2:59
Stage Fright, 1970
Written by Robbie Robertson
Like Neil Diamond's "Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show," released a year earlier, this song is about a long gone slice of Americana, the traveling medicine show. This one is a bit darker, more carnival than faith healer, and is based on a specific minstrel show from Levon Helm's youth in Arkansas, F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, which began around 1900 as "The Rabbit's Foot Company." On the surface, the lyrics sketch colorful performers and carnival atmosphere ("There's a young faith healer / He's a woman stealer / He will cure by his command"), but the song can also be read as a commentary on show business itself: part celebration, part cautionary tale about spectacle and excess ("Come on out and catch this show / There'll be saints and sinners, you'll see losers and winners"). It starts with funky guitar, leading into Helm's countrified vocal with Danko's backing. Garth Hudson's buzzy sax adds some vaudevillian swagger.