58 The Weight

THE BAND 1968

The Band were chiefly known as Bob Dylan’s touring group when they retreated to a pink house in Woodstock, New York, to record their debut, Music From Big Pink. The album was centered by “The Weight,” a fable of debt and burden driven by an indelible singalong chorus. Robbie Robertson said he wrote the song after watching director Luis Buñuel’s films about “the impossibility of sainthood,” but characters such as Crazy Chester could have walked straight out of an old folk song. As for the line “pulled into Nazareth,” it refers to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, home of the Martin Guitar factory.