Bob & Joni & Van

1998-05-17, The Gorge Amphitheatre, George, WA

Flagging Down the Double E’s is a free email newsletter exploring Dylan shows of yesteryear. If you’ve found this article online or someone forwarded you the email, subscribe here to get a new entry delivered to your inbox every week:

#1 album on this date: ‘Before These Crowded Streets,’ Dave Matthews Band (knocking off the ‘Titanic’ soundtrack after a 16-week run)
#1 movie on this date: Deep Impact
Times headline on this date: “Defending the Hansons,” by Neil Strauss

When last we checked in on 1998, Dylan was in South America opening for the Rolling Stones. A month later, he's on the U.S. West Coast with two equally iconic names: Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell.

This was not unusual. In the late '90s, Dylan, or his people, seemed to want to play bigger venues than he could fill alone. So he went into a dispiriting run of, essentially, oldies package tours. He'd already done one Van Morrison tour earlier in the year, and would do a third in the fall, playing glamorous venues like the Puyallup State Fair. The next year, he'd go out with Paul Simon twice, then chase that by touring with Phil Lesh and Friends, no doubt knowing that any Dead member is a guaranteed concert draw.

That impulse soon subsided. He'd still bring along prominent co-headliners here and there - Lesh again in 2000, Willie Nelson in 2004, most recently the My Morning Jacket/Wilco/Beck/etc "Americanarama" tour in 2013. Sometimes these are old friends; sometimes it's not clear he even knows their names (MMJ’s Jim James later complained he never spoke with Bob the entire tour). But mostly, he seems satisfied playing whatever venues he can fill himself.

Even this '98 super-tour wasn't initially supposed to be quite so super. It had been announced as another double-headliner tour with Van Morrison. Then Van dropped out and Mitchell was drafted as a replacement. But then at the eleventh hour Van somehow dropped back in, so all three icons hit the road together.