Every Show on the Greatest Leg of the Never Ending Tour

Launching a new series on Europe 2000

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Photo by John Hume

Twenty-five years ago today, Bob Dylan kicked off what some people consider the greatest leg of the Never Ending Tour.

What people, you might ask? Me! From my interview in Rolling Stone:

You called the year 2000 the best year of the Never Ending Tour. Why?

It’s the year I’m most jealous I didn’t see. I wasn’t a fan by then yet. I was at end of middle school. And I think that that band, Tony Garnier, of course, and Larry [Campbell], Charlie [Sexton], [David] Kemper, and Bob are just firing on all cylinders. There’s the amazing acoustic sets. They’re doing “Country Pie” electric. They’re doing all these amazing bluegrass gospel covers by the Stanley Brothers. It’s just these beautiful shows, crazy sets.

Some of the first bootlegs I would’ve gotten were rips of the Crystal Cat from fall of 2000. I remember printing out the art for Münster, and Portsmouth, and Cardiff, and just listening to these over and over again.

We were talking 2000 in general there, but the three shows I cited all came from this one leg, Europe Fall 2000. And I’m not a minority opinion. This leg gets cited a lot as possibly the best-ever in fan discussions of the Never Ending Tour. I hit on most of the reasons in that Rolling Stone answer, but there’s one I missed: The tapes! Revered bootleg label Crystal Cat released a CD set for almost all 18 shows on this tour and, though I haven’t listened to them all yet, every one I’ve heard might as well be a soundboard. Combine stellar performances, varied setlists, and sterling tapes, and you can see why this tour is beloved even by those of us who weren’t paying attention at the time.

So, in honor of the 25th anniversary, I’m going to do a special series on every show, sort of like I’ve done for Rolling Thunder ’75, Tour ’74, and Paradise Lost ’95. Is this actually the best-ever leg of the Never Ending Tour? That’s what I’m going to find out. Today, we kick off with an unusual warmup show in Dublin.

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Before we begin, a request: I was not at these shows, but I bet some of you were! I’d love to hear your memories, and maybe include them in a future post. Post a comment below or, if you’re reading this in your email inbox, hit reply. Make sure you note which specific show you’re talking about.

Bonus points for any memories that go beyond what we can all hear on the tapes: What was the venue like, did some crazy thing happen in the crowd, how easy was it to get tickets, did you see something onstage, were there rumored Bob sightings out and about, etc…

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Opening night in Dublin was the most unusual show of the tour.

You wouldn’t know it from the tape. It’s got a couple unique songs for the tour (good ones too: “Ring Them Bells” and “'Til I Fell In Love With You”), but many of the subsequent shows have unique songs too. And the performance matches but doesn’t exceed the high bar of the others.

What was unusual about opening night in Dublin was the venue size. Listening to these tapes in high school, I’d imagined intimate theaters. The curtains gently falling behind the band in the photos give that impression. But no, these gorgeous shows were largely presented in giant corporate arenas (which didn’t sell that well—more on that in a later installment). Except for opening night. Vicar Street is in fact one of the smallest venues he’s ever played. The tiny club fit just 900 people.

Tickets sold out fast. Really fast. In exactly 55 seconds, one newspaper reported. The promoter’s announcement read:

Aiken Promotions are pleased to announce that tickets for Bob Dylan's eagerly anticipated concert @ Dublin's Vicar St. On 13th September, went on sale today @ 10am from all Ticketmaster outlets nationwide, and sold out in a record breaking time of 1 minute. The intimate nature of this concert from such a legendary & influential artist, means that many music fans see this as the hottest ticket and the most exciting concert in Irish concert history.

“The most exciting concert in Irish concert history” seems like a stretch. Hell, I’m not sure it was the most exciting concert in Bob Dylan’s Irish concert history (see: Slane Castle). But that’s nit-picking. It was exciting! Look how fast the tickets went.

But rumblings soon began that shenanigans were afoot. As few as 150 of those 900 tickets actually went on sale to regular people, it turned out. The rest were distributed to various industry insiders. Hilariously, it was reported that Bono personally grabbed up 100 (some said 200) of the tickets. I bet I know who he gave one of them to:

U2 bassist Adam Clayton photographed heading into the show, via the Irish Independent

Also spotted in the tiny club: Van Morrison, Elvis Costello—who one reporter wrote was “jumping up and down in his seat like a 14-year-old” during “Like a Rolling Stone”—Ron Wood, Christy Moore, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe and Mike Mills, and yet a third member of U2, The Edge (what, was Larry Mullen Jr. too good for Bob?). I doubt those people were camping out for hours to snag a ticket in the first 55 seconds. Can you imagine Van Morrison trying to make small talk in the ticket queue?

About the ticket drama, Ian Woodward wrote this at the time in his newsletter The Wicked Messenger:

It was never going to be difficult to sell out Vicar Street. The main problem was how to do so in a way which would meet all the competing demands for tickets. At first sight, the Irish promoter has singularly failed to solve that problem and there is a very nasty smell in the air. It could be incompetence or it could be venal. Naivety or knavery*? There is talk of an official government enquiry.

* If I didn’t need to use this first installment to announce the series, “Naivety or knavery?” would have made a wonderful subject line. Good one, Ian.

Expectations were already high enough with the small show. Making things worse, the promoter announced that this would be an all-acoustic show. Some even said solo acoustic, which would have been his first such set in decades. Others claimed an unplugged set backed by U2 was planned. Maybe Lou Reed would be in the mix too, people whispered, since he was also in town at the time.

None of that happened. It was a standard show, at a time when Dylan’s “standard” was insanely high. Reviews by both fans and critics were fairly ecstatic. As well they should have been. Two songs into the tape, during the six-song acoustic set he did every night to open, he delivers one of the best “To Ramona”s I’ve heard in the Never Ending Tour.

In a five-star Guardian review, Irish journalist Sean O’Hagan (most recently seen co-writing a book with Nick Cave) set the scene:

Shuffling on stage in natty black suit and the coolest cowboy boots this side of a Sam Shephard [sic] play - white snakeskin with black toes and heels - he looked stick-thin and frail, slightly lost. Up close, you could catch every nervous fidget, every Chaplinesque shuffle and bemused shrug. He looked like a broken marionette, and, when the lights dimmed, like a ghostly silhouette of his iconic mid-60s self.

Flanked by four sidemen who looked as though they had stumbled out of a high-class Tijuana brothel, he ranged through his back pages for nigh-on two hours, by turns baffling and transfixing.

Another outfit-and-personal-behavior report from Barry Egan at the Sunday Independent:

Fastidiously installed in white-and-black, spats were worn beneath a dark, chic, almost midnight-cowboy suit with a brown shirt and a black tie almost as skinny as his legs. At certain entirely-bizarre moments during songs, Dylan would shake his left leg from side to side almost in slow-motion, bringing to mind a young Elvis Presley. It was an endearingly odd personal tic.

When he finished songs, he would sometimes kneel for a second and then jump up again. Other times, like at the end of Rainy Day Woman Number 12 and 13, he would take off his Fender Stratocaster as if it was a pickaxe he had been working with, then hold it over his head for 30 seconds before putting it over his shoulder again for the next song.

The Evening Herald’s caption writer was more succinct:

These series-intro posts always get too long, so I’m gonna cut it off here without going into the tape more. It’s a great tape! But I suspect they’re all gonna be great tapes. It was that kinda tour. More tomorrow.

2000-09-13, Vicar Street, Dublin, Ireland

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PS. As I usually do with these special series, some entries will go out to the entire list, but most entries (three out of four) will be reserved for paid subscribers. So if you want the sampler platter, you’ll get it. But if you want to join me on the full deep dive, sign up here: