The Paul Williams material is the part that stuck with me—the idea of a tour as a composition to be performed, with the arrangements living in the leader's head rather than on paper, and tapes as a “crutch” that risk you never having been present at all. There's a real tension in it for an archival project like this one: the soundboards that sound “nothing at all like” the cavernous stadium are both the only record we have and a kind of polite lie about what it was to be there. Worth sitting with even forty years on.
My first Dylan show was the 2nd RFK show. I too was a big Dylan and Dead fan. It was my 3rd Dead show. I still remember seeing Garcia up there and thinking wow, he does not look good! I have the original clipping of the Dylan/Dead newspaper ad you have for Minn! I thought Dylan/Petty was solid, Dead not so much. There was definitely a big gap between Dead fans v Dylan. It was definitely a Dead crowd. Maybe 70/30 Dead to Dylan as many have stated—-Dylan was on a “downward” cycle. Thanks for your work and coverage of this one in particular. Really enjoy all of your work
Super insightful stuff, wow! Without knowing it, THIS is the analysis I've been seeking ever since I bought the much-maligned "Dylan And The Dead" LP as a college student in Athens, GA in early 1989 just before I graduated. Got it the day it was released.
I was such a Dylan fan - not a Dead fan - so I was excited. Boy, was it bad! Or, if not bad: turgid, tedious, tolerable at best. A "damned by faint praise" kind of record. Not what one would expect from this Meeting Of The Minds.
I think this Flagging Down mini-series is going to help in that regard ... I've never read a Dead scholar's view on these tours. And this is a key time, because as much as this tour gets critiqued, I actually consider it possibly the turning point of Dylan's entire career.
Why? Because Dylan was trying to chase current trends for part of the 80s, with fingerless gloves, earring, Members Only™ jacket, synths on some songs. But apparently Jerry Garcia helped Dylan realize how great his OLD songs really were. And Garcia was probably one of the few who knew as many songs from the great American roots song-bag. So I believe Garcia helped slowly re-ignite Dylan's muse, which reappeared for "Oh Mercy" in '89 but really was truly rebooted in '91-'92, oddly enough, by the two folk cover records he did (!).
In other words, Dylan had to get back to his roots to point his way to the future.
Also, huge cackle at some of the lines in your intro ("There are periods of their careers that engage me less, but they all lead towards summer ’86...")
Man! I was at this show. It was my first ever encounter with Bob. I'd caught the Dead previously. It was a weird show in many ways for me. I'd recently been busted back in Kansas City, so even though I was still using at this show (and the Alpine Valley show a day or so later), I was a bit of a nervous wreck. It was fitting with the atmosphere of the Metrodome...overwhelming, tbh. A small band of us had driven up from KC for the show and the next one over in AV.
I remember the show beginning with the Dead's sound reinforcement only working through the onstage monitors at first. They'd set up these enormous scaffold towers with supplemental mains atop them about halfway down the cavernous space. It was an acoustic nightmare. The drugs didn't help. But the place was so big and/or there was such a delay introduced to the sound (once they got the mains working, part way through the first song), it was difficult to hear anything well. My seat (such as it was...I wandered around a bit, visiting friends) was well past the towers. The sound washed back & forth like a wave throughout the Dead's performance.
Dylan's set, the sound seemed better. I really am looking forward to listening to the recordings, since I've only heard snippets in the intervening years. I do recall Bob's frizzy locks backlit during what seemed to be a monumental rendition of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," that wrapped the evening. Then the lights came on, and you could see how gargantuan the venue was.
Thanks, Ray and Jesse for the post & links. I'll be at the July 4th show here next week, just over 40 years to the day hence.
I was at Akron. Afaiwc the best rendition of a Dylan song did not include him. It was Weir, I believe the song was Desolation Row, but I could be mistaken. I saw them in 87 at Oakland coliseum. I thought that was better. But, never a big Petty fan
Going back and relistening to some of the songs here, I'm impressed with the performance by Dylan, especially his solo rendition of "Hard Rain". He sounds great, engaged and playing guitar as well as perhaps he'd ever done on this tune. He really sings the hell out of it He's talking to the crowd. So, maybe this show is underrated, after all.
Thanks for this! I caught Dead/Dylan at Autzen Stadium Eugene, Oregon sound for a stadium show was pretty dialed in as their sound guy, Dan Healy, was familiar with the dynamics there. Both the Dead & Dead and Dylan sets were well played and what an awesome Dead/Dylan set list :
Maggie's Farm, Dead Man, Watching the River Flow, Simple Twist of Fate, The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, Stuck Inside of Mobile ..., Heart of Mine, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, Rainy Day Women, Queen Jane Approximately, Ballad of a Thin Man, Highway 61 Revisited & Tangled Up in Blue. I agree live album not great and the live shows were a mixed bag as one thing for GD to improv with each other another when your back up band for Bob who has a way of changing phrasings and tempo sometimes mid-song yet check out Dylan/Dead rehearsal's they are all having a good old' time sounding great. I seem to remember Dylan himself saying Jerry & the boys helping him rekindle the muse.
Minn was one of five shows I saw that tour. And yes the sound was indeed bad. My ticket was in the top tier but when I saw a bunch of dead fans preparing a rush down the stairs to a lower level, I joined them. But the sound was no better down there. Lots of people were wandering around the whole time trying to find a better spot. I finally found a sweet spot, first tier above and behind the stage. Also made for a good view down into the stage including lot of backstage area. There I ran into a friend from the Menominee rez who was there visiting with Raven, Bob's native American roadie.
We did see Bob's mother and her retinue heading in to the VIP boxes before the show. Met her and chatted after one of the 92 Minn shows, but his brother David wanted nothing to do with us.
Thanks for the lovely photo of Paul Williams. Spent time with him in Ca.
The Paul Williams material is the part that stuck with me—the idea of a tour as a composition to be performed, with the arrangements living in the leader's head rather than on paper, and tapes as a “crutch” that risk you never having been present at all. There's a real tension in it for an archival project like this one: the soundboards that sound “nothing at all like” the cavernous stadium are both the only record we have and a kind of polite lie about what it was to be there. Worth sitting with even forty years on.
My first Dylan show was the 2nd RFK show. I too was a big Dylan and Dead fan. It was my 3rd Dead show. I still remember seeing Garcia up there and thinking wow, he does not look good! I have the original clipping of the Dylan/Dead newspaper ad you have for Minn! I thought Dylan/Petty was solid, Dead not so much. There was definitely a big gap between Dead fans v Dylan. It was definitely a Dead crowd. Maybe 70/30 Dead to Dylan as many have stated—-Dylan was on a “downward” cycle. Thanks for your work and coverage of this one in particular. Really enjoy all of your work
Super insightful stuff, wow! Without knowing it, THIS is the analysis I've been seeking ever since I bought the much-maligned "Dylan And The Dead" LP as a college student in Athens, GA in early 1989 just before I graduated. Got it the day it was released.
I was such a Dylan fan - not a Dead fan - so I was excited. Boy, was it bad! Or, if not bad: turgid, tedious, tolerable at best. A "damned by faint praise" kind of record. Not what one would expect from this Meeting Of The Minds.
I think this Flagging Down mini-series is going to help in that regard ... I've never read a Dead scholar's view on these tours. And this is a key time, because as much as this tour gets critiqued, I actually consider it possibly the turning point of Dylan's entire career.
Why? Because Dylan was trying to chase current trends for part of the 80s, with fingerless gloves, earring, Members Only™ jacket, synths on some songs. But apparently Jerry Garcia helped Dylan realize how great his OLD songs really were. And Garcia was probably one of the few who knew as many songs from the great American roots song-bag. So I believe Garcia helped slowly re-ignite Dylan's muse, which reappeared for "Oh Mercy" in '89 but really was truly rebooted in '91-'92, oddly enough, by the two folk cover records he did (!).
In other words, Dylan had to get back to his roots to point his way to the future.
Also, huge cackle at some of the lines in your intro ("There are periods of their careers that engage me less, but they all lead towards summer ’86...")
Man! I was at this show. It was my first ever encounter with Bob. I'd caught the Dead previously. It was a weird show in many ways for me. I'd recently been busted back in Kansas City, so even though I was still using at this show (and the Alpine Valley show a day or so later), I was a bit of a nervous wreck. It was fitting with the atmosphere of the Metrodome...overwhelming, tbh. A small band of us had driven up from KC for the show and the next one over in AV.
I remember the show beginning with the Dead's sound reinforcement only working through the onstage monitors at first. They'd set up these enormous scaffold towers with supplemental mains atop them about halfway down the cavernous space. It was an acoustic nightmare. The drugs didn't help. But the place was so big and/or there was such a delay introduced to the sound (once they got the mains working, part way through the first song), it was difficult to hear anything well. My seat (such as it was...I wandered around a bit, visiting friends) was well past the towers. The sound washed back & forth like a wave throughout the Dead's performance.
Dylan's set, the sound seemed better. I really am looking forward to listening to the recordings, since I've only heard snippets in the intervening years. I do recall Bob's frizzy locks backlit during what seemed to be a monumental rendition of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," that wrapped the evening. Then the lights came on, and you could see how gargantuan the venue was.
Thanks, Ray and Jesse for the post & links. I'll be at the July 4th show here next week, just over 40 years to the day hence.
I was at Akron. Afaiwc the best rendition of a Dylan song did not include him. It was Weir, I believe the song was Desolation Row, but I could be mistaken. I saw them in 87 at Oakland coliseum. I thought that was better. But, never a big Petty fan
Going back and relistening to some of the songs here, I'm impressed with the performance by Dylan, especially his solo rendition of "Hard Rain". He sounds great, engaged and playing guitar as well as perhaps he'd ever done on this tune. He really sings the hell out of it He's talking to the crowd. So, maybe this show is underrated, after all.
Thanks for this! I caught Dead/Dylan at Autzen Stadium Eugene, Oregon sound for a stadium show was pretty dialed in as their sound guy, Dan Healy, was familiar with the dynamics there. Both the Dead & Dead and Dylan sets were well played and what an awesome Dead/Dylan set list :
Maggie's Farm, Dead Man, Watching the River Flow, Simple Twist of Fate, The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, Stuck Inside of Mobile ..., Heart of Mine, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, Rainy Day Women, Queen Jane Approximately, Ballad of a Thin Man, Highway 61 Revisited & Tangled Up in Blue. I agree live album not great and the live shows were a mixed bag as one thing for GD to improv with each other another when your back up band for Bob who has a way of changing phrasings and tempo sometimes mid-song yet check out Dylan/Dead rehearsal's they are all having a good old' time sounding great. I seem to remember Dylan himself saying Jerry & the boys helping him rekindle the muse.
Minn was one of five shows I saw that tour. And yes the sound was indeed bad. My ticket was in the top tier but when I saw a bunch of dead fans preparing a rush down the stairs to a lower level, I joined them. But the sound was no better down there. Lots of people were wandering around the whole time trying to find a better spot. I finally found a sweet spot, first tier above and behind the stage. Also made for a good view down into the stage including lot of backstage area. There I ran into a friend from the Menominee rez who was there visiting with Raven, Bob's native American roadie.
We did see Bob's mother and her retinue heading in to the VIP boxes before the show. Met her and chatted after one of the 92 Minn shows, but his brother David wanted nothing to do with us.
Thanks for the lovely photo of Paul Williams. Spent time with him in Ca.