BOB DYLAN by SETH ROGOVOY

Author:SETH ROGOVOY
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SCRIBNER
Published: 2009-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Other longtime friends and acquaintances who came along on the tour included Roger McGuinn, whose career got a boost from his renewed identification with Dylan. McGuinn went on to make several albums with members of the Rolling Thunder band, including one called ThunderByrd. Allen Ginsberg was brought along in large part for comic relief and for blessing the tour with his Beatific presence; he also wound up playing in several key scenes of Renaldo and Clara. Sam Shepard was drafted to write scenes for the film, which turned out to be an impossible, frustrating task, as Dylan had his own vision of what he wanted the film to be, which mostly consisted of improvised and ad-libbed scenes about Bob Dylan played out by musicians, actors, and tour hangers-on. Shepard soon left the traveling roadshow, but capitalized on his time spent with Dylan in his tour journal, Rolling Thunder Logbook.

Other guests who joined the tour for one-offs or short stints included Joni Mitchell, Arlo Guthrie, Gordon Lightfoot, Ronnie Hawkins, and his (and Dylan’s) former bass player, Rick Danko of the Band. Even Dylan’s mother, Beatty Zimmerman, joined in the regular all-ensemble finale, “This Land Is Your Land,” after being serenaded by Joan Baez and her son in a rarely heard version of “Mama, You Been on My Mind.”

The tour kicked off on October 30 with a concert at the War Memorial Auditorium in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The venue was chosen for its inherent symbolism, and much was made in Renaldo and Clara of the “landing” of the revue at Plymouth Rock. Organized by Dylan’s boyhood friend Lou Kemp, the tour proceeded throughout New England and the Northeast, playing thirty shows in theaters, college auditoriums, and small-town convention centers, with little official tour publicity but plenty of media attention, especially given the pairing of Dylan and Baez and the fact that this was the first Dylan tour in nearly two years, and the first concerts that included songs from Blood on the Tracks and Desire. This first leg of the revue culminated in the Night of the Hurricane benefit concert in New York City on December 8, and Desire was finally released on January 16, 1976.

The tour band featured the core group from Desire —Rob Stoner, Howie Wyeth, and Scarlet Rivera, augmented by guitarists T-Bone Burnett and Steve Soles and the mandolinist David Mansfield. The most surprising addition to the band was Mick Ronson, best known as David Bowie’s guitarist and bandleader, and Ronson’s incongruous style, from his wardrobe to the way he played guitar, lent the proceedings a unique “glam-folk” aura. It also meant that this was a guitar-heavy crew; with the addition of Dylan there were four guitarists, and they were often supplemented by Neuwirth, McGuinn, or others who all together formed a kind of guitar army. Dylan also enlisted the country singer Ronee Blakley to sing the harmony parts that Emmylou Harris laid down on Desire ; Blakley, who had just appeared in Robert Altman’s critically acclaimed film Nashville, about the country music business, also found her talents as an actress exploited for Renaldo and Clara.

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