Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour Began 36 Years Ago This Week With a Show Critics Scorched

By Andy Greene

Andy Greene

Bob Dylan‘s June 7, 1988, concert at the Concord Pavilion in suburban San Francisco was not seen at the time as a landmark moment in music history. This was a low point in Dylan’s career after two truly dismal albums (Knocked Out Loaded and Down in the Groove), two years of non-stop touring where he was backed at various points by Tom Petty and the Heartbreaks and the Grateful Dead, and many nights where it felt like he was phoning it in. He even made a movie, Hearts of Fire, where he played a washed-up rock star. It was such a box-office disaster that many hardcore Dylan fans had no clue it even existed. 

Because of all this, the mystique that surrounded Dylan throughout the 1960s and 1970s was largely gone. A couple of days before the Concord Pavilion show, The Sacramento Bee listed it in tiny print on their concert calendar near upcoming shows by Heart/Michael Bolton ($18.50), the Jets ($17.50), Robert Cray ($17.75), and Iron Maiden/Guns N’ Roses ($18.50). “Perhaps his plan is to become so accessible that he’ll rid himself of the Dylan myth he has been saddled with for more than 20 years,” noted The Oakland Tribune in their preview of the show on June 5, 1988, “and be able to just be Dylan the artist.”

As he revealed in his 2004 memoir Chronicles: Volume One, this wasn’t far off from the truth.  In vivid detail, he recounts telling manager Elliot Roberts to book 200 show dates in 1988, and keep up that insane schedule throughout 1989 and 1990. “I figured it would take me at least three years to get to the beginning, to find the right audience, or for the right audience to find me,” Dylan wrote. “The reason I thought it would take three years was that after the first year a lot of the older people wouldn’t be coming back, but younger fans would bring their friends the second year so attendance would be just about equal. And in the third year, those people would also bring their friends and it would form the nucleus of my future audience.

“I definitely needed a new audience because my audience at the time had grown up on my records and was past the point of accepting me as a new artist,” he continues, “and this was understandable. In many ways, this audience was past its prime and its reflexes were shot. They came to stare and not participate. That was okay, but the kind of crowd that would have to find me would be the kind of crowd who didn’t know what yesterday was.”

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The plan went into action at the Concord Pavilion when he walked out with guitarist G.E. Smith, bassist Kenny Aaronson, and drummer Christopher Parker, the smallest band he’d used in his entire career, and kicked into the first live rendition of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” since 1965. It was the first of many stunning moments throughout the night, including the live debut of the Blonde on Blonde classic “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” the first “You’re a Big Girl Now” since 1978, the first “Gotta Serve Somebody” since 1981, the first “Boots of Spanish Leather” since 1963, and the first “Gates of Eden” since 1978.  If that wasn’t enough, un-billed guest Neil Young was onstage for much of the show despite his unfamiliarity with the material or the arrangements. Dylan threw “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Maggie’s Farm” into the end of the set, but he otherwise didn’t play any of his most famous songs. 

The reviews were absolutely vicious. “Dylan stumbled through the music,” wrote Joel Selvin of The San Francisco Chronicle. “There were ragged endings, a sloppy mix and a tentative, uncertain ensemble sound not helped at all, undoubtedly, by carrying an unrehearsed guitarist like Young. Smith shouted out chord changes and directed the band with constant hand signals, but chaos nonetheless prevailed. Dylan, for his part, mumbled lyrics, never dug into his songs with any kind of feeling and generally tossed off the tunes like he could hardly wait to get out of there.”

Selvin wrapped up his review with some brutal parting thoughts: “Dylan used to matter. His records all made personal artistic statements that had a kind of integrity rare in the pop music field. Even as he began to churn out a steady stream of minor albums, he could be counted on for the occasional gem. His concert Tuesday seemed to say that he himself could no longer tell what is special about his work.”

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What Joel Selvin didn’t know, and what nobody could have possibly anticipated in the summer of 1988, even Dylan himself, was that he’d just witnessed the first show of a tour that’s still going after 36 years, and more than 3,700 concerts.

And the plan that Dylan outlined in Chronicles was flawlessly executed. A large percent of casual fans and baby boomers stopped seeing his shows long ago. What remains is a committed group, young and old, who come understanding exactly what they’re going to get. Nobody expects “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” or “Like a Rolling Stone.” If he feels like playing nearly every song from his 2020 LP Rough and Rowdy Ways for five consecutive years, they’ll keep showing up whenever he comes to town.

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