Robbie Robertson of the Band was sick of the road. "The Last Waltz" was his idea. Not everybody in the group agreed with his plan to pull the plug on the troubled rock band and play one final all-star extravaganza, which would be filmed and recorded, Thanksgiving night 1976 at Winterland in San Francisco. But Robertson prevailed.

So it is not surprising that a quarter century later, it would be Robertson, producer of the film and the original three-disc soundtrack album, who would spend five grueling months editing, mixing and remixing the original recordings. He's come up with a new theatrical print featuring six-channel surround sound, a DVD with 5.1 audio and a four-CD box-set stereo mix of the entire tape, all about to be released in celebration of the concert's 25th anniversary. The film opens a weeklong theatrical run tomorrow at the Castro Theatre.

"I knew it was all about the results," Robertson said recently in a phone interview, "to get this movie and all the music ready to pass on."

Director Martin Scorsese supervised the restoration of the 35mm print, and Robertson put together an audio version that brings that night roaring ferociously back to life.

One of the most magnificent evenings in rock history, the concert was a sublime sendoff, a celebratory climax to a grand career. At the unforgettable finale, the Band's Richard Manuel and Bob Dylan sang a duet of "I Shall Be Released," flanked by Van Morrison, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Eric Clapton, Dr. John, Ronnie Wood and Ringo Starr.

At the same time, it was an evening that will forever be remembered for controversy and conflict. Dylan refused until the last moment to allow his performance to be filmed, and Warner Bros. had financed the seven-camera filming only after being assured Dylan would be in the movie. Hectic backstage negotiations were conducted through the intermission and continued right up until Dylan's entrance. Producer Bill Graham always took credit for twisting Dylan's arm, although Robertson discounted Graham's role.

Graham, who went to extraordinary lengths to give the event its lavish atmosphere, always hated the movie and never felt adequately acknowledged for his role in the concert. Levon Helm of the Band expressed his disgust with the business decisions and events surrounding the concert in his 1993 book "This Wheel's on Fire."

MUSICIANS' MUSICIANS

The Band was always more respected and admired than popular. Other musicians loved the long-standing group, which started out playing as the Hawks behind Canadian rock 'n' roller Ronnie Hawkins, long before backing Dylan on his first electric rock tours. The Band's 1968 debut, "Music From Big Pink," never sold many copies, but the clapboard honesty of the music was a revelation to the acid-washed psychedelic blues-rock scene.

By the time Robertson decided, at age 32, that having spent half his life on the road was enough, the group was teetering on the edge of commercial irrelevance. The Band played the 1973 Watkins Glen concert, in front of the biggest rock-concert audience ever, as a supporting act to the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers. The group toured baseball parks only as special guests on the 1974 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tour.

At the time "The Last Waltz" was announced, only a little more than half the tickets to a pending appearance at Oakland's Paramount Theatre had been sold at $7.50. Those tickets were refunded, and a new Thanksgiving dinner show at Winterland was announced with $25 tickets, which sat almost entirely unsold until Graham leaked the special guest lineup to The Chronicle.

He transformed the seedy old ice rink for the evening. He brought in some potted plants and little hedges, hired a waltz orchestra and professional dancers. He hung chandeliers and rented San Francisco Opera's sets to "La Traviata" for the stage. He served turkey dinners at tables to the capacity crowd of 5,400, uncommonly well dressed for a rock show.

Drugs were everywhere. A room backstage had been painted white and decorated with noses cut off plastic masks while a tape loop of sniffing played in the background. A gauzy haze of cocaine lies over the movie. Never mind the reports that close-ups of Neil Young had to be doctored in post- production to remove incriminating evidence from his nostrils; his jaw- grinding intensity stands in stark contrast to the regal bearing of Muddy Waters.

A TOUCH OF TIN PAN ALLEY

According to Helm's account, he had to fight to have the enormously dignified Chicago blues immortal on the bill and never understood what Neil Diamond was doing there. Diamond's connection to the Band was through Robertson, who had just finished writing and producing an album with Diamond called "Beautiful Noise" that probably sold more than the entire Band catalog ever did. Robertson offered Helms the tepid explanation that Diamond represented the Tin Pan Alley part of the Band's music.

Fish-out-of-water Diamond, who hadn't performed for an audience that didn't come just to see him since he'd left the package-tour days of "Solitary Man," wandered out from backstage before his performance. He stood by the soundboard at the back of the hall, his face frozen in panic behind those designer aviator shades, as he watched the Band tear up a shuffle with Eric Clapton on guitar.

FIERY SINGING BY LEVON HELM

The film contains a large number of relatively gratuitous shots of producer Robertson, sporting an expensive haircut and a Hollywood-rock-star makeover, waving his guitar as if he were leading the band and singing far away from his microphone, which wasn't turned on anyway. Helm sings like a house on fire on "Up on Cripple Creek," the concert's (but not the movie's) opening song. The other Band members largely disappear into the shadows of the film.

The interspersed interview segments were filmed in the days after the concert at the Band's Malibu studio and headquarters, Shangri-La, and Helm is uncharacteristically tight-lipped. Manuel was so drunk he is barely comprehensible. Bassist and vocalist Rick Danko played interviewer Scorsese a solo recording rather than talk at all.

A quarter century later, Danko and Manuel are dead. Garth Hudson is bankrupt, his home in foreclosure, and Robertson bought everybody but Helm's interest in the group. Also dead are Muddy Waters, Roebuck "Pops" Staples, Paul Butterfield and Bill Graham. Even Winterland itself was torn down long ago. But "The Last Waltz," one of rock's shining moments, lives on.

MOVIE

THE LAST WALTZ, starring the Band, and directed by Martin Scorsese, opens tomorrow at The Castro Theatre.

E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sfchronicle.com.