Sides one through five of the album consisted of songs taken from the concert. Side six comprised "The Last Waltz Suite", new numbers composed by Robertson and performed by the Band on an MGM soundstage.[6] The suite featured Emmylou Harris and, on a remake of "The Weight", Roebuck and Mavis Staples. The music received overdubs at Village Recorders and Shangri-La studios in post-production, owing to faults recorded during the concert.[7]
On April 16, 2002, a box set reissue of the album arrived in stores, including everything released on the original with additional tracks taken from the concert.
Track listing
The performance of "Helpless" by Neil Young features backing vocals by Joni Mitchell; Paul Butterfield plays harmonica for Muddy Waters on "Mannish Boy"; Dr. John plays congas on "Coyote" and plays guitar on "Down South in New Orleans"; the entire ensemble sings back-up on the closer, "I Shall Be Released".
The Last Waltz is a 2002 four-disc box set re-release of the 1978 album The Last Waltz documenting the concert The Last Waltz, the last concert by the Band with its classic line up. A full forty tracks are taken from the show in addition to rehearsal outtakes. Twenty-four tracks are previously unreleased.
Among the tracks added are a version of Louis Jordan's "Caldonia" featuring Muddy Waters and Pinetop Perkins trading off the vocal, a reworked version of "Rag Mama Rag", Neil Young and Joni Mitchell joining the Band on "Acadian Driftwood", "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show", excerpts from a pair of instrumental jams involving several of the concert's guest performers, and the concert closer "Don't Do It". In addition, several edits made on the original 1978 set have been done away with; certain songs (such as "Forever Young" with Bob Dylan) are now presented in their unedited versions.
Songs still missing from the concert are a version of "Georgia on My Mind", the full versions of the two jams presented, the full version of "Chest Fever", and the concert takes of "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" and "Evangeline". While the album still has overdubbing, re-sequencing, and editing, it does give a more accurate representation of the event itself than the earlier album or film do, according to collectors who have made comparisons with bootleg recordings of the concert.[22]
On November 11, 2016, this set was reissued as part of a 40th Anniversary edition that includes the 1978 Scorsese film on a separate Blu-ray disc. Enclosed in a 10" by 11.5" booklet, the set contains numerous photographs from the event as well as essays by David Fricke and Ben Fong-Torres. A previously published article entitled "A Behind-the-Scenes Report" by Emmett Grogan is also included, as well as a reproduction of the article on the event by Joel Selvin printed in the San Francisco Chronicle on November 27, 1976. It is not indicated whether or not new mastering was done to the audio discs over and above that from the 2002 reissue.
Bob Dylan, Paul Butterfield, Eric Clapton; Neil Diamond, Dr. John, Ronnie Hawkins, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ringo Starr, Ronnie Wood, Pinetop Perkins
4:49
9.
"Jam #1[b]" (Danko, Helm, Hudson and Robertson from the Band)
Neil Young, Ronnie Wood, Eric Clapton, Dr. John, Paul Butterfield, Ringo Starr
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