Flak Magazine: Review of Volume 5 of Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series, 11-26-02

Jeff Rosen has quite a charge to keep. Rosen has spent the better part of 12 years as the general manager of Bob Dylan's business and music publishing enterprises, is the de facto overseer of Dylan's vast archive of recorded material and has prepared and delivered four volumes of unreleased Dylan material to the devoted: The first three volumes of the Bootleg Series are rare and unreleased tracks spanning 30 years and the fourth is a two-disc recording of Dylan on the European leg of his highly controversial 1965-1966 tour (when he went electric and enraged folk purists). What would volume five contain? Outtakes from the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan sessions? A sanctioned release of Dylan's Nashville Skyline-period work with Johnny Cash? A true Basement Tapes, remastered and complete and stripped of all the Band songs Robbie Robertson grafted onto the 1975 Columbia release?

How about a representative live set from the 1975-1976 Rolling Thunder Revue tour? The Revue coincided with the release of Desire, an album whose cinematic scope was in deliberate contrast to the highly personal, painfully honest Blood on the Tracks. While Blood's songs were spare and its band compact, Desire swelled with musicians and the songs were, with a few exceptions, epic. The Revue sought to approximate Desire's full-bore theatricality; the staggeringly impressive list of performers who played with Dylan on this tour included singers Joni Mitchell, Roger McGuinn and Ronee Blakely; poet Allen Ginsberg; a medicine man; Dylan's wife, Sara; and playwrights Sam Shepard and Jacques Levy. Dylan also oversaw the production of a piece of cinema verite during the tour, Renaldo and Clara, in which members of the Revue improvised scenes freely with one another. The final cut of the film was three hours and 52 minutes.

The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975 — The Rolling Thunder Revue is a two-disc, 22-track attempt to capture what Revue member and writer Larry "Ratso" Sloman called Dylan's "musical extension of the commedia dell'arte." It includes six tracks from Desire and two from Blood on the Tracks. There's also a terrific version of the traditional folk tune "The Water is Wide," sung by Dylan and Joan Baez. The rest of the numbers are culled from past Dylan albums. The songs are digitally remastered from performances in November and December 1975 in Montreal and the Massachusetts cities of Boston, Worcester and Cambridge.

Two things distinguish the set: the high quality of the band and Dylan's vocals. Desire is awash in musicians — on some days, the studio was crammed with up to five guitarists, a violinist, a gaggle of back-up singers, a rhythm section, a harmonica and a sax player, all of whom were thrown together minutes before being asked to lay down tracks. It was akin to the onstage personnel of an Elvis show in his Vegas period. The playing is ferocious and unfocused.

On Rolling Thunder Revue, the stage is crammed with musicians, but they've been playing together along the Northeast coast, and they're tight. Scarlet Rivera, the violinist, was a dubious addition on Desire — the songs certainly benefited from the sweetness of violin, but Rivera wasn't in sync with Dylan, and her playing was sometimes too sharp. On Revue, she's a musical highlight — her playing is accomplished, forceful and sweetly melodic. On "Hurricane," her insistent bowing is a match for the rhythm section, while her solo on "One More Cup of Coffee" is haunting and elegiac.

Guitarist Mick Ronson, who recorded with David Bowie for several years preceding the Rolling Thunder Revue, is an excellent addition to the band, adding supple slide work on "The Water is Wide" and "Mama You Been on my Mind." And Baez is luminous. Her singing is vivid and emotional, particularly on "I Shall be Released," where she approximates Dylan's staccato phrasing (and takes the curse off her sometimes overdone vibrato). Baez may be the only singer able to duet with Dylan, whose idiosyncratic delivery and propensity to change keys and tunings in mid-song have flummoxed some of the best singers in the business, including Emmylou Harris, who tried to jell with Dylan on Desire and ultimately failed.

Dylan's vocals are quite muscular; he attacks the lyrics like a boxer, shouting, growling and bending words in effort to wring new meanings from them. His approach works wonders with the newer songs, particularly "Oh Sister," "One More Cup of Coffee" and "Sara."

He is not as successful, however, with songs from his earlier albums. His casual lack of interest in giving an audience "what they want" is well documented by now; he's much more interested in finding fresh ways to imagine a song. On Rolling Thunder Revue, his adaptation of earlier songs to Desire's "big band" sound has mixed results. Where his formerly laid-back country tune "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You" makes for a spirited rave, with Dylan roaring the lyrics over a pounding rhythm section, acoustic ballads like "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" and "Mama You Been on My Mind" suffer under the full sonic assault. These songs achieve their power in understatement — here, Dylan barks out the story of Hattie Carroll in full froth, and the story is lost in the din of drums and guitars.

This live set is essential for the Dylan fanatic, but for the casual Dylan fan there are better live albums. The fourth volume of the Bootleg Series remains the standard, where Dylan answered cries of "Judas!" from an angry audience of folkies by turning to his electric band and yelling, "Play fucking loud!" The performance of "Like a Rolling Stone" that follows is an assault, a seminal moment in the history of live rock albums. The Rolling Thunder Revue is not about provocation; it's pure theater. The years following this tour would not be so kind to Dylan, as he made a bizarre foray into born-again Christianity and recorded such disposable albums as Saved and Knocked Out Loaded. On this set, however, he's at the height of his powers, and enjoying himself. So, Mr. Rosen, how about the Basement Tapes for volume six?

— Christopher Hickman (hickatz at mindspring dot com)