Stage Fright was a contradictory record, combining buoyant music and disenchanted lyrics, and exploring themes such as peace, escape and frivolity that revealed darker shades of melancholy, anxiety and fatigue.

They hailed aspects like Garth Hudson's diverse textural weavings, Robbie Robertson's incisive guitar work, and the funk of the Danko–Levon Helm rhythm section, but differed on the record's troubling tone and overall cohesiveness.

In later years, on the occasion of reissue and remaster releases, many critics reappraised the album as showing "no drop-off in quality compared to the first two"[7] and "evidence of a group still working at the top of their form.

Ultimately, the town council feared a Woodstock Music and Art Fair-type stampede and vetoed the idea, leading the group to simply use the off-season theater as a makeshift studio.

"[1] "The Shape I'm In" and "Stage Fright" grappled with dissipation and panic, while "The Rumor" and "Daniel and the Sacred Harp" addressed the malevolence of gossip and the loss of one's soul in pursuit of fame and fortune.

[1] Standing alone as a purely positive song was Robertson's delicate lullaby, "All La Glory", written for the birth of his daughter, buoyed by one of Helm's most gentle, emotive vocals.

[11] In a 2010 interview, Robertson described the recording atmosphere as tense, with the group contending with a tricky sound situation in the playhouse, an unfamiliar presence in Rundgren, and "distraction and a lot of drug experimenting.

Rolling Stone critic John Burks cited the group's "precision teamwork", but felt the lyrics did not quite connect with the music and vocals; he wrote that the album was lacking "glory.

"[5] Billboard's Ed Ochs described it as "candid and confessional, genuinely comic and gently satiric," but noted a "relationship of music to message [that] is noticeably off.

In Q, rock critic John Bauldie hailed the trademark vocal interplay on "The Rumor" and "Daniel and the Sacred Harp", the ballads "All La Glory" and "Sleeping", and "The Shape I'm In" as career highlights.

"[8] Writer Paul Casey described Stage Fright as "heartfelt," "sublime," and the "most personal, and least enamored with the fictional history aesthetic" of the band's albums.