The Last Waltz (2002 album)

The box set The Last Waltz is a 2002 four-disc 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.

Contents

• Track listing
• Studio Ideas
• The Band
• The horn section
• The guests
• Production
• Other credits
• Songs
• References

Among the tracks added are a version of Louis Jordan's "Caldonia" featuring Muddy Waters and Pinetop Perkins trading off the vocal, a radically reworked version of the live favorite "Rag Mama Rag", Neil Young and Joni Mitchell joining the Band on "Acadian Driftwood", a blistering take on the Stage Fright classic "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.

On November 11, 2016, this set was reissued as part of a 40th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set edition that includes the 1978 Scorsese film on a separate Blu-Ray disc. It is not indicated as to whether or not new mastering was done to the audio discs over and above that from the 2002 reissue.