Bob Dylan and the Band brought their reunion tour to arenas all across North America in January 1974 before touching down in New York City at the tail end of the month for three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. Demand for tickets was feverish, and a handwritten spreadsheet at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shows that Yoko Ono, Miles Davis, David Bromberg, Bob Gottlieb, Allen Ginsberg, Murray The K, Mary Martin, Noel “Paul” Stookey, and Sid Bernstein were all on the guest list. (Paul Simon’s name was crossed out.)
John Rockwell from the New York Times was also in attendance for opening night on January 30, 1974. “Yes, the voice of Mr. Dylan and the Band’s singers still sounded a little husky from the rigors of their month on the road,” he wrote. “Mr. Dylan was singing with a care and an in tensity extraordinary even for him. Suddenly—as it had in the Philadelphia concerts early this month—it all came together the rough‐edged, growling baritone, the emphatic delivery, the mocking, laughing distortions of the ends of phrases combined with the Band’s superb backings to present Mr. Dylan’s songs in a totally convincing light. It wasn’t the same as the records. But Mr. Dylan has always been an artist who grows and changes, and he is growing still.”
All three shows were professionally taped, but the only tracks to see official release were “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” from show one on 1974’s Before the Flood and “Highway 61 Revisited” from show two on the Band’s 2005 box set A Musical History. But Dylan’s sets from all three concerts are coming out in full on September 20 as part of the 27-disc copyright protection box set The 1974 Live Recordings.
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Check out a preview of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” from opening night at MSG right here. The Band weren’t on the original recording when Dylan cut the song for Highway 61 Revisited, but they played it with him every night on their legendary 1965/66 tour, where they often faced boos from angry folk purists for playing electric music. Nobody was booing when they reunited in 1974, and the final line of “I’m going back to New York City, I do believe I’ve had enough” from “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” was greeted by roars from the crowd at Madison Square Garden.
Nearly every show from the 1974 tour was captured by bootleggers, but this box set is the first chance to hear most of them with pristine audio. The Band’s nightly set of their own music is excluded.
