Forget About Today by Jon Friedman

Author:Jon Friedman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Jungle of Vines

One of the most profound examples of Bob Dylan benefiting from a collaboration resulted from one of his briefest partnerships, which shows that even a fleeting association can produce big dividends. This collaboration was the six-show engagement that he did with the Grateful Dead when they filled American football stadiums from coast to coast during the summer of 1987.

Dylan entered into the alliance with the Dead because he smelled a unique artistic challenge and a quick payday. Dylan and the Dead would play before some four hundred thousand people on that tour; at his usual pace, he’d have to play more than eighty concerts on his own to reach that number of spectators. He also needed a boost. As he wrote in his memoirs about his state of mind when he teamed with the Dead: “Always prolific but never exact, too many distractions had turned my musical path into a jungle of vines.” Dylan wrote that in Chronicles: Volume One, revealing exactly how far he had sunk during the 1980s. Clearly, he needed a shot of inspiration from people who thrived on the challenge night after night of pleasing concert audiences. Well, say this for Dylan: As down as he was, he went to the right source. By then, the Dead was riding high like never before. The group had just released the hit song “Touch of Grey,” a catchy, bouncing tune about acceptance of the aging process (accompanied by a terrific MTV-favored video!). Dylan wanted the Dead to help him fill seats—and make big bucks—and find a way to have fun. Buttressed by the star power of his newest bandmates, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Dylan, indeed, got himself booked to play at big halls and stadiums all over the world throughout 1986. But he recognized the bitter truth. He had, by his own admission (as he wrote in his memoirs), lost all of the impetus to perform many of his old songs on stage. He had basically lost interest in being “Bob Dylan,” a working musician who loved playing and singing his songs in concerts before thousands of people. He had surrendered his muse and desperately wanted to reclaim his love of making music and magic before it was too late.

As it turned out, audiences had mixed reactions to the curious pairing of two superstars from different sides of the rock ’n’ roll tracks. I saw the first show on the tour, in Foxboro, Massachusetts, on the Fourth of July, and enjoyed the performance. I was thrilled to see Dylan on stage, the first time I’d caught him live since 1978. Mostly, I remember it as an uneven show, with some musical high points and a few disjointed renditions as well. Regardless of what I or any of the other critics thought, however, one person greatly benefited from this pairing: Bob Dylan. As Dylan wrote in his memoir, the teaming profoundly influenced him for the rest of his career. It gave him a sense of purpose that had been missing from his performances for years.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.