One of my very favorite moments from The Last Waltz, with Robbie Robertson and Eric Clapton out front with The Band on Clapton’s live standby Further On Up The Road. Clapton’s in fine form but far too polite an Englishman to engage in a tawdry North American style cutting contest, but Robbie, raised in gritty roadhouses on both sides of the border, doesn’t know any other way and goes for the jugular, blood all over the floor by the time he finishes. Eric grins a surrender and follows up with a fine solo but never tries to outdo Robbie, whose show it is afterall. Rock’n’roll can be so polite. In real jazz and old R&B it could have been Robertson’s deathbed solo and the other cat would have tried to bury him anyway, no mercy, no quarter. I always thought it a shame that Clapton didn’t come back with a solo to make this a cutting contest to the death, back and forth, each of them throwing everything they had into topping the other motherfucker’s solo till, exhausted, one or the other gave in, humiliated. I’ve watched saxophone players do that and you can see the moment one of them, laughing and vanquished, gives in. It’s macho to the core. Exhilarating. But Eric was a nice guy, and it was a bittersweet event in a San Francisco hall full of faded peace and love hippies and he let Robbie have this one in a classic Robbie Robertson explosion of rockabilly and blues licks.