| bob dylan - in my own words [news] [facts] [dylan-jesus] [links]
|
Things started to move in
Dylan's mind. In January 1975 he released Blood On The Tracks and showed everybody that
Dylan was back on track again. The album wasn't "surrounded" by live
performances so it stands like a solitaire, very different, between the US tour in '74 and
the Rolling Thunder Revue I in 1975. The Dylan you hear in this three different moments
are from the full power retrospective, via the sensitive heartbroken "painter"
to something quite astonishing, the free and loose atmosphere within the circus of The
Rolling Thunder Revue. It's like Picasso going from his blue period to Cubism through
another form of art in less than 18 months! Dylan was hanging around in Greenwich Village with old and new friends. He was slowly building up a new touring band. A band that would fit in the idea of a big group of people, like a circus, that would travel across the country and play wherever they felt like. The result was a band with lots of character and a great ability to improvise and to lift Dylan's transparent songs to new artistic creations every time they were played. They stormed out through the country in November and December playing 33 shows in six weeks. The whole show was built around new songs from the forthcoming album Desire where Isis was the peak number every night. The songs played from the recent album Blood On The Tracks had to be recreated and rewritten to fit the new Dylan. No wonder that the audience had problem following Dylan's rapid change. Several songs during the shows were sung by the band alone without Dylan. There was also a part consisting of Dylan duetting with Joan Baez both with, and without full band. There are no officially released full length live album from this tour. Many songs are included in the film Renaldo Clara, and some turned up on Biograph and on a promo EP from 1978. I saw the film on TV in 1981 and the part I remember most is when Dylan sings Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall with his white-painted face, typical for this tour, with the camera close up to his face under his wide brimmed hat. Really a great moment, old song in a new package, it could just as well been written the day before the performance. In these concert we can hear Dylan sing his songs with full attention, from a sweet, soft and warm voice in Never Let Me Go to almost screaming out the lyrics in Isis. I think this tour is just as enjoyable as the world tour in 1966 but very different! |
Bringing
it all: Back home latest tour information o Tour '81 |
