Credit: Far Out / United Artists Films
Thu 3 September 2026 4:00, UK
Watching Martin Scorsese’s finest film, The Last Waltz, for the first time is a little like finally seeing Casablanca, Some Like It Hot or The Godfather. You’ve heard about its brilliance a million times over, yet somehow it still manages to exceed the lofty reputation that precedes it.
Recorded live in San Francisco’s Winterland Arena on November 25th, 1976, Thanksgiving night, where the audience was even treated to a sit-down meal before the show, The Band got together with a bunch of old buddies of studio and stage days gone by over the course of the night to say farewell to life on the road.
And those old buddies made for quite a roll call. After running through a 12-song-strong set of their own, The Band’s original bandleader, Ronnie Hawkins, came out to sing Bo Diddley’s ‘Who Do You Love?’ with them, before appearances by Dr John, Bobby Charles, Paul Butterfield, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Van Morrison and, of course, Bob Dylan.
As the biggest name on the bill and the singer with the most legendary association with The Band, Dylan was naturally the headliner. His introduction raised the biggest cheers, especially his performance of ‘Forever Young’ with The Band, which more than justified the excitement. Rippling with the same ferocity and bite that their shows from ten years before were supercharged by, but with an added decade of laid-back experience, their set was a fitting end to such a night.
And the highlight of that night was still to come, as an all-star cast featuring everybody who had performed that night, alongside Ringo Starr and Ronnie Wood, came together to sing Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’ for the encore, but though it might be the most memorable and enduring image of the night, was it the best performance at the Last Waltz?
You could fairly make the case, but then again, you could do so as well about any of the performances that night. Muddy Waters’ is as cool as you’d expect when commanding the stage in singing ‘Mannish Boy’, while Dr John’s version of ‘Such a Night’ is note perfect, infectiously fun, charismatically delivered and sweeter than sugar. Just what the doctor ordered. Then there’s Joni Mitchell’s ‘Coyote’, freshly written and still simmering and shimmering with the electrical spark of her creative magic.
And lest we forget, The Band themselves, who not only backed every other artist on the bill but delivered career-best and definitive versions of their own songs like ‘Up on Cripple Creek’, ‘The Shape I’m In’, ‘Life is a Carnival’, ‘Ophelia’ and ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’. But it might just be that the greatest, and most unexpectedly electrifying, performance of the night came from Van Morrison’s second song, and the only one that made it into the film, ‘Caravan’.
Further reading: From The Vault
Sparkling under the lights in a sequined mauve leisure suit, Van Morrison might look relaxed, but he means business right out of the gate: his voice, like his range (and his collars), is enormous and exploded into action from his very first note. All through the song, he’s perfectly supported by Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson and the eight additional musicians on horns and violin arranged by Allen Toussaint, but he is never lost in the mix.
The song ebbs and flows, rising to crescendos time and again before receding back and building once more, and Morrison has nothing but soul for every movement of the music. Even on Moondance, the album it originally came from, or in any of his other performances of it, ‘Caravan’ has never sounded better, and, even more unique to that night was seeing him so in the zone, kicking his leg into the air in time with the horns and bowing deeply to the audience and then kicking the air some more, “one more time” and “just one more time”.
Robbie Robertson didn’t step up to the mic at the end of the song and shout out to the audience, “Hey, Van the Man!” for nothing.
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