the never ending tour

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10 Things You Didn’t Know About Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour

On three decades — and nearly 3,000 shows..

1. Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour has been running for 30 years now.

The music industry will celebrate an anniversary of just about anything — there was a 20th anniversary edition of Joan Osborne’s Relish — and the compliant music press will help push a little product to mark the occasion. As what has come to be known as Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour has proceeded year in and year out, one remarkable thing is that no benchmarks have been noted. The tour began in the summer of 1988 — more on that below. The 20th and 25th year came and went with not so much as a press release, and stories about this endeavor are rare. (As on just about everything Dylan-related, his management company declines comment.)

So anyway, it’s 2018, and Bob Dylan’s Never Ending tour has now been going on for 30 years.

2. Some dispute the moniker, but it really is a Never Ending Tour.

The summer tour in 1988 began with Dylan appearing with a small backing combo. He stepped to the front of the stage and played songs from his catalogue. The band was dressed in black. The set list changed night to night. He almost never said anything to the audience; he didn’t say things like, “We’d like to play a few songs from our new album,” or “Here’s one you might remember!” He didn’t say thank you or good night.

And that’s how it’s been, for 30 years now. There have been a few tweaks here and there; now and again, a band member drops in or out, particularly guitarists. But right now, for example, he’s playing with three guys who have been with him more than 13, 16, and 29 years, respectively.

The big changes? The overall size of the band has gone up once in a while. And Dylan in the 2000s began playing a keyboard.

And for the record, it’s unusual, basically unique, for a star on Dylan’s level to tour like this. While of course the music industry has changed much over the last 30 years, as a rule, superstar tours take months and sometimes years of preparations. Tour caravans are created — sometimes massive ones — and million- to gazillion-dollar deals are lawyered out with Live Nation or AEG, with sponsors, merchandisers, and PR weasels circling round as album releases, TV appearances, souvenir live albums, and DVD films are negotiated, all the way to later cable broadcast.

Bob Dylan just tours, year in and year out, and doesn’t talk about it.

Many years ago, in the liner notes to World Gone Wrong , Dylan wrote, “There was a Never Ending Tour but it ended.” But read on and you can see it’s another of his mordant jokes, as he shares a list of what he said were the succeeding tours — a list that you can quickly see is of the sort favored by postmodern novelists:

[T]here have been many others since then: “The Money Never Runs Out Tour” (Fall of 1991) “Southern Sympathizer Tour” (Early 1992) “Why Do You Look At Me So Strangely Tour” (European Tour 1992) “The One Sad Cry Of Pity Tour” (Australia & West Coast American Tour 1992) “Outburst Of Consciousness Tour” (1992) “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Tour” (1993) and others, too many to mention each with their own character & design.

And once in a while, in interviews, Dylan would get positively heated when the subject of the tour came up. Label publicists discouraged coverage of the Never Ending Tour, and once in a while I’d talk to a critic who seemed to think it was uncool to call it that.

But at this point it’s clear that the summer of 1988 was a decisive turning point in Bob Dylan’s career, and that, 30 years on, we’re still seeing the wheels turn in the single most consistent thing this most mercurial of stars has ever done.

3. When it started, Bob Dylan was in a bad place.

We know this because Dylan himself has actually confessed as much, in his autobiography, Chronicles Volume 1 . At the very end of the 1970s he started out on the tour that accompanied his first album of religious songs, Slow Train Coming . Fans streamed out when it became clear than Dylan and his gospel backup singers actually were going to spend the entire evening singing ditties like “God Gave Names to All the Animals. ” A follow-up the next year, after the even less fun Saved album, mixed in some old standards and even some moments of magic, but the feeling was overall sour.

After that came … aimlessness. There was a tour of Japan with Mick Taylor, fan-friendly outings with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 1986 and 1987, and the stadium-sized turds that were the Dylan and the Dead concerts.

But let’s let him tell it, not without melodrama:

I had no connection to any kind of inspiration. Whatever was there to begin with had vanished and shrunk. … I couldn’t overcome the odds. Everything was smashed. My own songs had become strangers to me. I was what they called over the hill …The mirror had turned around and I could see the future — an old actor fumbling in garbage cans outside the theater of past triumphs.

A moment in clarity at a bar in San Francisco was a turning point. For better or worse, Dylan’s tours were always events, sometimes sensations. That forced him to think about how to get off that treadmill. The solution: denature the tour itself. Go play and play and play, until it wasn’t a novelty any more.

Dylan came back from the final Petty shows in Europe and told his tour manager he wanted to play 200 shows the next year, and keep going back to the same towns the next two years after that. He would build himself a new audience from scratch.

“I’d have to start at the bottom,” he wrote, “and I wasn’t even on the bottom yet.”

4. The Never Ending Tour deprives Dylan of something he’d had for least 20 years: Something to hide behind.

In 1972 he’d toured with the Band, scorching arenas across with country in different acoustic and electric sets, and with a set by the Band itself in the mix as well. On the Petty and Dead tours, he was using his partners as feints, or crutches, or something. He’d created his own dark carnival and even performed in whiteface in the fabled Rolling Thunder outing after Blood on the Tracks and Desire . And on the Budokan tour, in 1978, he dressed in sequins with a troupe that might have backed Neil Diamond. In most of those, he could cast himself as a ringleader or a master of ceremonies, further distancing himself from the performing artist he supposedly was.

The tour that began in 1988 stripped it all away — facades, crutches, and makeup. Even the band was small, leaving nothing for Dylan to hide behind or lose himself in. On guitar was G.E. Smith. Smith, known for being the bandleader on Saturday Night Live , is dismissed by some, but he had played with the crack Hall & Oates band for years, and it’s hard to believe his time at SNL hadn’t given him some useful insights on how to deal with stars even as big as Dylan.

And the result was … a normal concert tour, featuring a rock star of some renown playing tunes from his repertoire backed by a musical ensemble there to support his vision. For Dylan, this was something new.

5. The first shows were electric.

No, not electric as opposed to acoustic. They were exciting . The closest comparison based on the remaining filmic evidence would of course be his 1966 or 1972 outings with the Band, where he was young, feral, and determined. Of course, 1988 was nothing like that. He was a much different person in his classic era, leading his fans and (some would say) a generation into a new era of electric folk in the face of (some would say) screams of derision from his audience.

But 1988 was different. He was not humbled, exactly. But he was a star with essentially no living equal who had to figure out how someone like himself, approaching 50 and obviously past his songwriting prime, could carry his career forward.

Dylan started his gospel tours in Northern California, and he started the Never Ending Tour there as well. I saw the first of the four original shows in Concord, at a suburban shed east of San Francisco. Dylan played two nights later in Sacramento. I missed that, which I’ve always regretted; a friend went and said Dylan had played a short set, and fans had booed when he left the stage. I saw the next show at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, and then the following one the next night, in another shed south of SF. (That show, at Shoreline Amphitheater, was perhaps a third full, another humbling moment.)

Even by then I’d seen him many times: twice on the Budokan tours as a teen, at least a dozen of the gospel shows (I ushered for Bill Graham Presents at the Warfield in San Francisco); a couple of the Petty outings; and a Dylan and the Dead show in Oakland. I was already a writer, and already writing dismissively about him. The Petty shows seemed particularly pointless; why did Bob Dylan need a stringy-haired sycophant onstage with him?

Anyway, I would say we weren’t expecting much, but one had to admit we didn’t know what to expect either.

It was obvious from the beginning that these shows were different. Smith’s band was taut. At Concord, and then again in Berkeley and on the peninsula, Neil Young sat in for a good part of the set, adding some unbridled solos in the instrumental breaks. Even with Young playing a clearly subordinate role, the sight and sound of this pairing was wild. I will forever respect G.E. Smith because of one amazing scene. I forget the song, but it was clear there was some sort of a break coming. Smith, watching Dylan and Young intently, moved forward at one point — and reached out to clamp his hand down on the neck of Young’s guitar at the right moment.

How many people have done that to Neil Young and lived to tell the tale?

And … the shows went on like that. Song after song, from all over Dylan’s career, with a number of covers, ranging from the goofy to the incredibly obscure, thrown in. On a throwaway concert album called Real Live a few years previous, Dylan had redone the lyrics to “Tangled Up in Blue,” and delivered them in a rush. He insisted that this was the right version. At the Greek Theater, he played it in its original configuration, and it was beautiful. For an acoustic set with Smith, the pair brandished gorgeous Martins. Over the rim of the Greek, before the sun had set, people on the sides of the amphitheater could see the Golden Gate Bridge; for them, Dylan played Jesse Fuller’s “San Francisco Bay Blues.” Then came “Boots of Spanish Leather”; another gorgeous cover, a traditional ballad called “Lakes of Pontchartrain”; and then a ringing “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” And just in case we all thought that his defiant Christian era had been forgotten, he spent nearly six minutes delivering the Biblical epic “In the Garden.” Then came “Gates of Eden,” “Like a Rolling Stone” — and then a bizarre encore featuring an old bluegrass song, an obscure rockabilly number, and “Maggie’s Farm” to end.

Uncompromising and yet unassailable, it all sounded like Bob Dylan reclaiming his career.

6. The Never Ending Tour has featured many songs Dylan had never sung live before.

It seemed that, because years went by between his tours, and because so many of his outings were heavily overdetermined, Dylan actually had never played many of even his notable songs live. By 1988, he had released about two dozen studio albums, totaling 250 or so songs. It turned out that it just wasn’t just the lack of opportunity. To Dylan, to hear him tell it, his old songs had become a millstone. He couldn’t stand it when the Grateful Dead, as he began rehearsals with that august aggregation, started digging through forgotten tracks in his old albums to find songs to play:

I had no feeling for any of these songs, and didn’t know how I could sing them with any intent. A lot of them had only been sung once anyway, at the time they had been recorded .

At that bar in San Francisco, he had that moment of clarity. He was watching a jazz pianist unself-consciously play standards:

Suddenly and without warning, it was like this guy had a window to my soul. It was like he was saying, “You should do it this way.” All of a sudden I understood something faster than I ever did before… I used to do this thing, I’m thinking.

He went back to the Dead, and then finished his commitments with Petty. Indeed, when you go back and look, this shortish final European tour with the Heartbreakers is the real beginning to the NET — Dylan began the leg by playing three shows with almost entirely different set lists.By the time what would become the Never Ending Tour began, Dylan had looked back into his catalogue and come to terms with it. The opening song of the original shows was “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” That’s the one that begins, “Johnny’s in the basement mixin’ up the medicine” and one of his most quoted works. (“You don’t need a weatherman to know which was the wind blows.”) I was surprised to learn from Dylanologists at the time that Dylan had never played it live before. At the Berkeley show, the second song was, bizarrely, “Joey,” an interminable rant about a gangster from Desire . He’d played that once with the Dead and, one expert I consulted told me, perhaps once besides that. The third song was “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” from Blonde on Blonde , another live debut.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at a concert and seen the lead singer getting all excited to tell the audience the group was going to play some semi-obscure song at one carefully choreographed moment in the show. Over the first four shows of the Never Ending Tour, Dylan played 60 or so songs live; 41 one of them, by my count, were different. As the tour went on, he was sometimes introducing six or seven new numbers a night.

By the end of the 1988, nearly 75 shows later, he’d played 92 different songs, according to Olof Björner, who presides over a breathtaking overview of Dylan’s career in his About Bob pages. And three dozen or so of these were played just once or twice. (Another secret of big rock tours is that even when a new song is folded into a show, it generally comes from a small pool of numbers prepared for that moment. Traditionally in Stones tours, for example, Keith Richards will step up to do a waggish solo number — choosing from one of two or three prepared for the tour.)

In the Never Ending Tour, Dylan was calling audibles — except he wasn’t calling anything. He just started playing the song he wanted to play, and Smith & Co. had to figure it out. The demands on the musicians were formidable; Smith told me once that the band had to watch carefully what Dylan was up to as each song ended. “He would do anything from old folk songs, Civil War–era songs, up to standards,” Smith said. “I remember once, we were playing in Hollywood, and he played ‘Moon River.”’

And other stuff was going on as well. It took Paul Williams, the founder of Crawdaddy magazine and a serious writer on Dylan, to notice, for example, that when at the Concord show Dylan did a run at “Man of Constant Sorrow,” a folk chestnut from his first album, Dylan was tweaking the song on the fly. (This was years before the Coen brothers gave the song new life on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.)

The first line, Williams noticed, was now: “I’m bound to ride that open highway” — which it turned out Dylan would be doing for the next 30 years. (“Down the highway / Down the tracks / Down the road to ecstasy,” Dylan sang on “Idiot Wind.”)

Over time, Dylan kept at it, folding in songs from new albums as they were released but always digging up old tracks to debut live — classics (“Tears of Rage” in 1989), singles (“Tight Connection to My Heart” in 1990), and obscurities (“Drifter’s Escape,” from John Wesley Harding , in 1992, “Meet Me in the Morning,” from Blood on the Tracks, in 2007).

At this point, leaving aside albums of covers, his Bootleg collections of unreleased tracks, and more ragtag albums like Dylan and Self-Portrait , the most notable omissions from his touring are significant parts of New Morning, Planet Waves , Street Legal , and Infidels , so there are still some songs for him to unearth once again.

Incidentally, the most famous, or notorious, of the songs from his ‘60s height he’s never played live is the 11-minute “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” which back in the day took up an entire side of Blonde on Blonde . Dylan’s own site , incidentally, has a definitive list of his compositions, his set lists, and notes on when the songs were first played live.

7. The tour has now stretched to more than 2,900 shows.

As of this writing, he is at about 2,950; next year, if he keeps going, he will play show number 3,000. That’s a lot, averaging just under 100 shows a year, and reflecting the fact that in the last decade or so he’s regularly been playing fewer than 100 shows a year, whereas in the first decade or so of the tour, he routinely played 110 or more. When you add in travel and weeks off for the band, that’s a big chunk of time to be on the road year in and year out.

Here’s another way to look at it. Back in the 1970s and even in the 1980s, there were a lot of big bands that didn’t tour regularly. In the last 30 years, however, ticket prices have gone up by an order of magnitude — and now just about all the big names can regularly be found out on the road.

In other words, when you can make $4, $5, or $6 million dollars a night, there aren’t reclusive superstars any more. Still, since 1988, Dylan has played more shows than Bruce Springsteen, he’s played more shows than the Stones, and played more shows than U2.

Since 1988, Bob Dylan has played far more shows than Springsteen, the Stones, and U2 combined . (You can almost throw Madonna or Paul McCartney in as well.)

8. Dylan tours in a very weird way.

Dylan was 47 when he initiated this late journey, and he turned 50, 60, and then 70 on the road. In April 2021, he’ll turn 80. Probably because he’s bored or perhaps because he’s OCD, Dylan does things on tour other artists don’t. It’s said he almost always travels by bus, and even that he likes staying in less-than-deluxe hotels. It helps him stay out of sight, and he can bring his dogs along.

He could make a lot more money than he does by being more media friendly, playing the hits, developing coherent arena shows, and marketing himself sensibly. (“Come see Bob Dylan play his greatest hits live!” [ cue “Rainy Day Women “]). As it is, he seems to be content to do his own thing and play smaller 5,000-ish-seat halls.

Here’s the weirdest thing Bob Dylan does on tour. He wants to play in halls, and in cities, he’s never played before. Ten or 15 years ago promoters told me his management had been requesting unusual venues. It wasn’t just things like the tour of AAA baseball stadiums he did with Willie Nelson one summer. He actively seeks out new halls and theaters. When I lived in D.C., Dylan once played three nights in town … at three different venues. This adds a lot of unnecessary cost and hassle to a tour.

In New York over the years he’s played at about a dozen different venues in Manhattan alone, but in true Dylan fashion, he contrarily just does multiple shows at the Beacon when he hits town. He’s also played in literally dozens of different cities and venues upstate, from Lake Placid to Elmira, from Erie to Saratoga Springs.

You get the feeling with Dylan that he’s not touring so much as wandering. I saw the first two shows on the U.S. leg of his fall tour a few months ago, in Phoenix and Tucson. After that he went on a meandering path across the southern part of the U.S. He headed to Albuquerque, where he’d played before, and then on to Midland, Texas, which is in the middle of nowhere, and played a small venue he’d never played before. He moved on to Irving, near Dallas, to play a newish hall — and then went to Tulsa, where he played at an Indian casino. According to his website, it was the eighth different venue he’d played in Tulsa alone just on the Never Ending Tour. (For the record, it’s possible certain venues have changed their names.)

… and then continued like this for more than a month, playing metropolises like Huntsville, Alabama; Roanoke, Virginia; Fort Myers, Florida, and on and on. Once you start delving into the data it often takes a while to find places, besides the odd casino, in which he has appeared on previous tours.

Overseas, where you’d expect all involved would want to make things as easy as possible, it gets weirder. In 2008 he played 11 shows at various cities in Spain, and then one in Portugal and one in Andorra, which is a country one-sixth the size of Rhode Island and has a population of about 75,000. He then went to Croatia, Estonia, and Lithuania. In 2010 he played Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia (in a different city than he had played two years earlier), Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia before heading to play six shows in France, including the small and remote cities of Nantes and Carcassonne.

By the way, Eric Jaffe,  writing on City Lab five years ago, put together a mind-boggling Google map of all the venues Dylan had played to that point , and added an insightful essay as well.

In just about any given year, even as Dylan approaches 80, you can find searching journeys like this; this summer he’s already played in small towns in most of the countries of Western Europe — not to mention a side trip to Brno, Czech Republic — before playing in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore … and then doing the Oceania shows I mentioned above. (In 2010, he played shows in Beijing and Shanghai.)

There were country artists back in the day who toured for a lifetime, and more recently people like Willie Nelson, B.B. King, and Leon Russell, too, who spent their lives on the road. I take the point there’s a lot of juke joints out there. Still, I think I’d bet that, right now, Bob Dylan has performed live on the stages of more different venues in more different towns — and more different countries, too —  than any other performing artist.

9. The Never Ending Tour’s dirty little secret is that often the shows aren’t very good.

“Good” with Dylan is a fungible term. It’s fair to say, however, that, for many people, over these last 30 years, the concertgoing experience has been difficult. In those first shows, Dylan was singing his songs with force, and each performance, given the novelty of the setting, was memorable. But you could also discern, in the singing, the beginnings of something that would become an aesthetic issue.

Dylan plainly didn’t feel comfortable singing many of those early songs with the same meaningful fervor. After all, a different person wrote, and sang, the songs originally. It might have seemed an issue of falsity or fakery to pretend that the contempt and derision fueling, say, “Like a Rolling Stone” still burned.

As the tour went on, and pretty quickly at that, he began to interpret his songs in ever-more mannered ways. By 1989 or 1990, when his reputation could still find him booked at 20,000-seat sheds, he was delivering some of his most notable songs in ways that literally made them unrecognizable. (“Was that ‘Hollis Brown’?”) Reinterpretation is of course great; but as I said, it more often seemed mannered, particularly when his voice, capable of great power soft or loud, reverted to its most annoying fallbacks.

Dylan has a lot of them: the bleat, the too-gruff whisper, the caterwauling, the high reedy screech. This last, particularly, was used to force out the words to famous compositions at a high, abrupt speed. The result — think of lines like “ howdoesitfeel…. Tobeonyourown… likeacompleteunknown ?” delivered like a whiny car engine revving — rendered songs that once transfixed a generation not just hollow, but almost off-putting, and that’s when the audience could recognize them.

A lot of critics are highly respectful of Dylan’s 21st-century work; I don’t think I’m one of them, but it must be said that unlike a lot of stars from his era, he has never pretended live that his most recent work didn’t exist. On the Never Ending Tour he has always peppered his shows with songs from recent albums — more than a handful of them many hundreds of times just in the years since their release. Dylan said that he wanted to go back on the road to find the people who would bring their own new desires to the shows, not the expectations of the audience from his first two or three decades as a star, who had ended up putting him in a trap. To get out of it, he had to not only break free, but act like he was free of the cruel pressure he and a lot of other 1960s and ‘70s holdovers endured. It’s the mark of a nostalgia act to play only old songs, but … who wants to hear even “Mixed Emotions” at a Stones show, much less a deep cut from Steel Wheels ?

The smart (and richest) ones ignore the complaints and deliver the (nostalgic) goods. Dylan’s finessed it a different way, laying low, playing what he will and letting those who will buy into his complex aesthetics come to him. This is a noble endeavor on paper, a little more challenging on the ground, so to speak. I’ve seen terrible, terrible Bob Dylan shows on the Never Ending Tour. (I don’t really keep track, but I’ve seen him 25 or 30 times during the course of it, in almost as many different venues in a total of eight or nine states, the most remote of these a depressing Indian casino in upstate Michigan.) Sometimes he does things that are just challenging to the audience. At the Peoria Civic Center in ‘89, the first U.S. show of the year, he opened with Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty,” a cosmic song but I think one not well known to most of the people in the audience. Then he played Van Morrison’s “One Irish Rover”! And then segued into …”I Believe in You,” one of the more obscure songs from Slow Train Coming .

This might not have been the most audience-friendly opening of a concert I’ve ever seen, but all three tracks were done beautifully, and the rest of the show was almost a greatest hits affair. But during the ‘90s and 2000s I saw him many times bleat his way through songs well-known and obscure, and more times than not saw audiences sit on their hands.

At the beginning, he was still a lithe and mean 40-something. Over the years, of course time has had its way; he is now a courtly old man, often sporting something like a too-big tuxedo that drapes a body that can seem frail. His facial hair gives him an almost Spanish cast, and an odd way of standing, a bit stilted, a bit mannered, as if he is playing a part in an old movie, making feints at an odd dance the music to which only he hears. There are echoes of Alias, his character in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid , in this stance, possibly bits of the deceptively passive Jack of Hearts, many decades on; and, now that I think of it, of Lefty from “Pancho and Lefty” as well — a gunfighter you find in a remote locale still alive, but compromised and holding secrets.

Among the myriad insane things about Bob Dylan shows these days is that when he delivers standards from the Great American Songbook — he’s released five albums’ worth of them in the last few years   — he actually tries to sing the songs in classic fashion, which, given the nature of his own voice, not to mention his phrasing tendencies, generally comes out as outlandish as it sounds. Still, we listen and once in a while something connects: At that show just after the Nobel Prize was announced, he seemed to take his time, and seemed to care. The last song, done with feeling, was one of those Sinatra tracks. He sang it like he meant it. These were the last words of the show:

Let people wonder, let ‘em laugh, let ‘em frown I’ll always love ya till the moon’s upside down Don’t you remember I was always your clown? Why try to change me now?

10. The Never Ending Tour may or may not never end.

At that show, Dylan didn’t mention the Nobel Prize, which for anyone besides Dylan you’d say was the crowning achievement of a career nearing its 60th year. The appearance was just one of nearly 80 he did that year, beginning with 16 shows in Japan; he took in the two Desert Trip festivals at Coachella and took a detour to Las Vegas before slipping off into another quixotic journey across America, with stops at Forest Hills and Wolf Trap but also the Toledo Zoo Amphitheater and the CMAC Performing Arts Center in upstate Canandaigua, which is somewhere between Rochester and Syracuse and Buffalo, and which for some reason he has visited some half-dozen times before on the Never Ending Tour.

His schedule is clear for the rest of the year, but for 2019 dates have already been announced in eight different European countries, including Finland, Norway, Sweden, and the Czech Republic. There are no fewer than nine shows marked down for Germany. There is still much to do. He has not yet played Roswell, New Mexico; or Ogallala, Nebraska; or Thule, for that matter. (For some reason, actually, Dylan has apparently never played Alaska.) And while there are few major songs he has not played live, there are still major songs he has not played on the Never Ending Tour. (Like “Isis,” for chrissakes.)

Sometimes I think Dylan’s like any elderly uncle, just wanting to do what he did yesterday. Yours or mine might just want to sit around and watch Fox News. For Bob Dylan, daily life is different. He gets on a bus and drives to a new town. That’s what he does .

Other times I think — Jesus, this is a guy who doesn’t like being home much. Who or what is there? He married again, in the 1980s, and had a child now in her 30s, but the couple apparently divorced in the 1990s. He was stricken with a heart infection in 1997, which slowed him down for a few months, but there’s little sign of that now. Official maps of the Malibu fire that ravaged the hills northwest of Los Angeles this year show that the flames came within a block or so of Dylan’s famous Zuma Beach compound, but it was apparently ultimately spared. He may be indestructible.

Many of his public actions have plainly been feints over the years. He is consistent about being inconsistent. Other messages hide in plain sight. Think of that list of tours on the liner notes to World Gone Wrong . Those names he listed—they were all separate tours, he was saying, not part of one long Never Ending Tour.

To tell the difference, he says, “check the set lists.”

That’s another Borgesian joke: a new list. Since just about every night had its own new set list, every night was its own tour, which in a way they might have been and that might have been Dylan’s point. Maybe Dylan is in search of the musical equivalent of the Library of Babel , in which he keeps playing shows until every possible combination of his songs, and then everybody else’s songs, are performed. (It gets even weirder if you call the shows “tours.”) Like the polished surfaces of the Borges library, the Never Ending tour deliberately represents and promises the infinite, even though it technically isn’t. Promising the infinite! It’s an audacious and ridiculous plan — almost as silly as leaving your small town to find your voice and decisively marking a generation and a society, if not a civilization in the process. Bruce Springsteen’s Springsteen on Broadway show is all about going home. That’s the one place the odds are that if and when the Never Ending Tour does end, Dylan won’t be.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour

Invisible Hits is a column in which Tyler Wilcox scours the internet for the best (and strangest) bootlegs, rarities, outtakes, and live clips.

Only a pandemic could bring Bob Dylan’s so-called Never Ending Tour to a halt. Since 1988, Dylan has travelled the world relentlessly, often playing upwards of 100 shows a year in clubs, theaters, arenas—even minor league baseball stadiums. This year looked no less busy for the legend, who turns 79 on May 24. He had a full slate of dates in Japan scheduled for spring and a coast-to-coast North American jaunt in the summer (not to mention the June 19 release of Rough and Rowdy Ways , his first album of original material since 2013). Of course, all of his shows have been cancelled. For the first time in decades, Dylan is off the road.

Perhaps now is a good time to explore the vast archives of Never Ending Tour live recordings. The closest we have to an official concert album from this era is 1994’s lukewarm MTV Unplugged LP; Dylan has only parceled out Never Ending Tour performances on various compilations. So, like so many other parts of his life and work, die-hards will need to seek out unofficial sources to get a fuller picture of what the man has been doing onstage for the past 32 years.

Where To Start

With 30+ years of Never Ending Tour bootlegs available, it’s tough to know where to start. Each era has at least something to recommend it; my advice is to head for the sweet spot of the late-1990s/early-2000s. During this time, Dylan recruited a backing band that stands among his best: guitarists Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton, ex-Jerry Garcia Band drummer David Kemper, and mainstay bassist Tony Garnier. This combination of musicians could handle the breadth of the Dylan catalogue with grace, subtlety, and imagination. It’s no wonder Bob drafted the entire ensemble for his 2001 masterwork Love and Theft , the first time he’d brought a NET band into the studio.

The group’s prowess is on full display in a recently surfaced, crystal-clear tape from summer 2000 in Saratoga Springs, New York. The show crackles with energy, from the bluegrass stylings of the acoustic set to the electric bounce of “Country Pie.” Dylan clearly relishes his band’s intricate interplay and soulful backing vocals, responding with a warm, friendly performance (for Bob, at least). Check out the musical fireworks of their breakneck “Drifter’s Escape,” or the delightfully rambling “It Ain’t Me, Babe” towards the end of the show, with Dylan’s harmonica leading the group into a stirring half-time breakdown. This doesn’t sound like a bunch of timid backing musicians. This sounds like a band .

“It Used To Go Like That, Now It Goes Like This”

“It used to go like that, now it goes like this,” Dylan famously proclaimed during his controversial electric tours of the mid-’60s. It’s been his modus operandi ever since. For Dylan, the studio version of a song is only a sketch to be embellished and transformed onstage. During the Never Ending Tour, a common (and clichéd) complaint is that you might not recognize what tune you’re hearing until it’s halfway done. But these radical reinventions are thrilling more often than not, a chance to hear Dylan turn his songs inside out, twisting them into new shapes.

For example, take a listen to an intense 1988 arrangement of “ Gates of Eden ,” which had previously been relegated to acoustic sets. Here, Dylan’s band cranks the volume, encouraging a positively seething performance from their leader, which is matched by a series of vicious guitar solos from G.E. Smith (yes, of Saturday Night Live fame ). Or dig the smoky rendition of Time Out of Mind ’s “ Tryin’ to Get to Heaven ,” which features jazz-inflected chord progressions, a haunted Dylan vocal, and gorgeous guitar work. Even Dylan’s best-known works aren’t safe: Recent years’ setlists have included a slightly reggae take on “All Along the Watchtower” and a quizzical, bouncy “ Tangled Up in Blue .” Dylan is still finding new ways into his old material, keeping things interesting for both himself and his audience. The highlight of last fall’s North American jaunt was a hushed, spacey rendering of “Not Dark Yet” that could’ve been at home on OK Computer .

Weird One-Offs & Rarities

Never Ending Tour setlists have grown somewhat more rigid in recent years. But Dylanologists still wait with bated breath to find out which left-field song choices he’ll toss out from show to show. One night in Detroit in 1990, he opened with the first-ever live version of Blood on the Tracks ’ closer “Buckets of Rain” —and has never played it since. At Madison Square Garden in 2002, Bob decided to give the old Basement Tapes chestnut “Yea! Heavy and a Bottle Of Bread” its live debut . In London in 2003, the audience was treated to his first spin through “Romance in Durango” since 1976. A few years later in Spain, Dylan trotted out one of his deepest cuts, the awesomely goofy “ Handy Dandy ,” for its only onstage performance.

Surprise covers pop up occasionally, too. The crowd in Clarkston, Michigan, in 2013 heard a stirring version of Dylan’s then-tourmate Richard Thompson’s “ 52 Vincent Black Lightning .” A few weeks after his comrade Tom Petty died in 2016, Bob paid tribute with a yearning “ Learning to Fly .” And in 2018, he crooned his way through “Moon River” in Savannah, Georgia, the birthplace of the song’s lyricist, Johnny Mercer. It’s impossible to predict when and where these rarities will emerge—but being there when they do is a Bobcat’s dream come true.

Guest Stars Galore

An idiosyncratic vocalist to say the least, Dylan is not the easiest duet partner. But throughout the Never Ending Tour, musicians have found it hard to resist the invitation. Dylan and Van Morrison have locked horns on several occasions, attempting to out-growl each other on Morrison’s “One Irish Rover” or Dylan and the Band’s “ I Shall Be Released” (the latter also featuring Joni Mitchell). Jack White hopped onstage in Detroit in 2004 to perform a rambunctious version of the White Stripes’ “ Ball and Biscuit .” Sheryl Crow was an encore regular for awhile: Here she is in 1997 adding her pipes and accordion to “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” One of Dylan’s stranger and more successful partnerships came in 1995, when he and Patti Smith dueted on a quietly breathtaking “Dark Eyes” in New York City, rescuing the song from Bob’s mid-’80s flop Empire Burlesque . The pair’s harmonies may not be pitch-perfect, but the chemistry between them is as good as it gets.

Of course, some of Bob’s guests prefer to remain in an instrumental role. Way back at the beginning of the Never Ending Tour in 1988, Neil Young sat in with Dylan’s band for a series of Northern California shows, adding his unmistakably piercing guitar to the proceedings. This brief Young-Dylan summit was a high-energy, no-nonsense affair—and extremely fun. Just listen to Bob almost cracking up on a ragged ride through the old rockabilly chestnut “Everybody’s Movin’” during the encore.

Whether Dylan is on or off the road, his legacy will continue to be spoken of in reverent tones, but the Never Ending Tour has shown time and time again that his art isn’t a museum piece just yet. “It’s alive every night,” was how Dylan described it in 2006. These NET tapes prove him right.

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Untold Dylan

The meaning behind the music and words of Bob Dylan

The Never Ending Tour

This series of remarkable articles complete with audios from the concerts is written by Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet), and charts Dylan’s Never Ending Tour with musical examples throughout.

In each case the mainstays of the tour are listed, with an example of each song taken from one of the concerts in the tour.  We believe this is the only collection that has ever undertaken this massive task.

The series was completed on 22 January 2024, and an index to the series is published below.   However it’s not all over since we are now running “The Never Ending Tour Extended”.  Details of that appear on the home page.

• The Never-Ending Tour: 1987 – Farewell to all that
• 1988: Desperate stratagems, Part 1: Heroes and Villains
• 1988 Part 2: The 60s revisited
• 1988 Part 3: Absolutely still on the road
• 1989 Part 1: A sharper edge
• 1989 Part 2 – A fire in the sun
• 1989 Part 3: Blown out on the trail
• 1990 Part 1: Vomiting Fire
• 1990 Part 2 – Songs of love, songs of betrayal
• 1991: Part 1 Hidden Gems in a Train Wreck – The Undesirables
• 1991 Part 2 – Feet walking by themselves
• 1991 part 3: King of the unsteady
• 1992 part 1: Heading for the promised land
• 1992 part 2: What good am I
• 1992 part 3 – All the friends I ever had are gone
• 1993 part 1 – Tangled up in guitars
• 1993, part 2 – The epic adventures of Mr Guitar Man
• 1993, part 3 – Mr Guitar Man goes acoustic
• 1993, part 4 – The Supper Club and beyond.
• 1993, part 5 – A series of dreams
• 1994, part 1 – Full voice absolute vintage Dylan
• 1994, part 2 – Greatest ever Hard Rain
• 1994, part 3 – Absolutely Vintage Dylan, Encore
• 1994, part 4: I’d give you the sky high above
• 1994, part 5: Dancing to the nightingale’s tune
• 1995, part 1: The Prague Revelation and other astonishments
• 1995, part 2: The Prague Revelation – Salt for Salt, Peak Prague
• 1995, Part 3, The Prague Revelation – down in the flood
• 1995, Part 4, Beyond Prague, London Calling
• 1995, Part 5.  Acoustic wonderland
• 1995 Part 6: The Kingdom of Experience
• Never Ending Tour, 1996, part 1. Busy being born. With Al Kooper in Liverpool
• Never Ending Tour, 1996,  Part 2  – More Liverpool
• Never Ending Tour 1996 part 3: Berlin and Beyond
• Never Ending Tour, 1996, part 4. In the House of Blues forever.
• Never Ending Tour, 1997, part 1.  The Lonely Graveyards of the Mind
• Never Ending Tour 1997, part 2: Hanging onto a Shadow
• Never Ending Tour 1997, part 3: I came in from the wilderness
• Never Ending Tour 1997, part 4: Like so many times before
• NET 1998 Part 1: One who sings with his tongue on fire.
• 1998 Part 2: Friends and other strangers
• The Never Ending Tour 1998, part 3, What’s a Protest Song?
• Never ending tour, 1998, Part 4. You won’t regret it
• NET, 1999, Part 1: Every night in a combustible way.
• Never Ending Tour, 1999, part 2 – Is everything as hollow as it seems?
• NET, 1999, part 3 Touchdown at Tramps – Archaic Music
• Never Ending Tour, 1999, Part 4  – Minstrel Bob
• Never Ending Tour, 1999, part 5 – Inside the museum.
• NET, 1999, part 6. Honky Tonk Dylan: Despair and sentimentality.
• Never Ending Tour 2000, Part 1 – Master Vocalist: Finding voice
• NET, 2000, Part 2. Master Vocalist – Please heed these words that I speak
• NET 2000 Part 3: Master Vocalist – Rock n roil
• NET 2000 Part 4: Back to Bedrock I
• NET 2000 Part 5: Back to Bedrock II
• Never Ending Tour, 2000, part 6 – Beyond Dylan
• Never Ending Tour, 2001, Part 1 – Love and fate: acoustic 1
• Never Ending Tour, 2001 Part 2 – The Spirit of Protest: acoustic 2
• Never Ending Tour, 2001, Part 3 – In bed with the blues
• Never Ending Tour, 2001, Part 4 – Down Electric Avenue
• NET, 2001, Part 5: Power, Wealth, Knowledge and Salvation
• NET 2001 Part 6: More power, wealth, knowledge and salvation
• 2002, Part 1: Never Ending Tour, 2002,, Seattle Showdown
• Part 2   Tickling the Ivories
• Part 3:  Manchester and other outstanding performances
• Part 4: Magnificent performances
• Part 5: Accidentally friends and other strangers
• Part 6: Atlanta Aftermath and Manchester Moonshine
• NET, 2003, Part One. Things come alive or else they fall flat
• 2003 part 2: Pounding pianos and hectic harps
• 2003, part 3:I know I’m only living
• 2003, part 4: No flash in the pan
• 2003, part 5: Can there be a perfect performance?
• 2003, part 6: The Ragged Clown
• 2004: Part 1: The best singing audience
• 2004: Part 2: The jazz connection
• Never Ending Tour, 2004, part 3, Harping On
• Never Ending Tour, 2004, Part 4 More jazz, regulars and rarities
• NET 2004 Part 5: Rocking on
• Never Ending Tour 2004 part 6: Stone you and then come back again
• NET, 2004, part 7 Epilogue: Sing me back home
• Never Ending Tour 2005 part 1: Choice cuts from London and Dublin
• Never Ending Tour 2005 part 2: More choice cuts from London and Dublin.
• Never Ending Tour 2005 part 3: Seattle Stopovers
• NET, 2005, Part 4, Hello, Goodbye: First Ever, Last Ever
• NET 2005, part 5: Old friends grow old too
• Never Ending Tour, 2005, Part 6: God knows you gotta weep
• The Never Ending Tour 2005 part 7: Epilogue. Tell Ol’ Bill and other matters
• Never Ending Tour, 2006, Part 1, Enter The Organ Grinder
• Never Ending Tour, 2006, Part 2, Enter Modern Times
• Never Ending Tour, 2006, Part 3.  Walking through the Cities of the plague
• Never Ending Tour 2006, Part 4.  Strange Brews
• NET 2007 Part 1: The light is never dying
• Never Ending Tour, 2007, part 2: Your servant both night and day.
• NET, 2007, Part 3, One foot on the platform
• NET 2008, part 1, Industry Standards and Dallas Delights
• NET 2008 Part 2 Something’s out of whack: Salzburg and Odense
• NET 2008 part 3: Controversy Surrounds Him
• NET 2008 Part 4 Drowning in the honky-tonk lagoon
• Never Ending Tour 2009 part 1 Contending forces: Courting Disaster
• NET 2009 part 2: contending forces: through the tears and the laughter
• NET 2009 part 3 The blood of the land in my voice: Together Through Life
• NET 2009 Part 4 – foundations: the raw and the real
• NET 2009 Part 5 – Old things become new again
• N ET 2009 Part 6 – Rolling the Rock
• NET 2020 Part 1 – Centre Stage, a change coming on
• NET 2010 Part 2.1 Mostly Pardova: Fires on the Moon
• NET 2010 Part 2.1  Fires on the moon
• NET 2010 part 3 Jumping on the monkey’s back
• NET 2010 Part 4.1  Stay Dylan Stay
• NET 2010: Part 4.2  Stay Dylan Stay
• NET 2011: Part 1.  Things should start to get interesting
• NET 2011: Part 2.  Sultans of Swing
• NET 2011: Part 3.  I lit the torch and looked to the east
• NET 2011: Part 4.  Forgetful hearts and the Crystal Cat blues
• NET 2011 Part 5 – Quick man, I gotta run
• NET 2012 part 1 The Ivory Revolution Begins
• NET 2012 part 2 The Ivory Revolution Continues
• NET 2012 Part 3 New wine in old bottles
• NET 2013 Part 1: Shedding old Favourites: A Roman Farewell.
• NET 2013 part 2: The art of the Dramatic Monologue
• Never Ending Tour 2013 Part 3: A Date with The Faerie Queene?
• NET 2013 Part 4: Softly softly golden oldies
• Never Ending Tour 2013 part 5 – As Good As New
• The Never Ending Tour 2014 part 1: The Setlist, the first half.
• NET 2014 part 2 The Setlist: The second half
• Never Ending Tour 2014 Part 3: The survivors
• NET 2015 Part 1 Singing to you, not at you
• NET 2015 Part 2: Bring on the setlist
• NET 2015 Part 3: It doesn’t get any better than this
• The best ever year for the Never Ending Tour? 2015 Part 4
• Never Ending Tour: 2016  Part 1 – Riding the Wave
• NET 2016 Part 2: Embodying American Music
• NET 2016 Part 3: A New Art Form? Enter the Nobel Laureate
• The Never Ending Tour: 2017 part 1. Songs on the rebound
• NET 2017 Part 2 The Moveable Feast
• NET 2017 Part 3 You went through my pockets while I was sleeping
• NET 2018 Part 1
• NET 2018 Part 2
• NET 2018 Part 3 Riding the Setlist Wave
• Never Ending Tour 2018 part 4: Hell bent for leather
• Never Ending Tour 2019 part 1 The liberated republic
• NET 2019 part 2 We can either play or we can pose
• NET 2019 part 3 The Greatest Band Ever To Hit The Stage
• 2019 part 4: Virgil’s farewell: It’s not dark yet

You might also enjoy The Never Ending Tour Extended which traces the way individual songs have changed their format across the years.  The most recent edition, which itself contains an index of previous articles in the series, is at…

• The Never Ending Tour Extended: Summer Days from wild 12 bars to country smooth

You might also like to note…

Mike’s previous mega-series for Untold Dylan: Bob Dylan Master Harpist contains six articles which between them offer the most comprehensive guide to Dylan’s harmonica techniques ever assembled.

Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)  is a novelist and poet, born and raised in shit-faced little towns in the South Island of New Zealand. He graduated with a degree in Political Science from the University of Canterbury, and a sore head from too much educated rap.  He has also contributed the major series to this site.

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Bob Dylan Unveils “Never Ending Tour” Dates for Spring 2022

The post Bob Dylan Unveils “Never Ending Tour” Dates for Spring 2022 appeared first on Consequence .

Bob Dylan ’s “Never Ending Tour” is back. Today, the legendary singer-songwriter announced the next leg of his expedition around the world for spring 2022, in support of his most recent album, 2020’s Rough and Rowdy Ways .

Dylan’s “Never Ending Tour” resumes in Phoenix on March 3rd. The 27-date run will take him primarily through the southwest US over the course of five weeks, wrapping up in Oklahoma City on April 14th.

If your city has yet to be announced, however, have no fear: Dylan’s website teases the “Never Ending Tour” as continuing all the way through 2024, with more dates to be announced. As for this run, ticket presale begins on January 27th at 10:00 a.m. local time, with general onsale on the 28th. Grab your tickets over at Ticketmaster .

Prepare for the next leg of the “Never Ending Tour” by revisiting Consequence ‘s staff ranking of Dylan’s 15 best albums . At the end of 2021, the venerable songwriter gave that half-assed year the half-assed light show it deserved.

Bob Dylan 2022 Tour Dates: 03/03 – Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Federal Theatre 04/04 – Tucson, AZ @ Tucson Music Hall 03/06 – Albuquerque, NM @ Kiva Auditorium 03/08 – Lubbock, TX @ Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts & Sciences 03/10 – Irving, TX @ Toyota Music Factory 03/11 – Sugar Land, TX @ Smart Financial Centre 03/13 – San Antonio, TX @ Majestic Theatre 03/14 – San Antonio, TX @ Majestic Theatre 03/16 – Austin, TX @ Bass Hall 03/18 – Shreveport, LA @ Municipal Auditorium 03/19 – New Orleans, LA @ Saenger Theatre 03/21 – Montgomery, AL @ Montgomery PAC 03/23 – Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium 03/24 – Atlanta, GA @ Fox Theatre 03/26 – Savannah, GA @ Johnny Mercer Theatre 03/27 – North Charleston, SC @ North Charleston PAC 03/29 – Columbia, SC @ Township Auditorium 03/30 – Charlotte, NC @ Ovens Auditorium 04/01 – Greensboro, NC @ Steven Tanger Center 04/02 – Asheville, NC @ Thomas Wolfe Auditorium 04/04 – Chattanooga, TN @ Tivoli Theatre 04/05 – Birmingham, AL @ BJCC Concert Hall 04/07 – Mobile, AL @ Saenger Theatre 04/09 – Memphis, TN @ Orpheum Theatre 04/11 – Little Rock, AR @ Robinson Center 04/13 – Tulsa, OK @ Brady Theatre 04/14 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Thelma Gaylord Performing Arts Theatre

Bob Dylan Unveils “Never Ending Tour” Dates for Spring 2022 Abby Jones

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Never Ending Stories: Bob Dylan & the Never Ending Tour

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A podcast about Bob Dylan & the Never Ending Tour. Presented by Ian Grant, Evan Laffer, and Steven Hyden. Subscribe on Patreon for full access to all episodes at https://patreon.com/neverendingstories Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Like what you hear? SUBSCRIBE TO NEVER ENDING STORIES NOW FOR ACCESS TO ALL EPISODES AND BOOTLEGS ~ July 19th, 1987 Autzen Stadium Eugene, OR The Players Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar Jerry Garcia: guitar, vocals Bob Weir: guitar, vocals Phil Lesh: bass Brent Mydland: keyboards Bill Kreutzmann: drums Mickey Hart: drums Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Creator Never Ending Stories
• Years Active 2023 - 2024
• Episodes 85
• Rating Clean
• Copyright © Never Ending Stories
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clock This article was published more than  9 years ago

Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour is still rolling, but things have changed

Bob Dylan acknowledges but doesn’t embrace the name that has come to describe his life on the road: the Never Ending Tour. “There’s no such thing as forever,” he told Rolling Stone  in 2009. “Anybody ever say that Duke Ellington was on a Never Ending Bandstand Tour?”

But the name has stuck, and for good reason. Dylan will take off just a few winter months before getting the band back together to head overseas and return to familiar cities across the United States. Just this year, he has played in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and countries throughout Eastern and Western Europe before returning for a U.S. leg that will take him through early December.

It’s a stark contrast from the 1970s and ’80s, when Dylan would only occasionally tackle short world tours and appear at such major events as Live Aid and Farm Aid. But in 1988, Dylan discovered the right road rhythm and took off, hitting the circuit in June and playing 73 shows. He hasn’t played fewer than 80 shows a year since, and as recently as 2010, he played 102 concerts. At 73 years old, Dylan and his band are scheduled to play 92 shows this year. And he somehow has found time to record a new album of covers, “Shadows in the Night,” which is slated for a 2015 release.

One of those new songs — his take on Frank Sinatra’s “Stay With Me” — has surfaced at the end of Dylan’s most recent performances. Fans at his show Tuesday at Constitution Hall can expect to hear that number and a slew of songs from his more recent studio albums — “Tempest,” “Together Through Life,” “Modern Times” — with a few older favorites sprinkled in.

Here are a few more things you should — and shouldn't — expect from Dylan's concert on Tuesday.

Gathering Moss

"Like a Rolling Stone” is Bob Dylan’s best-known song. And the six-minute single, now 49 years old, is arguably his masterpiece: Rolling Stone magazine has called it the greatest song of all time, and the tune has earned similar praise from critics and chroniclers of the music industry over the years. As such, it’s been a staple of his live performances for nearly a half-century.

But no longer: Dylan has seemingly eliminated “Like a Rolling Stone” from his set. Just two years ago, he played it at every show — including his stop at Verizon Center — as part of a hits-heavy closing portion of the set that often included “All Along the Watchtower,” “Ballad of a Thin Man” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” But he has played the song live just twice since that D.C. concert in November 2012: the following night in Brooklyn and then the following November at a show in Rome. But in 79 shows through this past weekend, Dylan hasn’t asked “How does it feel?” to any audience in this calendar year.

Another trend of note: “All Along the Watchtower,” which Dylan has played at every performance, almost without fail, for the past four years, suddenly disappeared from the set list four weeks ago during a three-night stand in Los Angeles and hasn’t returned.

Don't look back

Seeking something familiar from your Bob Dylan set list? A few classic tunes have made the cut for most of the year, but “Blowin’ in the Wind” is the only song you should expect to hear from the first volume of “ Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits .” Other old favorites that show up regularly include “Simple Twist of Fate,” Tangled Up in Blue” and “She Belongs to Me.”

Change at the top

Although some of the old, familiar songs have cycled out of recent set lists, “Things Have Changed” has emerged as a constant at the top of his shows. Doesn’t ring a bell? If you saw the 2000 movie “Wonder Boys,” you may recognize the track. Dylan also performed it at the 2001 Academy Awards before accepting the Oscar for best original song. Still nothing? “Things Have Changed” played in the background of Dylan’s surprising Chrysler commercial (“There’s nothing more American than America”), that aired during Super Bowl XLVIII.

Bob Dylan Appearing Tuesday at Constitution Hall, 1776 D Street NW. Show starts at 8 p.m. www.dar.org/constitution-hall . $73-$123.

Previous Bob Dylan coverage:

A quick history of Bob Dylan in Washington

Five Myths about Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan and "The Basement Tapes": By the Numbers

Bob Dylan Live Review: Latest, and perhaps last, chapter of The Never Ending Tour comes to a masterful close

The penultimate night of the rough and rowdy ways tour caps off one of the strongest stretches of dylan’s live career..

ACL Live, Austin, Texas, April 5, 2024

Bob Dylan has had a long and fruitful relationship with audiences in Austin. Since playing one of his first shows with The Hawks here in September 1965, Dylan has played the Texas capital nearly two dozen times, culminating in a two-night stand here Friday and Saturday that concludes one of the most remarkably consistent stretches in Dylan’s concert history.

Contradicting his decades-long reputation as a mercurial and unpredictable performer, Dylan has delivered almost exactly the same 17-song set since November 2021, when he resumed touring after a nearly two-year pandemic break. 2020’s  Rough And Rowdy Ways  is the fulcrum: For more than 200 shows over the past three years, he’s played nine of the album’s ten songs, leaving off only the epic Murder Most Foul .

READ MORE: Bob Dylan at The London Palladium reviewed

The rest of the show almost always includes the same back-catalogue selections, from openers Watching the River Flow and Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine, to the closing Every Grain of Sand from 1981  Shot Of Love . At this point, die-hard fans know better than to expect his best-known songs: We may never again hear him trot out Like A Rolling Stone or Blowin’ In The Wind or Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door. And that’s all right: We don’t expect a greatest-hits revue from the man who wrote “he who isn’t busy being born is busy dying.”

As such, Dylan shows of late are partly a matter of whether he pulls out a surprise in any given city. If he likes your town, you might get an extra song: Earlier this week in Louisiana, he added a couple of Hank Williams nuggets, playing Jambalaya in Lafayette April 2 and On The Banks Of The Old Pontchartrain in New Orleans April 1.

Tonight in Austin, we’re treated to Across The Borderline, a Ry Cooder/Jim Dickinson/John Hiatt song first recorded by Freddy Fender in 1982. The new addition to the set seemed to energize Dylan: It features arguably his strongest vocal performance of the night, and his mid-song piano solo is gorgeously lyrical.

The performance marked the first time Dylan has played the song this century. It was a staple of his 1986 tour with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers; he may well have brought it back this evening  because it’s the title track of a 1993 album by Austin legend Willie Nelson, with whom Dylan will be touring from June to September.

Those summer shows are part of Nelson’s annual Outlaw Tour, which also will feature Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, John Mellencamp, Billy Strings and others. The multi-artist bills almost certainly will require abbreviating the 100-minute sets Dylan has been playing since 2021; as such, this weekend’s Austin concerts may well bring an end to this  Rough And Rowdy Ways  phase of his Never Ending Tour.

Dylan’s band has changed slightly since his March 2022 appearance at Austin’s Bass Concert Hall. Longtime bassist Tony Garnier remains the anchor, with pedal steel/fiddle player Don Herron aboard for nearly two decades now. Nashville guitarist Doug Lancio replaced Austin ace Charlie Sexton when Dylan returned from the pandemic, teaming with fellow guitarist Bob Britt (who joined in 2019). Drummer Jerry Pentecost recently took over from Charley Drayton, who played the 2022 Austin show.

READ MORE: Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks Revisited

Tonight, the band flexes its muscles on occasion, but just as often they hold back to provide space for Dylan’s singing, which has been defying nature for quite some time. His voice, once a ravaged rasp that paled in comparison to his youthful glory years, somehow improved as Dylan reached senior-citizen status. Near the end of 1979’s Gotta Serve Somebody, his full-throated vamp sounds surprisingly like the ghost of David Bowie.

A late-set choice of Johnny Cash’s Big River, which Dylan first covered in the late 1990s and has played at most of his shows in the past month, finds the band digging into a deep rockabilly groove after Dylan’s jaunty piano kicks things off. A highlight from  Rough And Rowdy Ways  was the nine-minute meditation Key West (Philosopher Pirate), on which Lancio switched from acoustic to electric guitar for a more atmospheric wash of sound behind Dylan’s sprightly melodic piano runs that at times brings to mind, of all things, the theme song from the 1980s TV show Hill Street Blues .

And Dylan’s presentation of his older songs, once altered so drastically that even longtime fans couldn’t name the tune till it was half-over, has been reined in. Well-travelled numbers such as 1967’s I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight and 1969’s To Be Alone With You still sound different from their recorded counterparts, but it’s less of a guessing-game now. (An exception: 1971’s When I Paint My Masterpiece, which has been reworked to where it uncannily resembles Irving Berlin’s 1920s classic Puttin’ on the Ritz .)

Dylan speaks not a word the entire night, though he acknowledges the crowd’s rapt attention at the end of the show by stepping out front for a few gracious bows. Then the lights go down, the band stroll off, and Bob Dylan’s 21st Austin concert comes to an end. Another full house at the 2,700-capacity theatre will greet him on Saturday night  — and then, what’s next? These past few years have seemed like smooth sailing for Dylan, which probably means it’s time to rock the boat.

Watching The River Flow

Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine

I Contain Multitudes

False Prophet

When I Paint My Masterpiece

Black Rider

I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight

My Own Version Of You

Crossing The Rubicon

To Be Alone With You

Key West (Philosopher Pirate)

Gotta Serve Somebody

Across The Borderline

I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You

Mother Of Muses

Goodbye Jimmy Reed

Every Grain Of Sand

Main picture: Bob Dylan at London's Hyde Park 2019 (credit: Matthew Baker/Getty Images)

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The Razor's Edge: Bob Dylan and the Neverending Tour Paperback – September 1, 2001

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"You hear sometimes about the glamour of the road, but you get over that real fast. There are a lot of times that's no different from going to work in the morning. Still, you're either a player or you're not a player… If you just go out every three years or so, like I was doing for a while, that's when you lose your touch. If you are going to be a performer, you've got to give it your all."-Bob Dylan

While most of rock's elder statesmen rarely venture far from home, the ultimate rock icon Bob Dylan has spent practically all of his life since 1986 touring the globe-including a gig at a military academy, a private convert for Japanese businessmen and a special performance for Pope John Paul II: Why?

Respected Dylan expert Andrew Muir documents the ups and downs of this unprecedented trek, and finds time to tell the story of his own curious meeting with Dylan.

"'Excuse me Mr. Dylan' I squeak. HE MOVES-and how-the head swivels round in an instant. Dylan is staring me in the face (or at least the rivers of swat where my face should be)and says pointedly and interrogatively: 'Yeah'…"

Muir also tries to get to grips with what exactly it all means-both for Dylan and for the Bobcats: dedicated Dylan followers, like himself, who trade tapes of every show and regularly cross the globe to catch up with the latest leg of The Never Ending Tour.

• Print length 256 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Helter Skelter Publishing
• Publication date September 1, 2001
• Dimensions 6.25 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
• ISBN-10 1900924137
• ISBN-13 978-1900924139
• See all details

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About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Helter Skelter Publishing (September 1, 2001)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1900924137
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1900924139
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
• #12,724 in Rock Music (Books)
• #14,115 in Music History & Criticism (Books)

About the author

Andrew muir.

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Sunami MONSTER ENERGY OUTBREAK TOUR wsg Never Ending Game, Ingrown, D Bloc, Torena, Bad Beat

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FROZEN CROWN Make Their US Live Debut At ProgPower USA 2024; Fan-Filmed Video Of Entire Show Streaming

September 23, 2024, a day ago

news frozen crown heavy metal progpower usa 2024

Rising Italian power metal outfit, Frozen Crown, made their US live debut at ProgPower USA 2024 on September 7th, held at Center Stage, in Atlanta, GA. Check out fan-filmed video of their entire set below.

"Neverending"  "The Water Dancer"  "Call of the North"  "Steel And Gold"  "The Lone Stranger"  "Kings"  "Far Beyond"  "I Am the Tyrant"  "Netherstorm"  "The Shieldmaiden"

Frozen Crown recently unveiled the guitar-driven title track, “War Hearts”, alongside a powerful official music video. Taken from their new studio album and Napalm Records debut, War Hearts, out on October 18, the uplifting track combines the strong message of fighting for your dreams with incredible vocal expertise and ultimate high-speed riffs. Determined to make it through the rough storm as war angels, relentless drums merged with a thrilling guitar solo by newest member Alessia Lanzone reflect the confident atmosphere.

With their youthful, raw and passionate approach to metal, Frozen Crown have garnered significant media exposure with their previous four albums and their massive hit, “Neverending”, which has gathered over 11 million views on YouTube to date. The band has further cemented their reputation with their dynamic live performance with legendary acts like U.D.O. in 2023.

Frozen Crown on the new single “War Hearts“: “We're overly excited and proud to introduce our new album's title track ‘War Hearts’ and to unveil its official videoclip! ‘War Hearts’ was the first song we wrote for the new album and it's meant to be a statement about how fast and uncompromising the rest of the album is going to be. It's also the first song to mark the appearance of our young new guitar player Alessia and her blazing solos. The video is once again settled in Italy, between the windy ruins of the Avigliana Castle, and once again portrays the band in the rawest manner possible, without any kind of post-production or artifice involved.”

Founded in 2017, the relentless band has performed at several festivals like Sabaton Open Air, Metal Fest Plzen and Rock Imperium Festival, headlined two Japanese tours and followed extensive European touring with significant bands such as DragonForce and Nanowar Of Steel – topped by an upcoming tour with Kamelot this fall. Joined by their newest member, 18-year-old guitar prodigy Alessia Lanzone, the band's characteristic sound has been expanded by her skills, adding depth and complexity to their performances.

Featuring all members on the recording for the first time, War Hearts symbolizes a fresh start and pays homage to the legendary Children Of Bodom with its album title, a band that inspired Frozen Crown's youthful, raw and passionate approach to metal. Addressing themes of self-improvement, awareness, personal growth and inner struggles, album opener and title track "War Hearts” is about fighting for your dreams in the darkest of nights and creates a powerful and uplifting message of always staying strong, making it through the storm as war angels. "I Am The Wind” features soaring choruses with dual vocals from frontwoman Jade and guitarist Federico, ingenious guitar riffs and perfectly blended drums, while the lyrics inspire listeners to let go like the wind and rise to shine again. To wrap up the album, tracks like "Edge of Reality”, inspired by the ’86 Highlander movie, and "Bloodlines”, referencing the Vampire: The Masquerade series of board and video games, showcase the band's colorful storytelling.

Frozen Crownconstantly define and refine their sound, pushing their trademark elements to new levels of complexity without forgetting the characteristic catchy hooks. War Hearts exceeds their previous successes and solidifies their place in the global metal scene.

War Hearts will be available in the following formats:

- Ltd. 1LP Gatefold Crystal Clear Black Marbled (Napalm Records Mailorder exclusive) - strictly ltd. to 200 copies - 1LP Gatefold Translucent Red (Napalm Records Mailorder exclusive) - Digisleeve - Digital

Pre-order here .

War Hearts tracklisting:

"War Hearts" "Steel And Gold" "To Live To Die" "Night Of The Wolf" "On Silver Wings" "Edge Of Reality" "Bloodlines" "I Am The Windv "King Of The Sky" "Ice Dragon"

"Steel And Gold" video:

Album introduction video:

Frozen Crown are:

Giada "Jade" Etro - vocals Federico Mondelli - vocals, guitar Fabiola Bellomo - guitar Francesco Zof - bass Niso Tomasini - drums Alessia Lanzone - guitar

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