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We’ve been deep into 1986 all year—first my Australia/New Zealand series in February, then Dead scholar Jesse Jarnow’s four-parter on Dylan & The Heartbreakers & The Dead ’86, plus a loosie subscriber-request in the mix too (catch up on all those here). But it’s the 40th anniversary of a tour I love, and I’m excited to dive in one last time. For now.
For those who followed my earlier series about the first leg of their tour together, I wanted to check in on the second leg, to compare how things have changed since all those shows I wrote about a few months ago. Dylan & The Heartbreakers spent the entire summer barnstorming the U.S. In some ways, it looked a lot like all those Australia shows I wrote about six months ago. In others, it looked very different.
The band hasn’t changed. At least, not much. A couple Queens of Rhythm have left, and a couple more have replaced them, most notably Bob’s new secret wife Carolyn Dennis—they were married just days before the summer tour began, though no one would know about it for 15 years. But Dylan is still backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers every night. So what has changed?
Well, speaking of Petty, the Heartbreakers’ two mid-show sets have doubled in length. They were playing only four songs each show in Australia. That seemed low, given that they were huge stars in their own right who got prominent billing on these shows (were they not that big in Australia?), so, appropriately enough, now they do eight songs a night. Here’s a fun “Heartbreak Hotel” they bust out at today’s final show, after Tom salutes the road crew:
And what about Bob? There are a few major changes to the standard setlist. The opening old-time-rock-and-roll number has changed. In the winter, it was generally “Train Of Pain” or “Justine” (which, as noted, are very similar). In the summer, it’s usually the 1950s Weldon Rodgers country obscurity “So Long, Good Luck And Goodbye” with an occasional swap of Little Richard’s rave-up “Shake A Hand” or Ray Charles’ 1961 hit “Unchain My Heart,” which Dylan had actually recorded during the Knocked Out Loaded sessions. The final night in Paso Robles gets the Little Richard number, the last time he ever played it:
Speaking of covers, “I’m Moving On” mid-show gets replaced by another country song, “We Had It All,” covered by a number of singers in the ‘70s, including Dylan’s buddy Bobby Neuwirth.
Among Dylan songs, “Shot of Love,” performed only a couple times the first leg, becomes a set regular in the summer. More notably, though, so does the new original song Dylan and the Heartbreakers recorded in Australia: “Band of the Hand.” It gets debuted the opening night of the summer tour and played almost every night after. This Paso Robles performance is the last time he played it.
Meanwhile he dropped, mostly or entirely, some first-tour staples like “Trust Yourself,” “Lenny Bruce,” and his solo-acoustic staple “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).”
Maybe my favorite of all, “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky” got an amazing new extended intro. I wrote last year, “Holy shit, those vocals. Bob somehow both belting and crooning, accompanied by Benmont Tench’s slow synths and the Queens of Rhythm. When it finally kicks into high speed, over two minutes into the runtime, it’s all the more effective.”
Some other intriguing summer setlist additions, though these songs never became regulars, were:
Lay Lady Lay
Union Sundown
I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
I Want You
Brownsville Girl
Got My Mind Made Up
Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
Of those, “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” and “I Want You” are great. So is, surprisingly, “Union Sundown,” a generally fairly wretched song. And this was the only-ever live version of the Dylan-Petty cowrite “Got My Mind Made Up.”
And those were just the Dylan originals. If you read my 1986 series earlier this year, you know how much I love the covers he did with the Heartbreakers. All these got added to the rotation in the summer. For most of these, it was the first and last time Dylan ever performed them:
So Long, Good Luck And Goodbye
Shake a Hand
Unchain My Heart
We Had It All
Rock With Me Baby
Let The Good Times Roll
Red Cadillac And A Black Moustache
Bye Bye Johnny
Good Rockin’ Mama
Kansas City
I Still Miss Someone
All My Tomorrows
A few of those—“Red Cadillac,” “We Had It All,” “All My Tomorrows”—rank among my favorite live covers of his ever. Here’s the former:
It all culminated at this final show in Paso Robles, 40 years ago today. Dylan wasn’t done with surprises, either. He had one more song to add to the tour rotation. It was an original song he’d never played before, and he never played it again.
Yes, this show saw the one and only live performance of “Brownsville Girl”!
If you’ve never heard it before, let me recommend you close this newsletter now. As far as you’ll ever know, he played the whole thing, the entire crowd rose as one to applaud, it was a triumph. Go on, get outta here, you’ll be happier believing that!
If you have heard it, though, you’ll know that’s not at all what happened. On paper—magic. In reality—wildly disappointing. The band seems to have rehearsed it, but Bob never bothers singing any of the verses. He and the backing singers just repeat the chorus. Over and over again. No Gregory Peck, no Corpus Christi Tribune, no Henry Porter who’s not Henry Porter. I mean, is anyone’s favorite part of “Brownsville Girl” the chorus?
It feels endless, way longer than its four-and-a-half minutes. Gotta be in the running for his most disappointing live performance ever. Can you imagine how excited you’d be in the crowd when they started it? And then this is what you get.
Apparently he performed it for, of all things, an Entertainment Tonight segment. “That was an old song that I recorded,” he tells the crowd when they finish. “We did that for TV. Anyway, I’ll get back to the regular part of the program.” Very unlike Bob to play a song only so they can air a video on TV—especially on a cheesy Hollywood show like Entertainment Tonight.
Here’s what the resulting TV piece looked like. Facilitating this short news clip is apparently the only reason he played “Brownsville Girl.” Wild. (Thanks Dag Braathen for sending me this.)
But let’s not let this unbelievably half-assed “Brownsville Girl” sully a great end to a great tour. This tape, while far from a soundboard, features so much of what made the two 1986 tours wonderful, from the covers (“We Had It All” is the highpoint here) to the blasted-to-the-rafters originals (“Gotta Serve Somebody” rips) to the majestic takes on his new songs (man do I love that “When the Night Comes Falling” intro). Maybe next year I’ll do a Dylan/Petty 1987 40th-anniversary series too. There are some good performances in there. But the vibe wouldn’t be the same.
1986-08-06, Mid-State Fairground, Paso Robles, CA
Union Sundown wretched! Oh hell no. 😀
Thanks for that explanation of the real deal behind their only performance of "Brownsville Girl." I've long wondered what that was all about. To see this clip from the TV show is so enlightening - and manipulative! If I were watching that show in 1986, I would have totally believed that they played the whole song. Deep fakes, 1980s-style!