BOB DYLAN
Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue
(Columbia/Legacy)
By the mid-1970s, Bob Dylan was reaching some kind of artistic and commercial peak. His landmark 1975 album Blood On the Tracks has reasserted his position as America's pre-eminent singer/songwriter. His 1974 arena tour with the Band had set new sales records, not to mention new standards for in-concert volume. His then-new album Desire found the bard experimenting with his sound and his writing, co-authoring a number of tracks for the first time (with psychologist/playwright Jacques Levy) and using musicians he'd never worked with before, including street performers he found while trolling the streets of New York. Dylan was facing two creative urges: to get back on the road and to do something different. With his massive mid-70s tour, he succeeded in doing both.

Inspired by Dylan's vision of a guerrilla gypsy caravan, the Rolling Thunder Revue took shape around Dylan and his Desire studio band, led by bassist Rob Stoner and featuring violinist Scarlet Rivera, whom Dylan picked up off the street just because she was carrying a violin case and he liked her look. He added some old friends to the mix, including his former partners-in-crime Joan Baez and Bobbie Neuwirth, plus folk legend and Dylan inspiration Ramblin' Jack Elliott. On Neuwirth's suggestion, more musicians were added: Bowie/Ian Hunter guitarist Mick Ronson, then-unknowns T-Bone Burnett and Steven Soles (on guitar and vocals, long before they found fame and fortune as producers) and multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield. (Upon the tour's conclusion, these latter three formed the Alpha Band, who released a couple of records before the principals split to their solo and session careers.) Dylan spent an evening trading songs with singer/actress Ronee Blakely, so she was added to the ensemble. Poet Allen Ginsberg somehow became part of the tour, as did ex-Byrd Roger McGuinn. Dylan whipped this motley crew into a sort of folk rock big band, included an entourage and a film crew, and took the whole bunch of them—75 people total—on a guerrilla tour of the United States, booking venues under an assumed name, passing out handbills a couple of days before the show, and generally having a grand old time playing music he'd previously become bored with, and making a hell of a lot of money as well.

The Rolling Thunder Revue has become legendary, but the two recorded documents—the four-hour art movie Renaldo and Clara and the album Hard Rain, neither of which rate well amongst Dylanologists—didn't do it justice. Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue, billed as Volume 5 in the Bootleg Series, attempt to address that issue. A small box set with two disks of music, a short DVD with performances of "Tangled Up in Blue" and "Isis" and a lavish booklet by Larry "Ratso" Sloman, who previously documented the tour in the pages of Rolling Stone, the set boasts stupendous sound for a concert album. It's a good thing the performances match up to the packaging and presentation.

Disk one starts off with a bracing take on "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You," with Dylan in full rock star mode, snarling out the lyrics as if the song was more threat than promise. The savage pummeling of a previously sweet song (originally from Nashville Skyline) sets a precedent for the show. The first half of this disk features several electric workings of Dylan tunes better known in their solo acoustic forms. "It Ain't Me, Babe" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" take on an added tough veneer, as the band rocks hard behind Dylan's aggressive exhortations, with Ronson, Mansfield and Rivera in excellent form. Then it's epic time, as the Revue rolls into "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," one of Dylan's unacknowledged best songs. Strangely, considering the blazing anger behind the previous tunes, he brings unexpected compassion to the song's most famous line, "Now ain't the time for your tears." He and the Revue then turn to Desire, his then-most recent album, for titanic versions of "Romance in Durango" and "Isis," enigmatic tracks that allow Rivera to run wild with her bow. With no easy way for the band to follow up those triumphs, Dylan sends the musicians to the break room for a couple of acoustic numbers, an achingly lovely "Mr. Tambourine Man" and a solid "Simple Twist of Fate," reworked for the tour. Joan Baez joins him for "Blowin' in the Wind," which garners one of the biggest ovations from the crowd; the contrast of Baez's bell-like soprano and Dylan's rough-hewn rasp is surprisingly poignant. The band comes back for a sweet "Mama, You Been On My Mind," then the ensemble gently runs through "I Shall Be Released," with Mansfield empathetic on pedal steel and Dylan sounding relaxed and soulful. "Bobby will be back," Baez tells the audience as the disk ends.

Disk two starts with more solo acousticana, as Dylan sings plaintive versions of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "Love Minus Zero/No Limit." Next up is a solid "Tangled Up in Blue," in a reworked version that would later be used as a music video on MTV in the early 90s. Baez and the band rejoin him for a luminous take on the traditional spiritual "The Water is Wide," an unexpected gem. Then Dylan returns to rock, with a rough-and-tumble "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," recalling the finest moments of the bard's collaboration with the Band. It's unclear whether it's Ronson on Les Paul or Mansfield on distorted steel taking the solo, but whoever it is plays brilliantly. Dylan then strips the band down to its original core for a set of Desire tunes, including "Oh, Sister," the darkly-nuanced "One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)" and the beautiful "Sara." But the highlight of this set-within-a-set is undoubtedly "Hurricane," Dylan's angry indictment of the forces that arrested and tried Randolph "Hurricane" Carter for a murder he most likely didn't commit. The band's roiling groove and Dylan's seething rage make this performance a classic in the man's vast catalog. The rest of the Revue comes back for a relaxed version of "Just Like a Woman" (an audience request!), before finishing things off with "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," a predictable but enjoyable way to end the album.

Throughout the record, the performances remain solid, often transcendent. Dylan sounds charged to be on stage, singing with more force than he'd ever demonstrate again, sounding perfectly comfortable fronting a group this size. The Revue sounds loose and relaxed, but without ever slipping into a laidback hippie haze. With a song selection that smartly mixes classics and greatest hits with strong new material, the tracks flow like a river, washing participants and observers alike in the remarkable power of Dylan at his best. Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue is easily one of the greatest albums in the catalog of an icon of American music. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: the Band, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young