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Sullivan’s Sunday night TV program and Garrison Keillor’s
A Prairie Home Companion. There wasn’t a comedian or jug-
gler or Topo Gigio, but there was a poet (Allen Ginsberg),
who served much the same purpose. In the large and jangly
band there was David Bowie’s “Spiders from Mars” guitarist,
Mick Ronson, and from Dylan’s earliest days in the Village,
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. There was Joan Baez for the first time
in 10 years, and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds. There was the
exotic violinist Scarlet Rivera, whom Dylan had recruited
after seeing her walking down the street, her violin case
slung over her back, and there was also Ronee Blakley, a fine
country singer who had just made her acting debut in Robert
Altman’s Nashville. As the tour gained steam, there were
guest stars: Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith
and others who wanted in on this wacky, hey-kids-let’s-put-
on-a-show idea. Taken in all—both in the more spontane-
ous regional 1975 leg of the tour and the 1976 second act that
moved into larger halls in bigger cities nationwide— perhaps
a hundred performers took the stage with the revue at one
point or another. Even, as said, the real Rolling Thunder
himself: “[He] showed up all the way from the West and per-
formed a special Tobacco Ceremony at the break of dawn,
with all the main stars involved,” wrote Shepard.
The true magic was in the first concerts, in Plymouth
and North Dartmouth and Lowell and Springfield,
Massachusetts; in Providence, Rhode Island; Durham, NewHampshire; Burlington, Vermont. At the very first of these,
the potential audience still wasn’t quite sure whether to
believe the rumors: that this was a Dylan tour. The fans had
heard that it might be him, but he had been out of the spot-
light for so long, these hopefuls had to buy tickets on faith
alone. There was no guarantee.
And then, there he was, often in whiteface makeup, almost
always in the flat-brimmed gaucho hat, singing as well and
as passionately as he ever had. (The music from the first con-
certs was finally released in 2002 on the album Live 1975: The
Rolling Thunder Revue.) Dylan was back, no doubt about that.
He was back, and at his very best.
The versions of old songs—he and Baez opening the sec-
ond half of the show from behind the curtain, their vocals on
“Blowin’ in the Wind” coming out of nowhere—were mes-
meric, and the renderings of new ones—the songs from Blood
on the Tracks and now Desire, particularly an incendiary take
on “Isis”—were startling. Dylan traveled auditorium to audi-
torium, all these ideas swimming in his head: What should
we shoot for the movie? What do we add to this night’s show?
What’s the deal with me and Joan? Me and Sara? Me and...
Shepard observes it all, and most of his note-taking is
semi-journalistic and in service to a sort of narrative. But
occasionally he just muses, and there is this: “Dylan has
invented himself. He’s made himself up from scratch. That
is, from the things he had around him and inside him. Dylan80-96 LIFE_Bob Dylan 2020 Rolling.indd 83 FINAL 1/13/20 4:36 PM