October 21, 2026

The Last Waltz at Winterland: Thanksgiving, 1976

San Francisco. Thanksgiving night. November 25, 1976.

Winterland was an old ice rink that had spent years getting beaten up by rock shows.

For one night, Bill Graham decided to dress it properly.

Carpet went down. Chandeliers went up. Scenery borrowed from the San Francisco Opera's La Traviata dressed the stage. Thousands of people sat down for Thanksgiving dinner while the Berkeley Promenade Orchestra played waltzes in a building better known for long sets, spilled beer and people waiting outside for the doors to open.

Then the tables disappeared.

Winterland Ballroom went back to work.

The Band came out sometime after nine and opened with "Up on Cripple Creek."

Back where they started

Winterland wasn't picked because it was pretty.

The Band had played its first public concerts under its own name there in April 1969. The opening night had been a mess. Robbie Robertson was sick enough that promoter Bill Graham called in a hypnotist to help get him onstage. The crowd waited until midnight and got a short, shaky set for its trouble.

They came back the following night and sounded considerably more like the band everyone had been waiting for.

Seven years later, they returned to the same room to get off the road.

The goodbye didn't begin as an all-star revue. For the first stretch, it was just The Band.

"The Shape I'm In." "It Makes No Difference." "This Wheel's on Fire." "Ophelia." "King Harvest." "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."

Levon Helm behind the drums. Rick Danko folded around the bass. Richard Manuel moving between piano and drums. Garth Hudson surrounded by keyboards. Robertson on guitar.

Before everybody else showed up, they got to sound like themselves.

Then the door started swinging

Ronnie Hawkins came first, which was exactly where he belonged. Before they were The Band, they had been his Hawks.

Dr. John came through. Bobby Charles. Paul Butterfield. Muddy Waters walked on and sang "Mannish Boy."

Eric Clapton joined them for "Further On Up the Road." His guitar strap came loose in the middle of it and Robertson picked up the lead while Clapton fixed the problem. Nothing stopped. They just kept playing.

Then Neil Young came out for "Helpless."

The high harmony belonged to Joni Mitchell.

Except nobody could see her.

Mitchell wasn't supposed to make her own entrance until later, so she sang from backstage. Five thousand people could hear one of the most recognizable voices in the room and had no idea where it was coming from.

She eventually appeared for her own songs.

Neil Diamond followed with "Dry Your Eyes."

On paper, the guest list can look like someone emptied a very expensive record collection onto the stage. In the room, most of the connections made more sense. These were people The Band had backed, played beside, learned from or simply wanted there.

Van Morrison knew how to leave

Van Morrison came out in a sparkly maroon suit that looked like it had arrived from an entirely different Thanksgiving.

He sang "Tura Lura Lural."

Then he did "Caravan."

By the end he was kicking at the air, throwing his arms around and barking the song toward the back of Winterland. He finished, dropped the microphone and walked off.

There are more complicated performances from that night.

There isn't a much better exit.

Dylan finally came out

Bob Dylan arrived late in the show.

His history with the five guys behind him ran deeper than anyone else's. They had taken the abuse with him when he went electric. They had spent nights playing to people who came specifically to boo. They had made music together around Woodstock. For years their stories had been tangled up.

For a few songs, they were Dylan's band again.

"Baby Let Me Follow You Down." "I Don't Believe You." "Forever Young." Then another run through "Baby Let Me Follow You Down."

After that came "I Shall Be Released."

At that point, pretty much everybody started piling onto the stage.

Dylan. Young. Mitchell. Morrison. Clapton. Diamond. Dr. John. Ronnie Hawkins. Paul Butterfield. Ringo Starr. Ronnie Wood. The Band somewhere in the middle of all of it.

If they had stopped there, nobody would have complained.

They didn't.

Nobody wanted to leave

The formal ending turned into a jam.

Ringo Starr sat behind a drum kit. Ronnie Wood plugged in. Clapton came back. Neil Young returned. Stephen Stills joined in. People drifted on and offstage while Thanksgiving quietly became Friday morning.

Eventually the stage emptied.

The crowd stayed.

So The Band came back.

Sometime after two in the morning, the five of them played "Don't Do It."

No parade of guests. No giant farewell production.

Just The Band again.

Then Robertson said good night and goodbye.

The movie cleaned things up

Most people know November 25, 1976 through Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz, released in 1978.

It's one of the great concert films.

It's also a movie.

The actual Winterland show ran for hours. There were more songs, more waiting around and more music than the theatrical version could carry. Scorsese and his crew shot the concert in 35mm with cameras positioned around Winterland, then spent a long time turning all of that footage into something with a beginning, middle and end.

They also added to it later.

"The Weight" with the Staple Singers and "Evangeline" with Emmylou Harris were filmed after the concert on a soundstage in California.

They belong to The Last Waltz.

They weren't part of Thanksgiving at Winterland.

The actual night was plenty crowded already.

Winterland had another goodbye coming

The Last Waltz wasn't the end of Winterland.

The room kept going for another two years and finally closed after its own marathon farewell on New Year's Eve 1978.

But Thanksgiving 1976 belonged to The Band.

An old ice rink wearing chandeliers. Dinner for five thousand people. Joni Mitchell singing from behind a curtain. Muddy Waters standing in the middle of the stage. Van Morrison kicking his way through "Caravan." Dylan appearing late. A jam that kept stretching after the supposed finale.

And sometime after two in the morning, five guys who had spent years on the road came back out and played one more song because the room was still there.

For a farewell, everybody had a hard time leaving.

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