BEST OF THE BAND

Music / Songs / Twilight

Twilight

An outtake from the Northern Lights–Southern Cross sessions that never made the album itself, released instead as the B-side to the "Acadian Driftwood" single in 1975 and added to the group's live sets that same year. Levon Helm described it in his memoir as a reggae-tinged song the group simply liked enough to want out in the world, even without a proper album slot to put it in.

Robertson wrote the music and lyric, but by his own account he preferred not to sing it himself, saying later that the group's whole way of working meant everyone contributed rather than any one person acting as a frontman, and that he enjoyed writing songs and then handing them to someone else to perform. Rick Danko took the lead vocal on the officially released version and kept the song in his own solo repertoire for years afterward, telling one interviewer that he considered it as much his song as Robertson's by that point. Danko's later live performances of "Twilight," including a well-regarded 1989 duo reading with Garth Hudson, are generally considered the song's definitive versions, more so than the original single release.

Though it never achieved the same recognition as the group's biggest songs, "Twilight" was included on the 1976 compilation The Best of the Band and has retained a devoted following among people who know the catalog past the obvious singles.

Notable versions