Mavis Staples says her appearance as a guest on the the Band’s Last Waltz film forever reshaped not just her life but her setlist.
“Being in The Last Waltz was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to the Staple Singers,” Mavis Staples tells Rolling Stone. “I still can’t get offstage without doing ‘The Weight.'”
The Staples — sisters Cleotha and Yvonne, Mavis Staples and her father Roebuck (known as Pops) — filmed the performance over three takes after the Band’s memorable Thanksgiving 1976 concert, on an MGM sound stage for director Martin Scorsese in front of some 250 people. “The Weight,” already one of the Band’s best-loved, most-discussed songs, has never sounded more soulful and alive.
“We were already close friends with the Band by then — with Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko,” Mavis Staples added. “Danko would keep you laughing! He was really cool.”
The Last Waltz was also notable, of course, for an appearance by Bob Dylan, an early mentor of the Band — and a fixture with the Staples Singers on the era’s folk and protest circuit.
“Bobby was a cute little guy in the Sixties,” Staples remembers. “He had the curly hair and, oh, man, we had big fun at all the folk festivals. He’s the world’s greatest poet as far as I’m concerned. He just laid it on the line here: The answers are passing us by, blowing in the wind.”
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