1968 Folk Rock Song, Covered by Aretha Franklin, Ranked Among ‘Greatest Songs of All Time’

When The Band released its debut album in 1968, one song immediately captured everything that made the group unusual.

“The Weight” sounded timeless from the start, combining gospel, country, folk, and rock with a cast of mysterious characters and a chorus built to be sung by a crowd.

Written by guitarist Robbie Robertson, “The Weight” appeared on Music from Big Pink, the album that introduced the Band as more than the musicians who had spent years backing Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan. Although the single wasn’t a major chart success, peaking at just No. 63 on the Billboard Hot 100, its influence soon eclipsed that modest showing.

Robertson set the song in Nazareth, a place that sounded biblical but had a more practical inspiration.

“I wrote the song in Woodstock, in a house that I had there in a place called Larson Lane,” Robertson said in an interview years later. “I went upstairs in this house, where I had a table and a guitar, and it was kind of my little workshop area… And when I sat down to try to think of something, I realized I had nothing in mind.”

The guitarist had noticed Nazareth, Pennsylvania, printed inside his Martin guitar, which was manufactured there. From that starting point, he created a fictional journey populated by characters including Carmen, the Devil, Miss Moses, Luke, and Crazy Chester.

“I thought, ‘OK, well let me see,’ and I wrote the first line of that song and I would say, in probably 45 minutes, I had written the skeleton of the whole song,” Robertson continued.

Robertson later explained that the song was influenced by the films of Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, particularly the director’s explorations of morality, sainthood, and the difficulty of doing the right thing. The result was a song filled with biblical imagery without telling a straightforward religious story.

“We were in the studio,” Robertson told Guitar Player. “And just out of trying to not be boring, we said, ‘Well, let’s give that ‘Take a load off Fanny’ song a shot. […] It wasn’t until we listened back to it that we realized, ‘Holy shit, this song’s really got something.'”

Levon Helm handled the lead vocal, with Rick Danko and Richard Manuel joining him as the song unfolds. Their rough-edged harmonies helped give “The Weight” the communal sound that became one of the Band’s trademarks.

Other artists quickly recognized its potential.

Aretha Franklin recorded “The Weight” for her 1970 album This Girl’s in Love with You, with Duane Allman contributing guitar. Her version performed considerably better on the singles chart than the Band’s original, reaching No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The song also received early interpretations from Jackie DeShannon and The Staple Singers, while countless artists would take it on in the decades that followed.

Its cultural reach expanded further when the Band’s recording appeared in the landmark 1969 film Easy Rider, although contractual issues meant a cover version was used on the movie’s soundtrack album.

More than half a century later, “The Weight” is no longer defined by its original chart position. Rolling Stone ranked it among its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, while generations of musicians have continued to perform and record it.

What began with a Pennsylvania town name spotted inside Robertson’s guitar became one of the most enduring songs of the late 1960s, a mysterious American road story whose burden has been passed between singers ever since.

Related: In 1970, a band recorded a song about an 1820 whaling disaster at the Record Plant; a British TV show used it as its theme for 16 years, and it is still an iconic hit 55 years later