Chords for The Band / Robbie Robertson - The Weight | Het verhaal achter het nummer | Top 2000 a gogo

[F] I take a load [Eb] off, baby.
Take a load for free.
[Bb] Take a load [Eb] off, baby. _ _
And you put the load [Bb] right on me.
[G] When I wrote The [Eb] Way, in [G] my guitar,
it's a 1951 Martin guitar.
And I have it on my knee, and I'm looking at it,
and I'm trying to think of what to write about.
And I look in the sound hole on it,
and it says Nazareth.
[F]
I thought, [Bb] all right.
And I used this in the first, I pulled into Nazareth.
It's the first line in the song.
I pulled [A] into Nazareth.
[Eb] I was a feeling about [Bb] half past dead.
I just [Dm] need to find a [Eb] place where I can lay my [Bb] head.
Hey, mister, can you tell [Eb] me where a man might [Bb] find a bed?
He just [Dm] grinned and shook my [Eb] hand.
I know that's [Bb] all he said.
And I want you to take [Eb] a load off, baby.
[D] So I'm sitting down to write this song.
[F] And there was a place in New York _ called
Gotham Books on 47th Street.
And in there, you could buy the [Bb] scripts for tons of movies.
And I was going through a phase right at that time
for Louis Bunuel.
In these scripts and in these movies,
there's a theme in there that it almost implies
the impossibility of sainthood, _ of trying to do good.
You think, there's not that many saints.
There must be something difficult about that.
And the theme in his films are that you
have these people doing good things
and really being tormented for trying to do a good thing.
And you can take [Eb] a load off, baby.
[Bb] _ [Eb] Take a load for free.
[Bb] _
Take a load [Eb] off, baby.
_ _ And you [Bb] put the load right on me.
And [F] I am [Eb] writing about somebody who's on a mission.
And somebody has said, listen, _ if you're going over here,
while you're there, would you do me a favor?
And so he is doing what's asked of him
in his kindness and generosity.
He's trying to do something.
And everything turns into a situation for him.
So it's kind of a theme that I was inspired by this Bunuel stuff, right?
And where movies and music are coming together for me
in some dream that I've [Bb] had.
Crazy [Dm] Chester followed me [Eb] and he caught me [Bb] in the fog.
He said, I [Dm] will fix your rack, [Eb] but he just ain't jacked [Bb] my dog.
I said, wait [Dm] a minute, Chester.
[Eb] You know I'm a [Bb] peeper, man.
He said, [Dm] that's OK, boy.
[Eb] Won't you beat them [Bb] when you can?
Yeah, yeah.
Take a [Eb] load off, baby.
And [Bb] also, _ [Eb] when I was 16 years old,
I went from Canada down to the Mississippi Delta
to join Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks.
I was going to the fountainhead of rock and roll.
This is where blues, mountain music, rhythm and blues, funk,
everything.
This is where rock and roll was born,
where it grew out of the ground.
I'm going to the Holy Land.
And it made such an impression on me,
because I'm 16 years old, [Bb] that all of the names of places
and characters and just the rhythm of the whole landscape
and of the Mississippi River, all of it goes,
pooh, and it washes over me.
And all of these things get stored somewhere back
in my dream compartment.
Now it's time for me, in 1967, to really write songs.
And so I [D] unlock [Eb] this [Bb] door up into my attic.
And it comes out, and it becomes a song like, The Wait.
[F] _ _ Levon was the only guy from [Eb] the South.
All the [Bb] rest were Canadians.
And this [Eb] music _ [Bb] became what's [Eb] called Americana.
And we're like, isn't that weird?
It's called Americana.
[Bb] Isn't it kind of [G] like North Americana?
[Eb] _ Isn't that really the [Bb] truth?
[G] _ _ _ [Eb] _ _ _ _ _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ [E] _