What “It Makes No Difference” means

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By 1975 the easy magic of the early records had largely gone — which makes the quiet miracle of “It Makes No Difference” all the more striking. Many fans, and not a few critics, consider it the most beautiful thing The Band ever recorded, and one of the saddest songs in all of pop.

What it's about

The meaning is plain and devastating: it's a song about being unable to get over a love that's gone. There's no twist, no story — just a man itemising his grief. Robertson reaches for the weather to do it: the sun won't shine, the rain won't stop, the clouds hang low. “It makes no difference where I turn,” the narrator admits; nothing eases it.

Written for Danko's voice

Robertson wrote it specifically for Rick Danko to sing, and it's hard to imagine anyone else. Danko's high, cracking tenor finds the “lonesome bottom” of the song without ever sounding self-pitying — biographer Barney Hoskyns said there's “something so elemental” in his delivery that it transcends mere sorrow. Levon Helm and Richard Manuel add aching harmonies on the chorus.

The two solos

The song's emotional peak isn't a word at all — it's the duel of solos at the end, Robertson's guitar and Garth Hudson's soprano saxophone answering each other, both caught between reaching for redemption and giving in to the loss. AllMusic called it “the best romantic ballad ever done by the group.” The version in The Last Waltz is, if anything, even more impassioned.