Bob Dylan by Seth Rogovoy

Author:Seth Rogovoy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2009-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

The Rolling Thunder Revue, which actually consisted of two distinct concert tours, was many things: a guerrilla-style road show influenced by 1960s street theater; a movable feast and party; an attempt to recapture the hootenanny spirit of Greenwich Village in its folk heyday by reuniting many of the key figures from that era and putting them all on a traveling stage; an expression of bicentennial fervor; a setting for Dylan’s attempt to make his great film masterpiece and a means to bankroll the film; an effort to spread awareness of and raise funds for Hurricane Carter’s defense fund; an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of two of Dylan’s most successful albums by touring behind Blood on the Tracks and Desire; an escape from the painful reality of a marriage that was dissolving; an attempt to salvage that marriage through performances almost wholly dedicated to winning back his wife through song; and an attempt to create a new kind of never-ending concert tour in which musicians would just drop in and drop out as their schedules allowed.

Overall, the balance sheet wound up in Dylan’s favor, despite several setbacks along the way. His dream that a phone line would be set up which superstar rockers like Neil Young, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards could call to find out where the next show was taking place (many of the concerts on the first leg of the tour were announced only a day or two in advance) and drop in to perform never materialized. While he was successful in making Hurricane Carter’s case a cause célèbre, culminating in a sold-out, star-studded Night of the Hurricane benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, the victory seemed pyrrhic when Carter was reconvicted after a retrial (the conviction was eventually thrown out by a federal appeals court). The good feelings initially created by Dylan’s inviting a host of Greenwich Village folkies, who had been somewhat left in the dust by his rise to pop star heights, to share in his spotlight—including Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Bob Neuwirth, and David Blue—soon devolved, as these things almost always do, into bitterness and backstabbing, as egotism replaced harmony, bringing old resentments to the surface, as Dylan remained aloof from many of these people (although not all). Elliott found himself uninvited to the second leg of the tour merely by omission, his place in the roster taken by the Texas singer-songwriter Kinky Friedman (who led a group called the Texas Jewboys). Phil Ochs, who always had a troubled, competitive relationship with Dylan, was plagued by manic depression, personality disorders and drug and alcohol addiction; in no shape to take part in the tour, he committed suicide at his sister’s home in April 1976, casting a pall on the proceedings.

The tour did, however, reunite Dylan with his erstwhile duet partner and former lover, Joan Baez. Given their tormented history, it was a questionable move on their part personally—especially at a time when Dylan was presumably trying to salvage his marriage. Why invite the

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