Was The Band's "The Weight" Written For a Drug-Dealing Woman?

Cathy Smith, Inspiration for "The Weight"? 

From a woman's perspective, the dreary, draggy song has always bugged me. Who was this Annie (or Fanny) who was so weak she needed some burden taken off of her? 

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And you put the load right on me 

Written by The Band member Robbie Robertson, "The Weight" has cryptic and poetic lyrics with many possible interpretations, and is admittedly about characters known to members of the group. "The story told in the song is about the guilt of relationships, not being able to give what’s being asked of you," Robertson has said. "In going through these catacombs of experience. you’re trying to do what’s right, but it seems that with all the places you have to go, it’s just not possible. In the song, all this is ‘the load'." 

Route from Toronto to Nazareth, PA

When I learned that the title of the song was "The Weight," I wondered if it was also about a drug deal. "Take a load" could refer to picking up a certain weight of pot or some drug from a woman named Fanny, who apparently didn't get paid for the risk she took in the venture, since the lyrics say, "take a load for free." 

The song takes biblical overtones to many with its first lines:

I pulled into Nazareth, I was feelin' about half past dead / I just need some place where I can lay my head....

However, Robertson says this was actually written about Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the home of Martin guitars. The town is a day's drive from the band's home base (Toronto, Canada) on the route to either Philadelphia or New York City. If the band was running weed to supplement their income, as so many musicians have, Nazareth might have been a stop on their trade route. In those days, it's likely they would have been carrying Mexican marijuana from the States across the border to Canada. 

"I loved The Band's music and thought 'The Weight' was a testament to the importance of underground drug dealing during that time," says NORML founder Keith Stroup. 

I picked up my bag, I went lookin' for a place to hide...

THE BAND AND THE POT BUST 
The Band originated when rockabilly artist Ronnie Hawkins and Levon Helm left Arkansas together in 1958 for Canada, and formed a backup band for Hawkins called The Hawks. The group spun off into Levon & the Hawks before naming themselves The Band as they added Canadian musicians to the line-up. "You won't get paid much, but you'll get more pussy than Frank Sinatra," Hawks told Robertson when he was hired. 

In 1965, Helm and fellow band members Robertson, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel, along with their road manager Bill Avis, faced a marijuana-smuggling charge for allegedly bringing pot into the Toronto airport. Bail was set at $10,000 apiece. Manuel reportedly offered to take the rap for the band, even though it was Danko who had the pot in his pocket. 

Danko is quoted about the incident in Helm's autobiography This Wheel's On Fire, with a story that (ugh) could be the inspiration for the song's lyric "Go down Miss Moses," featuring Fanny:

So Levon spoke to this chick he was dating. Her name was Kathy and she was the most beautiful girl in Toronto… 16 years old when he met her, and she was a gorgeous, gorgeous lady. She looked beautiful and no one could resist her. Anyway, Levon explained the situation to her, and she kindly gave this cop who was trying to crucify us a blow job. Then she told him she was 14 years old. He was the chief witness against us, but this was some weird shit for him, and he disappeared, we never saw him again. In the end everyone else got off, and I received a year’s suspended sentence on probation.

Smith at her sexiest. 

WAS FANNY CATHY? 

"Kathy," by all accounts, was Cathy Evelyn Smith, who met Helm and the Hawks in her hometown of Hamilton, Ontario in 1963. What a friend to the band she was! Yet she was hardly treated as such. 

Helm played the Larry Williams song "Short Fat Fannie," on the Conan O'Brien show in 1993, and said it was his favorite song to sing in the old days of the Hawks. Apparently it was his nickname for Smith: she says in her book Chasing The Dragon that she would turn red and run away every time he sang it, because he would look over at her and grin. 

So we know that Smith was Fanny. She told her own, sad story of how band members treated her like a slut at 17 to Rock and Roll Toronto: 

One night a few months after I met them, they rented a few rooms in the Seahorse Motel down on the lakeshore. We partied on into the night, and at one point I ended up in bed with Rick Danko. In the middle of making love, Rick found out I wasn’t on the pill and things (as it were) ground to a halt. He got out of bed and wandered on down the hall, leaving me lying there hurt and confused, then Levon walked into the room, and climbed into bed with me.

Six weeks later, Smith discovered she was pregnant. Helm wouldn't accept responsibility for the child, who became known as "The Band Baby." Manuel offered to marry her, but she turned him down. She wanted to keep the baby but in the end gave up her daughter, named Tracey Lee, for adoption.

So "the load" could also refer to the burden of being a father (or "shooting a load"). One of "The Weight's" lyrics is, "Do me a favor son, won't you stay and keep Anna Lee company," contributing to the Annie/Fanny confusion and using Tracy Lee's middle name.  

The Band opened their set at Woodstock with their song "Chest Fever," the lyrics to which, reportedly improvised by Helm and Manuel, sound like they could again be about Cathy: 

"She's stoned," said the Swede 

And the moon calf agreed 

But I'm like a viper in shock...

And as my mind unweaves

I feel the freeze down in my knees 

But just before she leaves, she receives

Lightfoot and Smith

WHAT HAPPENED TO CATHY SMITH? 

In 1973 Smith began working for Canadian musician Gordon Lightfoot, with whom she had an affair. Though Lightfoot was married when they met, his jealousy about Cathy he inspired his hit song "Sundown." She sang backup on his song "High and Dry":

Singin' why, me oh my, is there a better man than I?
I hope you find your way back home before you're lyin, high and dry
I hope you find your way back home before you die 

Smith, who also dated Hoyt Axton, eventually made her way to Los Angeles, where she worked for the Rolling Stones and did a little drug dealing. “I never thought of her as a dealer, just well connected,” said Bernie Finkelstein, who managed Toronto-based singer-songwriter Dan Hill. 

Smith heading to court. 

In the tragic incident she will always be remembered for, Smith was with John Belushi for the last five days of his life before he died on March 5, 1982 of an accidental overdose of heroin and cocaine at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. She admitted to injecting him with a speedball before leaving his room. “I killed John Belushi,” she said. “I didn’t mean to, but I am responsible.”  

Convicted of manslaughter in Belushi's death, Smith served 15 months in prison at the California Institution for Women between December 1986 and March 1988. She attempted to turn her life around in prison, where she taught computer skills to fellow inmates that included female members of the Manson Family. Deported to Canada after her release, she worked as a legal secretary and spoke to teenagers about the dangers of drugs. 

Patti D'Arbanville as Smith in Wired.

The Bob Woodward book Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi features Smith, who was portrayed in the 1989 film version by Patti D'Arbanville (the inspiration for Cat Stevens's "Wild World"). Two years later, Smith was arrested in Vancouver with two grams of heroin in her purse, for which she received a fine of CDN$2000 and 12 months' probation. 

THE WEIGHT ENDURES

The Band, meanwhile, went on to fame backing up Bob Dylan and had another hit with "Up on Cripple Creek" about a woman who's "a drunkard's dream." 

Manuel, apparently the only Band member to offer to do the honorable thing for Smith, was plagued with alcohol and drug addiction, and committed suicide in 1986. The video to Robertson's song "Fallen Angel," written for Manuel after his death, begins with a woman giving birth and a man chasing wolves from her door. In his 2016 book Testimony, Robertson writes that Manuel re-connected with Smith after breaking up with his wife. On tour, "Cathy tried to help Richard keep it together, but she had her own battles with drugs."

The Staples Singers in "The Last Waltz"

In 2004 Rolling Stone ranked "The Weight" 41st on a list of 500 greatest songs of all time. The song is immortalized in the Martin Scorcese–directed concert film "The Last Waltz," with the Staples Singers on vocals. Mavis Staples told the New Yorker of the experience: 

I took it as Moses in the Bible, you know. I just make up my own vision to make the song feel good for me, and make it my own. We were in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Nazareth was on the same highway. But when we sang, “I pulled into Nazareth,” I took it as Nazareth in the Bible. You could ask those guys what the song was about and they’d say, “We don’t know.” I guess they didn’t want to go through a long explanation. My brother said, “Mavis, I know what the song is about. This song is about drugs."

THE FINAL VERSE
Speculation continues about the lyrics' meaning, including the final verse, where the narrator heads back to Fanny carrying a heavy bag full of "regards" from her:  

Catch a cannonball now to take me down the line
My bag is sinkin' low and I do believe it's time
To get back to Miss Fanny, you know she's the only one
Who sent me here with her regards for everyone

In September 2019, the 50th Anniversary of "The Weight" was celebrated with a Playing for Change video featuring international musicians and Ringo Starr on drums. A female empowerment moment is a high-light when Sherieta Williams & Roselyn Lewis from Jamaica along with Larkin Poe of Venice, CA harmonize together on Fanny's "regards for everyone." Other women musicians in the video are Japanese pianist Keiko Komaki, Hawai'ian ukulele player Taimane. and percussionist Sol Homar from Barcelona. 

Cathy Smith died on August 16, 2020, in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, at the age of 73, living in senior housing and on oxygen.