The Weight

Mavis Staples birthday celebration week rolls on

Two Solid Sound alumni!

Keeping the Mavis Staples birthday celebration train going, I want to share an excerpt from my upcoming book, World Within a Song, that’s ostensibly about “The Weight” by Robbie Robertson, but is really about Mavis.

The Weight

Everybody knows and loves this song. Or at least every musician I’ve ever met. Although I’m ashamed to admit I once moderated my high opinion of the Band, and this song in particular, because of a Robert Crumb interview where he used “The Weight” as an example of how ridiculous and corny his musical contemporaries were. He could have just said he strongly preferred Dixieland jazz and early string band 78s, but he’s entitled to his opinion.

The shameful part is how it stuck in my head for so long. And because I liked his art and shared with him an affinity for early recordings and the unparalleled excitement of getting to hear new forms in their infancy, I had a period where I kind of agreed with him. Looking at the Band’s album jackets, I’d think to myself, “Look at these carpetbagging Canucks posing like they just robbed the Southern Pacific mail train, with their bushy beards and waistcoats . . . pfff!”

Now, some of you who’ve been following my career might be thinking, “Um, excuse me, Jeff, but I seem to recall you spending a good portion of your public life standing underneath hats and singing through a beard.” I hear you. It’s a weird disconnect. But it doesn’t need to make sense. Because it’s true. I have often donned and appropriated the styles of those whose authenticity I found suspect. I’m sure if I had the energy for such a topic I could rationalize my sartorial choices as being an extension of my desire to simultaneously embrace and subvert traditional American folk music forms. But in doing so I would sound like an asshole. So let’s just agree that it’s hard to find stuff to wear onstage. Especially when you aren’t particularly interested in the showbiz side of things. So somebody gives you a hat and you put it on, and someone else, maybe a publicist or someone in your band, tells you that you “look good” and says, “Man, you should rock that onstage.” And before you know it, you’re standing at a microphone years later looking out at an audience full of guys wearing “your” hat.

Let’s get back to “The Weight,” shall we?

Eventually I realized R. Crumb was kind of a creep for being so closed-minded about rock music, and maybe even kind of a creep in general. So I was able to reclaim both the Band and “The Weight” with unabashed fervor.

Of course, the other element that I’ve failed to mention—the one performance most responsible for making the song unassailable to myself and almost every musician I’ve ever met—is the movie The Last Waltz’s rendition with the Staple Singers. As great as the original studio recording of this song is, it doesn’t have Mavis Staples. I’ve watched it a thousand times and I still can’t understand the full ramifications of what it tells us about Mavis’s singular talent. Pure commitment, entirely free of pretense, a range of emotions on display in one line that surpasses what most other singers could summon up in an entire career . . . and above all else, the thing I think it’s impossible to find more of in any other footage of any other artist, joy.

With this one sublime performance, Mavis goes beyond just inhabiting a song, as all other musicians strive to do. She inhabits herself—her own skin—so completely, so free of judgment, so visibly generous in her spirit, that to see it is to be changed. It made such an impression on me that when we met years later I had to hide my shock that she wasn’t, as I had pictured her, nine feet tall. If humanity at some point in the future is ever put on trial before a galactic body, I hope this footage still exists, because I can think of nothing more redeeming for all of us than to witness Mavis in all her glory.