Despite the fierce competition On that year’s rock road show tour—the Grateful Dead touring through the massive Wall of Sound speaker system, CSNY resurfacing, and the Band resurfacing in record time—there was only one tour anyone had in mind when they said Tour ’74. In those two months of January and February, Bob Dylan and The Band reunited for 39 shows in 21 cities, their first tour together—and Dylan’s first tour ever—since the infamous 1966 world tour that fueled the early rock industry’s bootleg recording industry.
After 1966, Dylan had played sporadically—a full set with The Band on the Isle of Wight in 1970, and a few solo songs at the Bangla Desh Concert in 1971—but he had not toured since. His absence was defining for him and for rock. His return meant a rush for tickets, which were available by lottery. The 1974 tour was Dylan's first ever arena tour—a rock tour that was popular by 1974 and would have been unimaginable in 1966.
The '74 tour was warmly received and received extensive press coverage; Rolling Stone They called it the 1974 Event of the Year (RS 178) and showed a very funny series of Polaroid shots of cultural heroes (Warren Beatty, Cher, Carole King, Joan Baez) from the Los Angeles finale (RS 157), whose four performances provided the bulk of a two-disc souvenir. before the floodThe photos were accompanied by quotes similar to those of King, then eight months old: “I was so happy and it was so wonderful, I thought I was going to have the baby at that moment!”
before the flood The show was completely reversed – the band and Dylan interspersed with solo and ensemble pieces, each playing from his catalogue. Live recordings 1974 It tells a completely different story than before the floodAnd not just because it contains 27 CDs. (Even at that length, the box doesn't include all 39 shows of the tour—just the ones that were professionally recorded. And many songs are missing—thank goodness.) First, despite the billing, none of the band's songs are here—as with other recent clearances, Live recordings 1974 This project was to expand Sony's ownership of Dylan's copyright. On the other hand, the music changed, and changed, in noticeable and sometimes interesting ways, over the course of that six-week period; Dylan fans were not content with whistling “Hero Blues.”
This early obscurity – not released around 1963 Bob Dylan the Liberator“It was played three times in 1963, and was postponed after the first two shows of the 1974 tour, at the Chicago Arena, showing us how much Dylan cared about his bootleg recording market. Not only was he able to play unreleased songs like “Hero Blues” and “Nobody’s Caught You,” but even Open the entire tour With the above, I know that at least a few people in the audience will know and understand this.
The demand for the shows was high, the workload was heavy—up to five hours on stage a day—and the novelty of singing in an arena contributed to the raucous atmosphere of the concerts. This began to show, inevitably, in the singing. In the cover notes, music writer Elizabeth Nelson carefully draws the line between Dylan’s full-on vocal approach on this tour and the deterioration of his audible voice in the years since. The effect, at times, is like Dylan in a raucous Al Pacino—both brash and often charming even when he’s misguided (sometimes badly). At times he’s simply screaming—or, as on “Just Like a Woman” from Disc 11 of the Charlotte, North Carolina, otherwise huge show—almost as low as a cow.
But that's not all he did. Dylan's temperament is, above all, expansive. And the fighting spirit that characterizes him before the flood The rhythm is there in the early shows, but the nerves show, and it’s more defensive than offensive. Still, the fever pitch is audible from the start. It’s worth noting that Dylan has never played any of his hits “All Along the Watchtower,” “Lay, Lady, Lay,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” or the new song “Forever Young” on tour. “Forever Young” becomes a warhorse to our ears—not because it lacks emotion, but because Dylan’s commitment means he masters it night after night rather than moves into it. He does more of that with “Knockin’,” and “Watchtower” feels more like Hendrix than Dylan’s fast, powerful trilogy from “The Greatest Hits” to “The Greatest Hits.” John Wesley HardingBut the way “Lay” turns into a sexy ballad (rather than a soft-focus, candlelit dinner-focused hit single) says a lot about the essence of things.
Take the fate of another song that barely made it off the tour: “The Wedding Song,” like “Forever Young,” from the album that coincided with the tour. Planet Waves“Wedding Song” is also cut six times on the box, and is an intense, emotionally committed song even if you listen to it quickly. Similarly, “Nobody Cept You” is a Planet Waves No album was released until 1991, the first album smuggling chain Box. Dylan plays it in the performances on discs 1 through 8 here—his entire on-stage performance of the song. Both songs are nakedly indecent. They provoke fiery performances. But songs like this don't fit the mood.
Often, the real fireworks came during solo acoustic performances. Dylan is active Investigation “Gates of Eden” and “It’s Alright, Mother (I’m Only Bleeding),” in particular. The most ubiquitous part of the shows themselves was always the chants that accompanied “It’s Alright, Mother,” which Dylan performed solo every night—specifically, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, the line “But even the President of the United States / Gotta stand naked sometimes.” (Dylan’s essential live newsletter, Flagging Down the Double E’s, included a short clip from every then-available version of this moment in the tour, with the label: “For the Really Sick Only.”) But what’s even more impressive is how many aspects of these songs Dylan finds in the read-through.
The shows themselves proceed in similar ways. At the beginning, while the setlists are still changing, the playing is of a country-rock restraint, typical of Robbie Robertson’s guitar—it hits all the marks but sounds restrained. But in the middle, everyone warms up—Discs 15 and 16, the afternoon and evening in Houston, are loose and swinging, with Robbie slinking around like a snake. At the end of the second show in Houston, Dylan starts to talk a little into the microphone. (“On behalf of myself and the band, we want to thank you. Good night!”) Then the pace picks up dramatically, leading to the hurricane-like solemnity.
The final four shows of the tour, in Los Angeles, yielded the most before the flood (There was only one song that came from somewhere else: “Knockin' on Heaven's Door” on Disc 17, from Madison Square Garden.) But even in the wake of several more interesting performances, it's easy to hear why flood The shows in Los Angeles have come from one place, and the shows in Los Angeles seem like a culmination of what came before. But, thankfully, they are no longer the last word.
