REVIEW: Bob Dylan would love you to love "The Complete Budokan 1978"
REVIEW: BOB DYLAN - THE COMPLETE BUDOKAN 1978
“A poet is a naked person … some people say that I am a poet.” - Bob Dylan, 1965
(SONY)
An expanded version of the 1978/9 Bob Dylan live album, At Budokan, is being released Friday, November 17. This is the perfect opportunity to reevaluate the album, as I’m sure others have written. It's an excellent document of a transitional time in Dylan’s career. There’s a lot more going on here than meets the eye, however, so I’d like to address that in the review.
This album and tour has had such a sordid history, and from what I can tell from the headlines of other articles, that aspect has already been covered quite well. So while some of that may also be included below, what I hope to accomplish is place the album in a personal historical context, since I caught one show of the 1978 tour, at the Boston Garden, on September 20, 1978.
I received the 8 LP limited edition version from Japan yesterday, and you can watch my unboxing video here. However, so far, I’ve only had time to listen to an advanced stream of the album, courtesy of Sony. Also note, The Complete Budokan 1978 is not part of the Bootleg Series, so just releasing archival material like this may be the norm from now on, if rumors are to be believed.
Before I go any further, I’ve got to say that this may be Bob Dylan’s best sounding live album, certainly up there with Dylan & the Dead. Although I don’t consider myself to be any kind of audiophile, the album, even while streaming, certainly sounds crisp and clear.
Caveat: These are just my opinions and observations.
In 1977, Bob Dylan was at a crossroads. His career had come full circle. From a folkie playing hootenannies to going electric with the Hawks, to almost eight years as a family man playing simplified country influenced music, then back on the road again in the mid-70s, first with the Band, then the travelin’ hootenanny tour known at the Rolling Thunder Revue. This period coincided with three number one studio albums, and much critical acclaim.
Then Dylan appeared to throw it all away. A challenging, but brilliant, document from the end of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1976, a prime time TV special titled Hard Rain, alienated much of his audience, and his four-hour film from the 1975 leg of the tour, the misunderstood Renaldo and Clara, was even more savagely reviewed.
Newly single, and “Street-Legal.”
In 1978, Dylan went out on his first ever world tour, playing in many countries for the first time, including Japan. Just to put it in perspective, Dylan only played overseas in limited territories a few times in the mid-1960s until his motorcycle accident in 1966, then once again at the Isle of Wight in 1969.
While there were certainly unique releases in Japan previously, when the 1978 tour was announced, the powers that be at Columbia Records went all out and released a triple album compilation, a precursor to 1985’s Biograph, modestly titled Masterpieces. It was also decided that two of the eight shows at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan, would be recorded, and a double live album would get a special Japanese-only release. (Check out Alan Fraser’s Searching For A Gem page for more details.)
Music fans were familiar with the venue, whether they knew it or not. The Beatles played there, five shows in three days, and the first two shows were filmed. The famous bootleg of the show, Five Nights in a Judo Arena, would have been known to fans, even if they were unfamiliar with the name. There was actually some controversy at the time about a beat combo playing at such a hallowed venue.
Releasing an album exclusively in Japan was not that unusual, especially when it came to artists signed to Columbia/Epic, which was still owned by CBS at the time. Among the artists that had released albums exclusively in Japan, at least initially (and mostly on Columbia/Epic), included Donovan, Santana, Mountain, Miles Davis, Cat Stevens, the Carpenters (Live at Budokan 1974), and Beck, Bogart, and Appice. These could be obtained as costly imports in the US.
The Nippon Budokan was becoming quite the hotspot in 1978. The Japanese-only release Cheap Trick at Budokan, actually recorded in April 1978 in Osaka, was released in Japan that October. The band had a cult following at the time, but after getting widespread acclaim and airplay in the US and elsewhere, Cheap Trick at Budokan was released worldwide the following February, and became the band’s best selling album. In April, 1980, Eric Clapton released a double live album recorded the previous December at Nippon Budokan, titled Just One Night (recorded over two nights.)
It’s almost impossible to explain how bizarre Dylan’s tour seemed at the time, at least here in the US. We were spoiled. North America had Tour ‘74 with the Band, and then the Rolling Thunder Revue. I was lucky to catch both tours, and I probably wouldn’t be writing to you now if I hadn’t. The 1978 trek would not only be nothing like those previous tours, but the antithesis.
In the fall of 1977, I moved to Boston to go to college. About a year later, it was announced that Dylan would be playing at the Boston Garden. I was worried about getting tickets. It was something you basically had to do in person. There was a newsstand smack dab in the middle of Harvard Square, which also was a ticket agency where you could leave a deposit ($5 per ticket I think?) and you’d hopefully be all set. So I went for the max - eight tickets. Of course when tickets went on sale, I waited in line at the local Ticketron and bought eight tickets on the floor, then went back to Harvard Square, and picked up my other tickets, those were way further back.
Now the climate for these shows was hostile. There was just a bad vibe about them. With Hard Rain, Street-Legal, Renaldo and Clara, Dylan was no longer in favor, and the US press, in particular, had their knives out, and they had to cut something. Dylan was swimming against the tide at the time. Punk, New Wave, Disco, Rap and Hip-Hop, were the hip and happening genres at the time. Most of the old guard like Paul McCartney, Neil Young, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks, were trying to keep up with the kids, and continued to have hit records and critical acclaim.
Adding to everything else he was going through at the time, Dylan was mourning the loss of Elvis Presley in August, 1977, at the age of 42. Instead of following the crowd, Dylan doubled down and put together an Elvis-type revue. His band included Steve Douglas, who played in the studio with Presley, and later, Jerry Scheff, from Elvis' 70s touring band, replaced Rob Stoner on bass.
According to legend, when Dylan and his new management (Jerry Weintraub) were negotiating a contract for his first ever shows in Japan, apparently they wanted a list of songs that Dylan would play, but they didn't specify how they would be played.With the help of Rolling Thunder veteran Stoner, a large band, including a saxophone, a flute, female backing vocalists, and the drummer from King Crimson, were instructed to dismantle every song.
The critics tore the show apart.
Now this was an American phenomenon. For the most part, the rest of the world embraced the tour. They accepted it for what it was, not hating it for what it wasn’t.
I was having trouble getting rid of all 16 of my tickets. My sister came up from Long Island, there were friends of the family from Italy visiting, there were also some of my friends, including Seth Rogovoy, and classmates that were willing to go. By showtime, I had one ticket left. There were a lot a shows booked at the Garden around then - Billy Joel, Bob Seger, Neil Young. I tried to get rid of it just before the show, but there were no takers. I still have an intact $8.50 ticket somewhere in my basement. (So I went to see Bruce Springsteen soon after, and got a ticket outside the venue for $3.50)
So when it came to showtime, there was a weird atmosphere. One couldn’t help but wonder if Dylan really had a big, mainstream, showbiz setup for the show?
What could I compare it to? It wasn't like Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, that was just (in some ways) a slap in the face of everything. It wasn’t like Nirvana putting out a K-pop album - that would just be thought of as irony or something. What was it like? It was kind of like Newport ‘65! (Or Self Portrait.) Dylan represented something - sacrificing monetary rewards for artistic integrity. A poet. It sounded like he was blowing it.
Today it’s difficult to imagine, but there were musical battle lines drawn back then. In the 1980s. Presley’s image was rehabilitated, but at the time, Elvis was seen as someone who wasted his talent. Vegas = artistic death, not to mention his movies.
Today, all sorts of music from different genres co-exist. The barriers have been broken down due to streaming services and other factors, but back then, this type of thing was deemed to be important, an outgrowth of the folka-rocka boom, the civil rights movements, and the Viet Nam war. Music mattered. What you listened to was similar to taking a political stance. It was how young people communicated and expressed themselves.
So the Dylan show was everything we had feared - a huge band of hired session musicians, all dressed up, rehearsed, and playing in tune. Dylan later commented that on Rolling Thunder, they were criticized for dressing and playing sloppily, then he was criticized for the 1978 band dressing up and playing well together.
The show began with an instrumental version of “My Back Pages,” an interesting choice - a rejection of his past? A hint at a so-called born-again awakening?
Now the sound was horrendous, very muddled and echoey, which didn’t help matters. Dylan then made a grand entrance (much like on the current tour), and performed a completely rearranged version of Muddy Waters’ “I’m Ready,” but the mix was so muddy, it could not be identified. The set list was similar to the Budokan shows, with some added Street-Legal and other different choices and placements.
The arrangements were shocking. You couldn’t really believe what you were witnessing. It appeared to be career suicide. WHAT THE HELL WAS HE DOING? AND WHY?
Some of the arrangements were so cliched, like the gospel/spiritual take on “Blowin’ in the Wind” (which I think worked better than the reggae version attempted in rehearsal.) He performed "Ballad of a Thin Man" without his guitar (or piano), roaming the stage like a Vegas crooner. The version of “All I Really Want To Do” was set to the jaunty melody of Simon and Garfunkel’s “59th Street Bridge Song” (Dylan and Simon could have duetted on this in 1999!). I remember people around me gasping, and then moaning, later on when they heard the lines from a familiar song lead up from “Any day now, any day now …” to “I SHALL BE RELEASED!”
There were some highlights, though. There was a new song, “Am I Your Stepchild?” and the Street-Legal material. Early on in the second set, Dylan played one song, solo, on an acoustic guitar. The song he chose? “It Ain't Me, Babe.” In this context, it felt like a protest song. Protesting what? His audience and their expectations. In other words, me.
So it wasn’t until I read the second edition of Michael Gray’s Song and Dance Man book in 1981 that I began to get a sense of what was going on. He praised Street-Legal as Dylan’s second best album of the 70s.
When the original Budokan album was released, a criticism (among many) was that it was recorded too early in the tour. The band really gelled much later on. The Complete Budokan 1978 album is an important release. To me, it is the dividing line between the 60s/70s Dylan of the past, and the even more challenging artist that emerged around that time. The album sounds brilliant now just the way it is. The gentleness works in its favor as a listening experience. Besides the sonic clarity, there’s something soothing, yet compelling about this expanded set. It reminds me of Shadow Kingdom in a way. The audience is purposefully mixed down, the aural equivalent of Martin Scorsese ignoring the audience in The Last Waltz. It seems silly that we were so wrapped up in the political undercurrents of the 70s back then, but it certainly didn’t feel like that at the time.
On The Complete Budokan 1978, you can really get a sense of where Dylan was really at, considering he’s not much of a confessional songwriter, really. (He just plays one on TV.) First of all, he silently acknowledges that he is in Japan by having an instrumental version of “A Hard Rain” as introductory music. The feeling of loss and nostalgia permeates the concerts, this box set comes across as almost a kind of concept album. The two different blues covers with which he begins each set (“Repossession Blues” and “Love Her With a Feeling”), the rewritten “I Threw It All Away” and "Going Going Gone," songs from Blood On The Tracks and Street-Legal, and most of the non-hits, all reflect what Dylan was experiencing. Plus there’s the version of “Maggie’s Farm", where the oft-criticized lead guitar lines played by Dylan on the Hard Rain album/special has now been revamped and re-orchestrated as a pounding heavy riff, the reggae version of “Don’t Think Twice” is reminiscent of Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry,” and changing the arrangements of such sacred songs as “Like A Rolling Stone” …this is Dylan burying his past while staring it down. He has rarely been as naked as he appears to be on this album.
Everything about the album is a rejection of the past. Everything about this album is setting him up for the future - Gospel, R&B, reggae, standards, self (and cultural) analysis - is all right here. We might not have known it then, but we can certainly explore it now.
WARNING - CULTURALLY INSENSITIVE MATERIAL FROM 1978: Melody Maker Budokan headlines.
Bob Dylan:
The Complete Budokan 1978
Limited Edition
4CD from amazon.com - .co.uk - .de
2LP from amazon.com - .co.uk - .de
8LP from CD Japan
Listen: The Man in Me - I Want You
Unboxing video
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