2024-09-19 15:35:57
He came to Germany and brought a great gift: Bob Dylan released his entire comeback tour in 1974 on 27 albums. The reason for this is a law. In terms of music history, however, the box is a hybrid – with one flaw.
When Elvis Presley made his return to the concert stage in Las Vegas on December 3, 1968 after a seven-year absence, a word quickly “initiated” to give the event, which was also broadcast on TV, a strong hashtag : The ’68 Special Return”. Because the event is a global event in the history of pop music, comparable in its media relevance only to the TV broadcasts of the World Cup final or the moon landing, which brought all countries language, if not the world, together for a moment in front of the screen. The word “comeback” has been part of the common vocabulary since Elvis.
In January 1974, Bob Dylan found himself in the same situation as Elvis six years earlier, when full-page, beautifully designed newspaper ads announced Dylan’s return for a short tour of indoor arenas. the largest building in America. The reputation of being the “voice of a generation” hangs over the singer like a huge shadow. An environment that has taken on a legendary life of its own since Dylan became a ghost following a fatal motorcycle accident on July 29, 1966.
In the eight years in which Dylan returned to private life, there were many successful album releases, including the country album “Nashville Skyline” in 1969, and also some guest appearances, for example in Concert George Harrison performed for Bangladesh in New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1971 – but these signs were overshadowed by the rumor that Dylan’s health was so bad that he would not be able to undertake the difficulties of a tour again.
All of this is important to understanding the seismic shocks that caused Dylan’s announcement that he was going on tour with The Band almost overnight. Tickets can only be ordered by mail order, so great that for decades it has been considered the fastest-selling tour in the history of rock music – according to organizer Bill Graham, just under four percent of the US population has used A it’s a fraction. tickets, even though the event takes place around 18,000 spectators, sometimes with two shows per day, in the afternoon and evening.
“The voice of your generation”
Dylan’s group, The Band, is the same one with which he had made noise night after night in the USA, Europe and Australia on his last tour in 1966, because Dylan introduced new versions of the acoustic guitar that he had already recorded and harmonica songs in new versions in new versions. . Unauthorized recording of concert by 1966 in Manchester recently circulated under the misleading title “Live at the Royal Albert Hall, London” – for many this recording, officially released in 1998 as the fourth installment of the “Bootleg Series”, is considered the best live album in rock history because that shows Dylan’s transformation from stoned folk singer turned aloof rock star behind in ghostly perfection on two CDs.
In 1974, of course, the cards were reshuffled. A country that has been highly politicized since October 1973 by the Nixon impeachment trial following the Watergate scandal is generally interested in the question of how the musician who had participated in the March on Washington ten years ago and his fame Being ” the voice of a generation” will discuss the political situation at his concerts.
So there cannot be any issue of confrontation between the audience and the actor. Bob Dylan and The Band, who have become stars themselves thanks to album releases such as “Song from the Big Pink” (1968) and even “The Band” (1969) and which show their status as the founder of the Americana music genre, was by a free party on the first night in Chicago on January 3, 1974.
The external conditions mentioned above form an amazing and, for Dylan, new architecture of shows. As the arctic winter took place in many cities where Dylan and The Band had its frozen grip, the song exploded in the concert halls after the show. This, by the way, is not giving away the DNA of the songs we make. Unlike groups like Rolling Stone or Led Zeppelin, whose repertoire seems largely composed for large halls and stadiums, Bob Dylan’s songs were and prevail introverted, sometimes wordy songs that are not easily performed in cold multi- why the hall can.
A new voice
The concerts themselves are divided into blocks. Dylan and The band together, Dylan solo, but also The band had their own sets, in which Dylan was again not present on stage. The programs, especially the joint performances, have energy, anger and passion that recently talked about the triumphant return of Bob Dylan.
Music reviews of the time were similar in their descriptions of distribution systems. The image of a speeding freight train is used over and over again, as if the musicians were actually working on their audience. This emphasis on strong performance, which has a deep self-confidence in its foundation and an instrument based on a lot of power and very organized parts of old songs, certainly also under the influence of musicians, led to transferring power from the stage to an audience that can be heard and understood today.
Robbie Robertson, guitarist and leader of The Band, recalled in his memoirs entitled “Testimony” rehearsals for the tour in December 1973 at the Great Forum in Los Angeles, how much Bob Dylan’s voice had changed compared to to the last time they recorded music together between June and October 1967 would have changed – The Band and Dylan recorded hundreds of obscure folk songs, which were only officially released in 2014 under the title “End basement tapes”. And Robertson was right: Dylan’s voice in the 1974 concerts, now collected on 27 CDs, is angry, loud, demanding, expansive, self-confident, and at times almost narcissistic. It’s what you want to hear at all costs.
The fact that sometimes the nuances of the songs were lost in comparison to the album recordings because of the sheer power, take-no-prisoners in the euphoric sound – that didn’t seem to bother anyone at the time. Silence is simply mesmerized evening after evening by the interplay of Dylan’s soaring voice, Robertson’s control and dominant guitar, Levon Helm’s precise drums and Garth Hudson’s organ. The audience can be heard loudly on many of the recordings.
Surprisingly, Bob Dylan maintained intensity in the work but also had his solo blocks. In these, he superficially fills the audience’s nostalgic hopes by playing old protest songs like “It’s Okay Ma (I’m Just Bleeding)” sing, which includes the predictable line “Sometimes even the President of the United States / Must stand naked” that became famous in the wake of Watergate, or perform very personal love songs. On the other hand, Dylan rushes through these songs as if he needs this speed to express the nostalgia that fans want.
One may wonder why this huge box “Live Records 1974”, which seems at first glance to be important because of the similar lists of concerts, appears in this capacity today. The origin of the opportunity is of course the fact that, according to European copyright law, music recordings become common property after 50 years and copyright expires if they are not officially published. For this reason, almost every year for eleven years now, small scale releases of all of Dylan’s studio and live recordings from year to year, ensuring that only his label, Sony Music, can continue to sell Dylan’s music exclusively .
For Bob Dylan fans, these releases are like the Holy Grails, fetching high prices at collectors’ games. Above all, however, it is truly a privilege to listen to the 27 CDs that capture all the recordings from the 1974 tour that are still preserved today. Last but not least, this has the great advantage that the concerts almost always sound very nice and warm. Above all, it’s an experience to hear from CD to CD the effort, the physical energy, that Dylan and The Band bring to the stage night after night.
So that it is almost unforgivable, but probably simply a question of rights, that the performances of blocks in which The Band hit each other and those that seemed like an amalgam in the dramaturgy of the concerts because they really belong to each other The dynamic is completely missing. How important these other sounds and songs are to the concerts is captured on the live album Before the Flood, released in 1974 – blocks of songs in which only the band worked. increase the exposure.
This is a painful flaw, but one that is soon forgotten for the rich material, with many songs that are only played on a few nights. Looking back, the 1974 tour opened the door for Bob Dylan, which, like Elvis after the “Special Return” in 1968, allowed him to open a new chapter in his career.
Carried and accelerated by the wave of success, before the floodDylan published the album “Blood on the Tracks” a year later, which is considered his most complete album to date – and is certainly one of the reasons why Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. The 1974 tour was the last time Dylan was on stage with The Band – their last appearance was documented by Martin Scorsese in his famous concert film “The Last Waltz” in 1978, after which the Band broke up.
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