Bob Dylan Concert Posters in the 1970s

Bob sings, smokes, and wears a succession of wild hats

Today, the belated second entry in my decade-by-decade series about Bob Dylan concert posters. The 1960s were a wild ride, poster-wise. The 1970s, though, are more straightforward, largely because the tours were more discrete: 1974 with The Band, Rolling Thunder #1, Rolling Thunder #2, etc.

As I did with the 1960s entry, I’ll start with the standard poster formats—the ones that Dylan’s people used for many shows—then share some favorite one-offs at the end. (Credit as always to DylanStubs, where most of these come from.)

Disclaimer: I’m using the term “poster” a little loosely. “Printed concert advertising material” is more accurate, but makes for a cumbersome headline. Working off digital images of these decades later, it can sometimes be difficult to determine whether these were posters hung up on walls, flyers handed out, or even ads in magazines or newspapers. Where I do know, I’ll say.

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Dylan didn’t tour until 1974, his so-called comeback tour with The Band (explored in depth here). Technically speaking, I don’t think there were any posters. Not that I can find, anyway. Everything seems to have been done through newspaper ads. Place a full-page ad in the local paper, sell out the show. It worked most nights. They looked like this. Simple, effective.

Both legs of Rolling Thunder did have posters, plastered up at the venue a day or two before. (See my interview with one of Rolling Thunder’s poster plasterers here for more info on that.) They all used a standard format. The box at the bottom was to write in the individual show details. Here’s the 1975 edition:

In 1976, they used a similar format, with two different variations. My guess is the first one—on the left below—was made earlier, before they knew the full lineup. Though I wonder why Kinky Friedman, who took over the Ramblin’ Jack slot, didn’t get Jack’s prominent poster placement next to Joan. Or, for that matter, why Roger McGuinn—surely a bigger draw than either Jack or Kinky—never did either. At least their names end up there eventually in the fine print below Bob Neuwirth.

Also note the Dylan photo changes between the two variants. The first shot comes from the Rolling Thunder rehearsals; the second is the famous photo later used on the cover of Live 1975.

Pretty straightforward so far, right? 1978 is where things get messier. In Japan, promoters must have had license to design their own posters. There are suddenly a lot of one-offs, which I’ll hit at the bottom. The closest thing I can find to a standardized format is this, which popped up for a few different runs of dates.

When the 1978 tour moved from Japan to Australia, the format changed. Now the posters typically looked like this:

That continued through the summer tour, with some variations. Then, for the Fall tour, there was a third standardized 1978 poster. It looked like this:

Again, seeing these out of context, it’s a little muddled what is a poster and which is a newspaper ad. I’m assuming the version above is a newspaper ad since it says “Tomorrow.” But from this Etsy sale it looks like the actual posters used the same design.

His final tour of the decade, the first Christian run in 1979, repeated it. Funny—1979 was a very different tour from 1978, but you’d never know it from the advertising!

And that’s it! I suspect the 1970s might be our shortest and easiest decade in this series.

Here are some of my favorite one-off posters. Some really wild stuff here!