I saw it on the Independent Film Channel Sunday.
The Band is great, but Niel Diamond and Bob Dylan on the same stage?
I feel like my head is going to swell up and bust…
You are not alone. We have the DVD. Neil is not the dude for the gig. Neil would fit better with Lawrence Welk. Not good, but better than with the Band.
I heard an interview with Neil on Fresh Air not too long ago. I didn’t know he wrote Daydream Believer but I’m not surprised.
Going on memory here and possibly apocryphal ( i.e. may be gossip ), however my understanding was the inclusion of Neil Diamond was purely Robbie Robertson’s doing. Supposedly he was working on some project or other with Diamond and wanted to bring him in, but the rest of The Band resisted the idea. Ultimately Robertson got his way.
Of course the whole Last Waltz thing is somewhat mired in controversy as it was really just Robertson who wanted to go his own way. Nobody else was that keen to stop and eventually ( if not almost immediately ) they resented him for it. I believe in an interview once Robertson said that after the concert everybody else said the equivalent of, “Wow! That was great! Let’s do it again!”, and Robertson replied that, nope, far as he was concerned that was it.
- Tamerlane
Correction: Neil wrote I’m A Believer and not the other one. My bad.
Oh and I suppose I should say that I actually like Neil Diamond ( one of my guilty pleasures, along with The Monkees he wrote for ) and in fact everyone on stage that night. Though I guess I’d admit that Ronnie Hawkins is only of minor interest to me. But ya gotta love the stoned out of his mind Neil Young :D.
However I agree that Diamond wasn’t particularly well suited for that bill.
- Tamerlane
I…
That is my favourite memory of that movie - Neil Young performing and looking like someone has told him there is a guy in the audience with a gun, and he intends to kill him.
Haven’t seen it for a long, long time.
Yeah, yeah - mock away :p. But really some early/mid-period Diamond ( and the Monkees better output ) represent very nicely crafted pop tunes. Hell, I also like lightweight pop outfits like The Association and Tommy James and the Shondells.
I even like, <i>whisper it</i>, some 1970’s vintage disco, though as an early teen in a working class whitebread suburb of Detroit I of course righteously despised it as was culturally required ( by my mid-teens my tastes started to broaden beyond ELP and Lynyrd Skynyrd as I adopted the music of my step-brothers in Oakland’s Fruitvale districct - Parliament, Brothers Johnson, Commodores, etc. 
).
But it all works for me - Dead Kennedys, Miles Davis, Jeff Beck, Pixies, Stravinsky ( and his favorite student Zappa ), MC Solaar, Beethoven, Bukka White, Wayne Shorter, Sleater-Kinney and on ad infinitum - it’s all good :).
- Tamerlane
My highlights from The Last Waltz:
Van Morrison high-kicking his stumpy little legs thorugh the closing to “Caravan”
Paul Butterfield and Levon storming through “Mystery Train”
Muddy Waters nearly giving himself a heart attack grinding out “Mannish Boy”
The Staples Singers and the Band combining to creat multipart harmony in the last verse of “The Weight”
Robbie picking up Clapton’s solo in “Further Along Up the Road” after Clapton’s strap broke
Ronnie Hawkins, big time at last, hamming it up in front of his former sidemen.
Levon, Rick, and Robbie yodelling through “Up on Cripple Creek”
Garth’s greasy sax solo in “It Makes No Difference”
Levon singing the immortal lines 'Vrigil Caine is the name, and I worked on the Danville Train." for what was presumably the last time.
Mr. Helm hails from my noble state of Arkansas. The rest of the Band are Canadians, right? Why the fascination with things Southern? Why the Confederate flag on the wall? Do they think anything south of them is Southern? 
Is it true that when Neil Diamond walked off stage he said to the assembled cast words to the efect of “you guys are gonna have to go some to top me!” and Bob Dylan piped up with “whadda want us to do, go out there on the stage and fall asleep?”
And stoned off his gourd or not, I think “Helpless” was the prettiest I have ever heard Neil Young sing.
Van Morrison’s silly dance was pure comedy gold!
mm
Muddy Waters was awesome in the Last Waltz and was good for more than another decade…
I had a buddy at University that actually was in the audience of the Last Waltz. IT had been planned for several months earlier and the ticket holders from that cancelled gig got free tix to the Last Waltz
I haven’t seen the whole movie in probably 20 years because whenever it’s on my dad and I wait for the part where Van Morrison gets himself so worked up that he leaves the stage in mid-song, and then we laugh and laugh.
–Cliffy
The Neil Diamond number is in there to give moviegoers a chance to hit the restrooms.
[sub]I think I may have already said this in another Last Waltz thread[/sub]
Despite being dead for the last three and a half years of that decade?
Mid song? He got through Caravan.
As I recall, Robertson explained Diamond’s importance as being one of the last relics of Tin Pan Alley. Nobody says that his work is anywhere near the significance of Dylan’s, but even then he was one of the most enduring of the songwriter/performers.
Good point, and worth repeating.
Seriously, Neil’s earliest stuff was great pop music - Kentucky Woman, Thank The Lord For The Night Time, Solitary Man, etc.
And he could be serious without being smarmy: Shilo, Brooklyn Roads.
However, a few years after this gold… not so good!
All right, now that we know why Neil Diamond was there . . . why was Michael McClure onstage reciting from the Prologue of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales?
Actually, Muddy died less than seven years later.
My husband watches the Last Waltz at the very least three times a day. I know everyword and note. It is too good to hate though, and Eric Clapton too…
With the exeption of Joni Mitchell, she has way too many teeth for her mouth.