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.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
