The Weight - Composition

Composition

According to songwriter Robertson, "The Weight" was inspired by the films of Luis Buñuel, about which Robertson once said:

(Buñuel) did so many films on the impossibility of sainthood. People trying to be good in Viridiana and Nazarin, people trying to do their thing. In ‘The Weight’ it’s the same thing. People like Buñuel would make films that had these religious connotations to them but it wasn’t necessarily a religious meaning. In Buñuel there were these people trying to be good and it’s impossible to be good. In "The Weight" it was this very simple thing. Someone says, "Listen, would you do me this favour? When you get there will you say 'hello' to somebody or will you give somebody this or will you pick up one of these for me? Oh? You’re going to Nazareth, that’s where the Martin guitar factory is. Do me a favour when you’re there." This is what it’s all about. So the guy goes and one thing leads to another and it’s like "Holy shit, what’s this turned into? I’ve only come here to say 'hello' for somebody and I’ve got myself in this incredible predicament." It was very Buñuelish to me at the time.

The original members of The Band performed the "The Weight" as an American Southern folk song with country music (vocals, guitars and drums) and gospel music (piano) elements. The lyrics, written in the first-person, are about a traveler's experiences arriving, visiting, and departing a town called Nazareth. The singers, lead by Levon Helm, vocalize the traveler's encounters with people in the town from the perspective of a Bible Belt American Southerner, like Levon Helm himself, a native of rural Arkansas. The traveler begins the song by giving the impression that he is visiting the Holy Land. The traveler is weary from his long journey alone in a truck or automobile (e.g. “feelin' half past dead”), and is refused a place to stay and sleep, as in the New Testament Gospel of Luke story of Joseph and Mary prior to the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in Bethlehem. In the town, the traveler encounters people with names taken from Biblical characters – the Devil, Miss Moses, and Luke. The traveler encounters others, including Carmen walking with the Devil, who the traveler meets while trying to find a hidden place to sleep. Carmen tells the traveler that she cannot stay to talk with him but the Devil "can stick around." The traveler wrecks his vehicle (e.g. "rack" which is also spelled "wrack"), and meets Crazy Chester, who offers to repair it if the traveler takes his vicious dog named Jack. The chorus and last verse mention Miss Fanny, who had charged the traveler the responsibility (e.g. “The Weight” or “load”) for giving “her regards to everyone” in the town. The song ends with the traveler, moderately dispirited by his experiences, leaving Nazareth. Having failed to have his vehicle repaired, the traveler catches a “canon ball” (e.g. a train, as in the American folk song "Wabash Cannonball") to go back to see Miss Fanny.

The traveler's apparent visit to a holy city was a goal of the writer and composer, Robbie Robertson, who located the story in Nazareth, because Nazareth, Pennsylvania is the hometown of the C.F. Martin & Company, a famed, long-time producer of guitars and other musical instruments. Such a city might be considered "holy" to American musicians and their friends. In the third verse, the traveler characterizes, using only Biblical references, a disagreement between two friends, Miss Moses and Luke . The traveler tells Miss Moses, "Go down, Miss Moses, there's nothin' you can say" to Luke, using the Negro spiritual song of liberation "Go Down Moses" to associate her with the African-American civil rights struggle, a crisis that transformed America throughout the 1960s. In doing so, the traveler tells Miss Moses that it is futile to persuade Luke to join the movement since his friend is preoccupied with "waitin' on the Judgement Day." (Luke is so obsessed that he asks the traveler to stay in Nazareth to take care of the young girl, Anna Lee.) Also, the song's characters have high spiritual meaning to the traveler because, as Levon Helm explained in his autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire, that the characters mentioned in the song were based on real people The Band knew. In particular, "Miss Anna Lee" mentioned in the lyrics and in the refrain is Levon Helm's longtime friend Anna Lee Amsden.