In retrospect, Bob Dylan likened his 1974 reunion tour with The Band to Elvis Presley ’s “Fat Elvis” period . It was powerful, sure, but it was nostalgia; creatively unsatisfying. And a cash grab.
Ultimately, it showed him the way he didn’t want to go forward, as he recalled in 2004 in Chronicles, Vol.1 . Still, 1974 was a landmark year in rock ’n’ roll, and it was Bob Dylan and the Band who kicked it off in January, playing 40 shows during their six-week trek together—a groundbreaking feat in and of itself—often putting on matinee and evening arena shows to satisfy demand.
If, during his Thin Wild Mercury music period in the mid-1960s, Dylan had given songwriting and new vocabulary, and had created the look and attitude of the modern rock star, in 1974 he updated all of that for a new era, for good measure adding a tour that presaged the bloated, arena-filling tours that would become, and remain, a staple of the music business. Dylan, who’d released a couple of laid-back country-tinged albums and had performed sparingly since his last tour with The Band in 1966, had signed a new record deal with David Geffen’s Asylum Records—leaving the storied Columbia label—and was about to have his first #1 record, Planet Waves , recorded with The Band. Geffen enlisted the legendary promoter Bill Graham to handle the organization of the entire tour, a highly unusual move at the time, with tickets sold via a mail in lottery.
Dylan and The Band even traveled cross-co.