer: "Shilo." His most personal song of this era, it represented the opening of a new chapter in his career, but one that Bang Records' chief Bert Berns was unwilling to turn the page to open, as he believed the company was better served by keeping Diamond identified with catchy pop/rock aimed at teenagers 16 and under, not deeply personal, confessional lyrics that might not appeal to them. Berns' refusal to release the song as a single led to a rift between Diamond and the label which, following Berns' death from a heart attack at the end of 1967, ended the singer's relationship with the company. Listening to the song tucked neatly into the middle of side two of this album, it still sounds like it exists on a whole different plane from anything else here. It was a deal-ender between Diamond and Bang, but also a career-maker in terms of getting him to a place where he could advance to his full potential. (Bruce Eder in AllMusic)

NEIL DIAMOND FIRST ALBUM

Original released on LP Bang BLP-214 (mono)

(US, October 1966)

Neil Diamond's debut LP was issued in October 1966 just as "Cherry Cherry" - Diamond's first Top Ten hit - was peaking at number six on the singles chart. It's a fascinating document, and not just in hindsight: it has virtues of its own, separate from being an early chapter in a long career to follow. As a showcase for Diamond as both singer and songwriter, he fares well in both capacities, though his songwriting is more interesting here than his singing, but that's no surprise, as according to his own account, he'd just achieved a new level of seriousness and depth as a composer and was reveling in the best that he could do at that moment. As a singer, he needed more time to develop, though he obviously had a good deal of depth and expressiveness at his command, even in 1966. He does have some wonderfully transcendent moments here, and not just on the hits - "Solitary Man," "Cherry Cherry," and "Oh No No (I've Got The Feeling)" are familiar to most fans - but "Love to Love," "Someday Baby," etc. also show some of the power and range that Diamond would be able to muster more effectively in his singing as he moved toward his prime years, and show the new, very personal songwriting he was pursuing.

He's at his best on the original songs, the most personal of which (apart from "Solitary Man") are confined to the second side of the album: producers Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich (who are all over this record with handclaps, backing vocals etc.) wanted to introduce his talent to the would-be purchasers gradually, book-ending the contents between the two hits ("Oh No No" didn't chart until a month after the LP's release) and offering Diamond doing a handful of covers of familiar hits. Given that he was still making the transition from songwriter to performer, he does very well by all of the latter, which include Paul Simon‘s "Red Rubber Ball" (done in the same arrangement used by the Cyrkle, but with Diamond's raw, personal singing a very different experience from that group's harmonies) and John Phillips‘ "Monday Monday" (with Ellie Greenwich very prominent on the vocals), as well as the Barry-Greenwich "Hanky Panky." As a debut effort, it has some flaws that one would expect; not all of Diamond's originals were jewels, and he would find some finer nuances to his singing in short order. But when his songwriting and singing were on target, which was well over half the album, this was one of the better pop/rock releases of 1966, as well as a kind of transitional work in a singer/songwriter mold. It sounds (and even often, on the covers, feels) like Brill Building pop, but the words and the singing are already evolving out of those origins and into something new.

NOTE: All tracks are in original mono

A DIAMOND TRIBUTE