When connected with for his first tour in eight years, he was understandably edgy. That’s what the audio from the Chicago Stadium, January 3, 1974 suggests. The songs pitch and collide, and some of them were removed from future set-lists.
The vocals are alternately great and appalling. But, as always with Dylan, there are glimpses of towering art with the havoc. The acoustic section of the night allows him to turn savage with , and to voice respect on .
Recorded sections of the tour (chiefly the California shows) were packaged on the double album ; clearly the gigs had become more settled over the duration. plays his wiry guitar lines that meet the sentiments of hurt and rage. His bandmates are not merely riffing into chaos as they reach the finale of February 14 and , a kiss-off that might just be sarcastic.
Those are the significant bookends, but now this 27-CD set delivers a massive piece of Dylanology: a recorded history of many afternoon shows and evening pile-ups along the way. Treasured songs suffer repeated acts of vandalism. On many nights, Dylan and the guys howl the chorus of frat party-style.
Conversely, the 1974 release (from the album) gets regular care and rises in stature as a Boomer benediction. The Seattle version is most charming. For keen listeners, the 417 previously unreleased tracks provide essential detail.
Sure enough, it’s a challenge to find the perfect (especially fragile in Toronto and Houston) or the most ridiculous version of (Philadelphia, maybe). You recall the US political scandal of the Watergate Tapes when Dylan adds withering scorn to – a highlight of the New York visit. When it was over, Dylan himself was ambivalent about the tour (“It was all sort of mindless”), yet it had returned one of the greatest talents back to the stage and prepped him for the Rolling Thunder Revue a year later.
This history might not be Dylan at his best, but still there are sparks. Stuart Bailie is a journalist and broadcaster based in Belfast. He is the editor of the quarterly Dig With It magazine, and his work has appeared in NME, Mojo, Uncut, Q, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Mirror, The Irish Times, Classic Rock and Hot Press.
He was Assistant Editor of NME from 1992 to 1996 and is the author of Philip Lynott: The Ballad of the Thin Man, Trouble Songs: Music and Conflict In Northern Ireland, and 75 Van Songs: Into the Van Morrison Songbook. "Even by Nightwish's standards, the album is sonically huge": Much-imitated symphonic metal giants Nightwish go even bigger than ever on Yesterwynde "Chunky, boogie-infused glam-rock tunes are in vanishingly short supply": Glam survivors Sweet bow out in a blaze of AOR Co-starring Axl, Slash and other heavy friends, Michael Schenker's My Years With UFO finds the mad axeman in phenomenal form.
