November 15, 2024      —–     Chart #272

Hello Music Friends,

Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Chart of the Week. Pardon the pun but to me this song is a heavyweight. “The Weight” is a song by the Canadian-American group the Band that was released as a single in 1968 and on the group’s debut album Music from Big Pink. It was their first release under this name, after their previous releases as Canadian Squires and Levon and the Hawks. Written by Band member Robbie Robertson, the song is about a visitor’s experiences in a town mentioned in the lyric’s first line as Nazareth. “The Weight” has significantly influenced American popular music, having been listed as No. 41 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time published in 2004.

“The Weight” was written by Robbie Robertson, who found the tune by strumming idly on his guitar, a 1951 Martin D-28, when he noticed that the interior included a stamp noting that it was manufactured in Nazareth, Pennsylvania (C. F. Martin & Company is situated there) and he started crafting the lyrics as he played. The inspiration for and influences affecting the composition of “The Weight” came from the music of the American South, the life experiences of band members, particularly Levon Helm, and movies of filmmakers Ingmar Bergman and Luis Buñuel. The original members of the Band performed “The Weight” as an American Southern folk song with country music (vocals, guitars and drums) and gospel music (piano and organ) elements.

The lyrics, written in the first person, are about a traveler’s arrival, visit, and departure from a town called Nazareth, in which the traveler’s friend, Fanny, has asked him to look up some of her friends and send them her regards, though with each encounter, he comes away more favors he must do, and those favors become more favors, until the weight of doing so many unexpected tasks causes him to pick up his bag and leave town altogether and return to Fanny. The singers, led by Helm, vocalize the traveler’s encounters with people in the town from the perspective of a Bible Belt American Southerner, like Helm himself, a native of rural Arkansas.

The characters in “The Weight” were based on real people that members of the Band knew, according to Robertson, Fanny is based on Frances “Fanny” Steloff, the founder of a New York City bookstore where he explored scripts by Buñuel. Helm explained in his autobiography, This Wheel’s on Fire that “Carmen” was from Helm’s hometown, Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, “young Anna Lee” mentioned in the third verse is Helm’s longtime friend Anna Lee Amsden, and, according to her, “Crazy Chester” was an eccentric resident of Fayetteville, Arkansas, who carried a cap gun. Ronnie Hawkins would tell him to “keep the peace” at his Rockwood Club when Chester arrived.

Along with many of my musician friends I have played this song a few hundred times and it never gets old. If you enjoy it half as much as I do, it will be in your top 25. Have a good time with this one.

Keep Rockin’,

Stan Bradshaw