As 1978 began, BOB DYLAN prepared to shift gear yet again. Launching his first world tour since the “electric” controversy of 1966, he seemed intent on another decisive and equally dramatic break with his past. But what followed over the next 12 months was transformative, even by Dylan’s mercurial standards…
Forty-five years on, Damien Love reconstructs one of Dylan’s most intense years, from satin stage suits and silent audiences to a knife-wielding Sid Vicious and the biggest crowd of his career. “People complained, ‘This doesn’t sound like Bob Dylan’ – well, that’s the fucking point.”
ON February 20 1978, Bob Dylan stood on stage at Tokyo’s cavernous Budokan concert hall wearing a bespoke three-piece white silk suit, a blue muffler and a generous application of eyeliner. It was his first time playing Japan – the first night he’d toured anywhere outside North America since the epic of 1966, when he and the Hawks famously flew into an electric storm of controversy. And, once again, he was venturing out backed by a band unlike any he’d had before.
The year-long world tour that stretched ahead was his most ambitious and demanding, leading an 11-piece group through 114 concerts across three continents. It eventually played to some two million people – with an estimated quarter million of them at one gig alone.
It also became one of his most polarising tours. Fans cherished some shows as the greatest they’d ever seen. Critics, particularly in America, had the knives out. Contrasting Dylan’s new style with the rootsy romance of the preceding Rolling Thunder Revue, the undertaking was castigated as soulless showbiz cabaret, a cash-grab that, following Dylan’s recent divorce, was swiftly labelled ‘The Alimony Tour’. The band he’d assembled was disparaged as his attempt to ape everyone from Elvis Presley to Neil Diamond and Bruce Springsteen. The reaction was encapsulated by the headline to Rolling Stone’s review of Street-Legal, the album Dylan released mid-tour: “Never So Utterly Fake”.
“That period was unfairly condemned,” says Rob Stoner, who helped Dylan build the 1978 band. “Sure, it was radically different to Rolling Thunder: matching outfits, a slick presentation, staging. They said we were trying to copy Springsteen because we had a sax player. Sorry, what the fuck? That sax player was Steve Douglas, man. The guy who played on all the Phil Spector stuff. One of the Wrecking Crew. We weren’t imitating anybody.”
“The tagline everyone agreed on was ‘Dylan’s Gone Vegas’,” says multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield. “To me, it’s incomprehensible how people could’ve made that remark.”
All that criticism lay in the future, though. For the moment, on stage at Budokan on opening night, Dylan had an immediate problem. Back in 1966, he’d faced down boos and catcalls. Now he faced near-silence.
ROB STONER
The opener, a kicking version of Curtis Jones’s 1937 blues “Lonesome Bedroom”, might have been an obscure choice, but Dylan had followed it with a song anyone coming to see him would surely know, “Mr Tambourine Man”. Still nothing. Aside from a polite ripple of applause, the 14,000-strong audience sat quiet. Dylan glanced over his left shoulder, where Stoner, similarly swathed
