VIETNAM, WATERGATE, AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE: Bob Dylan/The Band - The 1974 Live Recordings
VIETNAM, WATERGATE, AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE: Bob Dylan/The Band - The 1974 Live Recordings
Mildred (Peggy Maley): “Hey, Johnny! What are you rebelling against?”
Johnny (Marlon Brando): “Whadda you got?” — The Wild One (1953)
“Mama wipe the blood from my face/I'm sick and tired of this war/I’ve got a long black feeling and it’s hard to trace” - “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” 1974 live version.
“Art is never finished, it is only abandoned,” Leonardo Da Vinci, which can be applied to Dylan’s body of work, as well as this review. (Please forgive any grammatical or syntax errors. I am abandoning the article now, as is.)
Bob Dylan and the Band - The 1974 Live Recordings is a 27 CD box set of whatever surviving soundboards exist in the Sony cupboards, from Dylan’s “comeback” trek across North America, then known as “Tour ‘74.” 40 shows in six weeks, sometimes two a day/night - a mix of Dylan with the Band, Dylan solo, and separate sets by the Band. Each of almost all of Dylan’s performances were able to fit onto a single CD. Some shows are missing, some sets incomplete. The Band’s sets are not included.
That said, this might be the most cohesive political statement of Dylan’s music ever assembled.
(Pause)
MY INNOCENT PERSPECTIVE (TL;DR)
I was fortunate to attend the January 29th performance at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. I was a novice with the world’s worst Dylan collection. It started with my friend Danny (or should I say his parents) buying me a copy of Greatest Hits Vol. 2, in late 1971. I then bought whatever was released - The Concert For Bangla Desh, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, the 1973 unauthorized Dylan album, and Planet Waves, each one the week of its release. (Patti Smith reviewed the new album for Creem Magazine.)
I hadn’t quite “gotten” Dylan at the time, but was certainly fascinated by him. His music was too loose, voice too unconventional, the lyrics too bizarre, his hair too curly - very un-mop top, not unlike how mine used to be. The Band was even more baffling - they looked like they time traveled from the Civil War. I was into artists like the Who, the Stones, Jethro Tull, Alice Cooper, CSNY, Rod Stewart, the Allman Brothers (a band actually from the South), some Prog, and solo Beatles, among many others. In preparation for the show, I bought the Band's newest album, Moondog Matinee, a collection of covers that I thought I could at least get into - and I did. It was especially educational for me since I was unfamiliar with most of the material covered. After all, I was only 15 at the time, and accessing music was not as easy as it is today. Their sepia toned personas were so believable that I was shocked that someone actually played anything as modern as a synthesizer! An electric guitar was one thing, but …
My goal with this review is to place the musical performances, and the tour itself, in some sort of contemporary context. Yes, I’m that old. (I’m a big fan of the Paranoid Style’s Elizabeth Nelson who wrote the liner notes, but I’m refraining from reading what she wrote until after I finish writing this, so as not to be influenced by her, or anyone else's observations.)
Once I started listening to the first CD of this set, all of these memories came (before the) flooding back. I’d already seen John & Yoko at Madison Square Garden in August, 1972, an experience that can never be topped, for a myriad of reasons. Then the two following Decembers, my father took Danny and me to see Grand Funk with Freddie King (Poker’s his thing, apparently) and then Emerson, Lake & Palmer, both at the Nassau Coliseum, a hockey arena located in Uniondale, Long Island. Danny had been trying to turn me onto Dylan ever since a British au pair left her mono vinyl album of Bringing It All Back Home in her guest bedroom when she left to return home. Still I resisted, Dylan being just a bit too weird to me, even considering that weirdness was usually looked at as a positive thing by me.
My Sunday morning ritual at the time was to check out the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times to torture - I mean educate - myself by checking out the concert listings of shows I most likely could not attend. Sometime near the end of 1973, there was a full page ad on page 2. It was minimalist, reminiscent of the Pat Garrett album cover. No graphics, just the words “BOB DYLAN/THE BAND” suspended in whitespace, with the concert information listed at the bottom - Two shows at the Nassau Coliseum (January 28 & 29), and three at Madison Square Garden (January 30 and twice on the 31st.) There was going to be a lottery for tickets to try to foil scalpers, with a limit of four per envelope. Ironically, the Madison Square Garden shows didn’t sell out in advance, even though they probably had the greatest demand, because - with this primitive system - they hadn’t taken into account that many people had only asked for a pair of tickets.
I wanted to go. I felt compelled to go. But … How could I rationalize it? I wasn’t even sure if I understood his music. But he was playing with the Band again. (I thought he didn’t look back?) The mystique around Dylan was immense, even as he was often mocked at the time, with a lot of negative reports planted in the press, pretty much dismissing him as irrelevant at this point. One thing felt (almost) certain - This was something that was not going to be repeated, and, of course, not to be missed. I’d already missed the Beatles, and would soon miss the Stones with Mick Taylor, the Who with Keith Moon, etc. etc. Luckily, Danny had another friend and acolyte, Steven, whose older sister, Sharon, somehow scored two sets of tickets, and Danny secured an extra one for me. If it wasn’t for this random act of kindness, I probably wouldn't have skipped school on December 1, 1975, to score Rolling Thunder tickets, and probably wouldn’t be writing this article.
I read at the time that bootleggers were out in force, planning to release illegal vinyl sets of each of the 40 shows of the tour, all available (if you could find them) within two weeks of each show. Needless to say, this tour was a big deal and big business, legal and otherwise!
Before the show, I did as much research as I could with my limited resources. I borrowed my friend Brian’s copy of Newsweek, the recent one with Dylan on the cover. Then I returned it, then asked to borrow it again. He let me keep it, and I still have it!
At one of the desks at school, front row on the right, an anonymous student wrote “Someone start a conversation.” I replied, “Do you like Bob Dylan?” The reply was sort of noncommittal. So I went on as only an adolescent male music fan could, the two of us going back and forth every school day, me giving updates throughout the month of January, her feigning interest. At one point, the desk was so full of ink that when someone came in to wash it clean, it felt like Noah and his ark had just passed by. We then, of course, anonymously continued our correspondence.
On the Sunday night before the big show, alone in my Long Island bedroom, I turned the FM dial on the radio from its default setting, WNEW-FM, to see if anything was happening on WLIR-FM. It turns out they were having a “Dylan & The Band Preview.” I was surprised when they played the Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and the DJ informed listeners that this was the original version that Joan Baez covered. So I dug out my Vanguard 7” single, and noticed that the composer was one J.R. Robertson! The “R” must stand for “Robbie!”
Now remember, at the time, Dylan had spent the past seven and a half years as a country gentleman, a family man, a soft rocking mellow dude. He had the reputation of someone shellshocked from the trail he blazed in the mid-1960s, and that was the price he paid. A rock and roll PTSD survivor. I don’t think anyone was prepared for the sonic onslaught that would be emanating from these six hairy 60s rebels. Especially after his poorly received appearance with the Band at the Isle of Wight in 1969.
Here was what was going on when Dylan & the Band took the stage at the Nassau Coliseum on January 29, 1974 (unfortunately not included in the box) - The previous night, there was a rematch between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Super Fight II, at Madison Square Garden, with Ali winning by unanimous decision, knocking Smoking Joe clean out his spleen, so it was one of the things we all discussed on the car ride in, and a good omen. Steven and Danny were conspiratorially talking about Dylan fan stuff of which I was unfamiliar. “You’ve never heard of Great White Wonder?” Sorry, no. Whispering like naughty schoolboys, they were hoping Dylan would perform “Rainy Day Women,” which I didn't know, but I had heard of a song that went, “Everybody must get stoned.” I thought it would be cool to hear that one, even though I had not been anywhere near any reefer at the time.
THE STORM BEFORE THE FLOOD
Outside, there was a storm a-raging. There was Vietnam, technically over for us, but not forgotten. Tens of thousands of American soldiers dead, and not officially over until next year. There was Watergate. Civil unrest. Assassinations. Overdoses. More sophisticated forms of racism. Poverty. Crime. Pollution. Strikes and protests. There was Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, with high office relations in the politics of Maryland. There was Richard F*cking Milhouse “I am not a crook” Nixon. (I had an “Impeach Nixon” sticker on my guitar case, rebel that I am.) We were the nattering nabobs of negativism; the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history. We couldn’t wait to get rid of these guys, these crooks, these monsters, who were sending kids to die in a stupid, useless, unwinnable war. Impeachment with honor! With him gone, things would never be that bad again, with our peace and love and rock’n’roll dreams. Right? RIGHT?!?!?!
I felt unworthy of even entering this sacred hall. To hear these sermons from the mount, I felt like I was suffering from imposter syndrome. Something would be happening, of course, but would I even know what was going on? Would I get it? Luckily, I had nothing to worry about.
We three guys sat together at the far end of the arena. I was on the left, Danny with a portable Panasonic cassette recorder and a pair of binoculars in the middle, and Steven on the right. Danny said he wouldn’t record the Band’s sets, because he wasn’t sure if the batteries would last. However, for “Dixie” and “I Shall Be Released,” the recorder was on. We didn’t yet know about “This Wheel’s On Fire.” I only watched a small fraction of the show through Danny’s binoculars. I didn’t want anything between me and what was happening on stage.
It’s interesting that this tour took place the same year as the Ramones began playing CBGB, not too far away. This tour was back to basics. No concept albums, no rock operas, no platform shoes, no drums rotating in midair, no guillotines, no mascara, no smashed guitars, no pyrotechnics. Just a funky old couch, a rug, and a lamp. It was as punk as anything possibly could be.
So the three of us sat in the sports arena, waiting for the show to begin. You could feel the electricity in the air. It was like the second coming. Like John & Yoko, you didn’t actually SEE people like these. You only READ about them. They were mythical creatures. Apparitions.
The lights went down. The crowd noise was deafening. The six prophets moseyed their way onto the stage. Nonchalantly, they decided to tune their guitars NOW, ignoring all the adulation, not wanting to be distracted from the task at hand. Barely any acknowledgement of the sold out crowd, hardly a word was spoken except sparingly, this night or any other, except at the very end of the tour.
They also looked subversive. They were unkempt, with straggly dark hair, most with beards grown with varying degrees of success, wearing blazers like a mid-60s pop band, or hippies at a job interview. Their bizarre coolness housed in conservative dress, weirdos masquerading as normal people, fooling no one.
They were on a mission. They were the town cryers. A bunch of revolutionaries like a gang of Minutemen, or Sherman’s soldiers plowing through the South. In addition to reclaiming the title of the real “New Dylan” after imitators had been stealing him blind, the Real Deal was spreading the news. Sick of the Nixon shenanigans, the war, the civil unrest, the filth, the corruption, the post-Flower Power apathy, Dylan had the soundtrack of the world in his back pages, and it was time to take it out of his back pocket.
Since the breakup of the Beatles, and with Dylan sidelined, rock music had lost its united focus. Overdoses, assassinations, incarcerations - that will do it for a movement. Now it was Big Business. Of course, Dylan was not immune from making the big bucks. In retrospect, it looks like Dylan hooked up with David Geffen’s new Asylum label in order to have a bargaining chip to get a better deal from CBS/Columbia. Like a jilted lover, his former label released audio revenge porn in time for the tour, an album of outtakes from earlier in the decade, something to embarrass the future Nobel Laureate. However, they would soon kiss and make up, and Dylan would return to the label, and record Blood On The Tracks. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The six week tour was the first cross country trek organized by a single promoter, namely the legendary Bill Graham of Fillmore Auditorium fame. There was actually an outcry when the top ticket price was an outrageous $9.75. Ah … Young and innocent days.
So back then, we looked up to musicians to find out about the world, about the truth, about the possibilities. They were a beacon of hope, shining a light on the parts of the planet that were lurking in the shadows. Times were different. Things moved slower. Choices were limited. Some avenues were otherwise closed.
Thanks to Dylan’s street cred, with his socially conscious songs from the early part of his career, he - along with Lennon - were at the top of the list, and they both stopped touring in 1966, and the Stones soon followed (temporarily). In the intervening years,Woodstock led to Altamont. Sure there were big acts - Grand Funk Railroad played Shea Stadium. But it wasn’t the same thing. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t authentic. It wasn’t organic. Basically, it didn’t mean a damn thing.
In 1966, Dylan disappeared from view, as everything about his persona predicted. He was a doomed, James Dead type figure. This was just a few years after the Kennedy assassination. You just knew he was living on borrowed time. Just like Jesus, or the early Elvis who spent most of the 60s making movies instead of touring. Dylan’s not here. He’s gone. Would there be a resurrection?
THE MUSIC
Listening to this box set (though my phone) is a real trip, man.
During the first couple of weeks of the tour, Dylan and Co. were finding their groove. And let us be clear - he was not backed by the Band, he was backed by the Hawks. Revisiting these shows through an updated lens, I can appreciate it anew. I’d forgotten, or didn’t appreciate at the time, that during the electric sets, Robbie Robertson’s guitar was screaming with all the intensity needed to echo Dylan’s cry in the wilderness. Add to that, Garth Hudson’s swirling, mocking organ, Levon Helm’s southern accents, Richard Manuel’s ancient insertions, and Rick Danko’s bottom line, and all you could do was surrender. The final drips of Dylan’s syrupy Nashville Skyline voice were still there in the mix, but there was an anger - not the same bratty enfant terrible voice of 1966, though. It was more mature, authoritative, one of a man with a family, full of rage and disgust. The sound of his voice on this tour has been described as “glazed,” but listening to show after show, it was clear he was not phoning it in. (Oh the iPhone irony!) There was power in every vocal. It’s like Zim Van Winkle woke up from a 7 ½ year nap, and was appalled by what he’d discovered had happened while he was asleep.
Dylan was back, and he was pissed. In the 60s, he was railing against the status quo, on behalf of his generation, unwittingly and uncomfortably becoming the voice of his generation. Now, as a father and husband, he was a reluctant voice of concern for the next generation, as well as his own.
Not unlike his triumphant appearances at The Concert(s) For Bangla Desh, Dylan was focusing on his “old stuff,” even by 1974 standards. Post-accident, Dylan only regularly played “All Along The Watchtower,” “Lay Lady Lay,” and 1973’s “Knockin' On Heaven’s Door,” plus five songs from the Planet Waves sessions, which dwindled down to just one or two per setlist by the end of the tour. (Dylan’s only live performance of “As I Went Out One Morning” is unfortunately among the missing tapes.)
The first two weeks of the tour were the most diverse, and therefore of much interest to Dylan fans. Dylan and the Hawks hit the stage in Chicago on January 3rd, after flying in from California on the private Starship I airplane, owned by teen idol Bobby Sherman. Dylan’s first full fledged electric concert tour in seven and a half years had begun, after a reported four hours of rehearsals. The six ceremonial horsemen of the apocalypse hit the stage running (actually quite leisurely), all energy and power and anger and righteous indignation, all the while with a modicum of restraint. Childhood friend Louis Kemp sat next to Levon at every show. Dylan was giving it all, although some exhaustion could be ascertained by the final two selections. (Remember this was before stage teleprompters were commonplace.) That would be the only example of this for the rest of the tour. Pretty impressive after so much time off of the road.
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (Live at Madison Square Garden, New York City, NY - January 30, 1974)
Probably the most fun evolution was the song “Rainy Day Women,” with almost all of the lines replaced by new ones, and those replaced by even newer ones! It was also a nod and a wink to the counter culture, since a couple of joints could still land you in prison.
There were some leftovers from the 1966 tour electric set, “I Don’t Believe You,” “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” “LARS” of course, and with Dylan on piano, and Manuel moving to a second set of drums (connecting the Band with their Watkins Glen brethren), “Ballad of a Thin Man.” The latter song in particular morphed from the moderate tempo of the original to a manic interpretation by week number three, amplifying its meaning with Dylan’s emphasis.
The percussive soundtrack was the ammunition of Vietnam. Hendrix at Woodstock was the template. The obvious connection was his cover of “All Along The Watchtower,” but there’s Robertson’s blasting shotgun etiquette on “Hollis Brown,” and Dylan’s rapid fire delivery on - well, just about everything - but especially his snake-like hissing on “It’s Alright Ma,” just spitting out venom with the urgency of a newsroom teletype machine.
1974 (HAROLD’S VERSION)
When Dylan and the Band took the stage, Steve said what everyone was thinking. With hipster cool, he spoke clearly, as can be heard on Danny’s tape, “Holy sh*t, man …Dylan.”
Outside the Coliseum, I bought a blue t-shirt and a black and white poster.
The Band were most likely the collaborators least in awe of Dylan’s aura. Simultaneously, each musician was in his own world, yet somehow playing together, completely in sync.
Starting with “Most Likely,” Dylan’s manifesto was clear - I’m here, but I won’t be for long. Message received. I was enraptured.
I remember my reaction when I heard “Lay Lady Lay” in its new incarceration. It was truly a shocking transformation. I wasn’t a particular fan of the song beforehand, a bit too mellow for my 10 year old brain, but what - WHAT!?!? -the f was happening? What is this devil’s music? I didn’t know this could even be thought up, let alone executed. And this was only the second song of the night! Better fasten my seatbelt.
Dylan was attacking everybody from all sides. The most famous and memorable line of the tour, in the midst of Nixon’s Watergate scandal, was “Even the President of the United States must have to stand naked,” from the decade old “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” bringing the past kicking and screaming into the present. You can hear the audience’s shock and delight on opening night. (Even though I hadn’t heard the actual song before I’d seen him live, I could tell by the rhyme scheme when to cheer on the 29th.) By August, Ol' Milhouse would be gone.
Political corruption was not limited to the crook in the Oval Office with the hidden recording equipment. (Where is the Nixon Bootleg Series?!?!) His Vice President was obliquely referenced in a song often played (mostly) in the early part of the tour. “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” referenced the corruption in Spiro’s home state of Maryland. Don’t go looking for any truths beyond Eden’s Gates.
He was still calling for senators and congressmen to act, and that civil rights still needed to be addressed, in such direct songs as “Hattie Carroll” and “The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” and in morse code in almost every other one.
Then there was Vietnam. A middle verse was added to his most recent hit, “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” asking for the blood to be wiped from his face, declaring he was “sick and tired” of the war. Of course, the undercurrent of all of his middle-60s repertoire is of an anti-war sentiment.
That night, I also became a fan of the Band. I’d never heard anything like them before. There was a lot more energy in their set than I’d anticipated. After Dylan’s first set of six songs, he exited the stage, as the Band played a five song set. Their first song was one I knew only by title, “Stage Fright.” Its impact was powerful and immediate. Back then, believe it or not, musicians had a certain mystique around them. (At least the cool ones.) Hearing Rick Danko unveiling this song to me in real time felt like he was commenting about the supposed retiring and reluctant homebody that was known for NOT touring. I hadn't even had time to absorb what Dylan had done, and now this! The Band was not an antiquated Matthew Brady inspired history lesson. They were as vital as any other act I’d seen.
The solo acoustic set, with a real old unplugged folk guitar and rapid fire vocals and harmonica, was as mesmerizing as it was powerful. Just a lone figure on stage, Cronkite-ing the underground news, commercial free, inventing Billy Bragg on the spot. Dylan was holding 16,000 people in the palms of his hands. To paraphrase Beavis and Butthead, I didn’t know an acoustic guitar could Rock! Such power without electricity! Everything he said mattered, every harmonica solo a wordless diatribe. It cut through the world’s bullsh*t. For example, listen to “Don’t Think Twice.” Here, the hurt of the original now exposes the hidden anger within. The performance is pure punk rock.
The entire evening was the soundtrack to the 7:00 evening news, except that this was the way it really was. The picture of a tramp vomiting into the sewer next to a picture of Rockefeller. You know, that type of thing.
In personal relationships, some were a waste of time, others a misunderstanding. Don't even acknowledge you knew him when .... Just act like you’ve never even met.
Aside from criticizing just about anything and everything (whaddya got?), it was then time to turn the focus on himself. Ever the Gemini, it was twofold.
First off was his relationship with his fans. This was evident from the very first song on the very first night. An obscure, unreleased early 60s song, “Hero Blues,” electrified and updated, a humorous take on his refusal to be anyone's hero, years before he actually was! Then there was “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” and in newer songs, he declared it was never his intention to lead the changes needed. In fact, only his wife, Sara, could see him as he really was. Lyrically, “Wedding Song” is an unflinching precursor of his end-of-decade exploration of biblical gospel music, while the criminally omitted track from Planet Waves (at the expense of the fast version of “Forever Young”?) , “Nobody ’Cept You,” hints at the richness of his next album, Blood On The Tracks.
After the closing benediction of “Like a Rolling Stone,” the intro of which was easily recognized by the audience from their copies of the “Royal Albert Hall” bootleg, Dylan came full circle. He went his way. We went ours. Except … his ghost stayed with us. At least it did with me.
Actually, for the first two weeks of the tour, Asylum was unable to get the new album into the shops during this crucial time. This was due to Dylan’s last minute decision to write liner notes, which now needed a special shiny gold wraparound piece of paper to cover some of Dylan’s more colorful language. In spite of this, Planet Waves was Dylan’s first US #1 album.
The one undisputed classic song from the album was the (slow version of) “Forever Young,” supposedly written for his son Jakob, born on December 9, 1969. Like David Bowie’s “Golden Years” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Fire,” “Forever Young” was originally written (according to future collaborator Rob Stoner) with Elvis Presley in mind. He'd be gone in a few years as well.
(End of pause)
Back on Long Island, it felt like an interminable amount of time until Danny let me borrow his cassette with the recording of the show. When I got it in my greedy little hands, I placed my own portable next to another one (where did I get that??!?) and pressed play on the master, and record+play on mine with a new blank cassette in a groovy blue case. No direct line, not the best fidelity, but it was mine! I played the sh*t out of it. It was my companion, my new best friend, my teacher, my bible. I felt like if I listened to it over and over again, I would somehow be able to immerse myself into this music, transport myself into this mystical mysterious world. (That summer during a family vacation, I convinced my parents to shell out for an early version of a Walkman, and I recorded every show I attended until it died during a concert by the Who at the end of 1979.)
I couldn’t wait for the inevitable double live album, especially “The Ballad of Hollis Brown.” It was the one song I hadn’t even heard of. Every other Dylan song I’d at least been familiar with, but I had to ask Danny a couple of times, much to his annoyance I’m sure, for its title. Just the way his onomatopoeia pronunciation of “Shotgun” should have won him a Grammy.
There was a free magazine being distributed at the time, a Dylan-centric issue of Good Times, which, among other things, had a blurb about each of his albums, and for The Times, They Are A’Changin’, “Hollis Brown” wasn’t even in the description. It must have been really obscure! I’m pretty sure the first Dylan album bought after the show was this one, his third. It would have to hold me over until it was included on the promised live album. It HAD to be included, right?
Announcer: “It was not.”
I remember reading something someone wrote ages ago, that in order to understand Tour ‘74, you had to listen to all 40 shows. I dismissed it, figuring it was someone either bragging that he had all the shows, or his OCD (obsessively collecting Dylan) was even worse than mine. But listening to these concerts, I think he does have a solid case. The first two weeks of the tour were interesting, as I said, because Dylan and the Band were still figuring things out, mixing things up, telepathically communicating the best way to move forward. Sure, there are plenty of highlights early on - the reworked “To Ramona” immediately comes to mind- but it’s as the tour marches on that Dylan and his collaborators really come into their own. Is it that they found what worked, with minimal substitutions (the show I attended featured “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” instead of “Just Like A Woman”) or were they preparing a suitable set for the live album?
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Live at The Forum, Inglewood, CA - February 14, 1974 (Afternoon))
To put it another way, Dylan also comes across not just as a social critic, but as one from outside of society, like a Batman villain, The Joker Man if you will, stretching single syllables into aural mocking bullet points - “To come every time to you caw-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hawl,” “Do ya, Mista Jo-ho-hones,”etc., with Garth and Robbie instrumentally echoing this needling of society.
(I also want to give a shout out to Harry Hew for championing this tour before it was cool, noting that it was only when Dylan later dismissed it that its reputation suffered, which had an influence on this piece.)
Creem Magazine actually reviewed one of the bootlegs from the tour - Highway 61 Revisited Revisited - with recommendations, including IIRC that Levon’s drums should be highlighted. Here the mixes are varied, which helps with the intense and lengthy listening experience. Sometimes it’s Robbie and Levon, sometimes it’s the dueling keyboardists, sometimes it just meshes everything together.
After the virtual single of “Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues” from January 30 began streaming in early September, Chris Shaw (@chrisshawmix) commented, “One of about 130 mixes I did for this.” The 431 tracks included in the box set were apparently not mixed to recreate the concert going experience. Almost all of the tracks quickly fade out when finished, or morph into one other. The crowd noise is mostly muted (except in New York City - they clearly hadn't had enough.)
When Before the Flood was released, I bought it that weekend. I was both elated and disappointed. It was great to get another new Dylan album, and start my proper dive into the Band’s catalog. I even bought the sheet music songbook. But while Dylan performed 10 of the 13 songs included here were the same as on January 29, seven were omitted, eight if you include the encore repeat of “Most Likely.” Back in the day of the Dylan Tape Trading Library, I got an upgraded cassette of the 29th show, the sound was clear but too distant, too dull.
The 1974 Live Recordings corrects this aberration. Nothing before really captured the intensity of the experience of being there. Of course, nothing really could … you had to be there. Even if I could be transported back in time, it wouldn’t be the same. How many times can you lose your virginity? This box set is the best representation so far.
After seeing Dylan & the Band, nothing was the same. It was my musical Bar Mitzvah. It was like telekinetically having hallucinogens enter your cerebellum. From then on, I just looked at everything differently. It sent me ramblin’ down the road, a road on which I continue to travel. It wasn’t always easy. I kind of lost the plot at the end of the decade, then set back on course after reading the 1981 edition of Michael Gray’s The Art of Bob Dylan. Over 100 shows later, here I am, with Dylan as my phantom companion, accompanying me still to this day, together through my life.
Bob Dylan, The Band - Forever Young (Live in Seattle, Feb 9, 1974 Afternoon Show)
However, it’s bittersweet. Dylan and Hudson are the last two men standing. The Last Waltz is less than three years away. Some major Dylan fans are also no longer with us. Songs like “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and “Forever Young” weigh a bit more heavily now.
What’s the best way to experience this set? Well, for me, it’s the same way I revisit the Beatles’ Get Back documentary - relive each concert on its anniversary. It’s a time to celebrate. Dylan would continue to record masterpieces, and the Band would step up its game with Northern Lights, Southern Cross. By the end of the year, Eric Clapton, CSNY, and George Harrison would all come out of the woodwork to tour North America.
Believe it or not, I could still ramble on about what this concert means to me, but I’ll stop here. Hopefully it has given you some idea what it was like.
Bob Dylan and the Band
The 1974 Live Recordings
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- Thanks to Jeff Slate, and Anna at Shorefire
(C) 2024 Harold Lepidus. Please do not cut and pate and share in its entirety. Partial excerpts are ok. TIA
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