Bob Dylan and The Band: Robbie Robertson on the 1974 Tour
by Harvey Kubernik
Bob Dylan and The Band touring in Chicago, 1974 Left to right: Rick Danko (bass), Robbie Robertson (guitar), Bob Dylan (guitar), Levon Helm (drums), via Wikipedia
Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings will release Bob Dylan and The Band’s The 1974 Live Recordings on September 20, 2024, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Dylan’s return to touring that year.
The label’s announcement describes the product: “Featuring all professionally recorded shows from the artist’s 1974 performances backed by the Band, the collection will be available as a deluxe boxed set across 27 CDs. The 1974 Live Recordings offers fans 417 previously unreleased Bob Dylan live tracks, including 133 recordings newly mixed from 16-track tape, and every single surviving soundboard recording, along with new liner notes by journalist and critic Elizabeth Nelson.”
In 2002, I interviewed Robbie Robertson, the Band’s lead guitarist and primary songwriter, and I asked him about the group’s onstage relationship with Dylan and how the ’74 tour came together.
“There was a thing that happened between Bob and The Band that, when we played together, we would just go into a certain gear automatically,” said Robertson. “It was instinctual, like you smelled something in the air, and it made you hungry.
“Whether we were playing in 1966 or 1976, or when we did the tour together in 1974, we would go to a certain place where we just pulled the trigger. It was like, ‘Just burn down the doors because we’re coming through.’ It was a whole other place that we played when we weren’t playing with him. It was a whole place that he played when he wasn’t playing with us. So it was like putting a flame and oil together—or something.
“In 1966, we were just some musicians working with Bob Dylan. Then the people came to the concerts with their minds made up and booed us. At least on the ’74 tour we didn’t get any bottles thrown at us,” he added.
Product shot of the forthcoming 1974 Live Recordings box
In 2016, I interviewed Robertson again and we further discussed the Band’s collaborations with Dylan on the road.
“It’s really a very interesting experiment to see…the world revolved, and everybody came around and said, ‘This is brilliant.’ That was very interesting, to see everything else change around you.
“Well, we didn’t change,” Robertson reiterated. “I don’t know that this has ever happened to anybody else. And it is a phenomenon. That’s why I feel bold enough to refer to it as a musical revolution. Because the world came around. We didn’t do anything that different,” he said with a laugh.
“We just went out there and hit it between the eyes. And now people had a completely different reaction to it.”
The genesis of the tour can be traced to 1973, when music industry agent/insider David Geffen, who had just formed Asylum Records, approached Robertson about a deal involving the Band and Dylan. An agreement was inked, and the Band members relocated to Southern California.
Dylan penned the tunes for an album to be called Planet Waves in New York during September and October of 1973, and with the Band recorded the LP hastily over four marathon sessions (November 5-14, 1973) at L.A.’s Village Recorders.
Related: What else was happening in music in 1974?
“I moved out to Malibu and Bob and I were hanging out,” Robertson told me in 2017. “We’d been talking about a tour for years. All of a sudden it seemed to really make sense. It was a good idea, a kind of a step into the past. We felt if there’s anything that everybody expects us to do, that’s what it is. We quickly decided it was a good idea. We thought we’d do the Planet Waves album and get back to rehearsing, and that’s exactly what we did.
Listen to “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)” from the ’74 tour
“When I came out from Woodstock and New York to the West Coast and David Geffen convinced me to go to Malibu, there weren’t many studios in that side [of Los Angeles]. Village was the only studio on the west side. Tons of people made records in that room. Rob Fraboni was the engineer who came with it, and Rob was terrific.
“We’d been playing with Bob [Dylan] for years,” Robertson added. “We knew his technique very well; there were no surprises involved. We did it and it was over before we knew it. We managed to get several things off very well for such a short time. But it went by so quick and we were preoccupied with the tour and all the other things that go with it. With all the decisions to be made, and all the how, when and where, that album really took a back seat.”
Over five million ticket requests were mailed in for the approximately 700,000 seats available for the six-week jaunt. Promoted by Bill Graham, the tour promised to be one of the most talked-about, written-about events in modern media history. Newsweek magazine’s January 14, 1974, issue proclaimed on its cover, “Dylan’s Back.”
The tour began on January 3, 1974, in Chicago, and continued through February 14 in Inglewood, Calif. Summed up Robertson, who died in August 2023, “It was a new day.”
The collection is available to order in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.
[Author and music journalist Harvey Kubernik’s books are available in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.]
3 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationMy first-ever concert was at the Oakland show and I’ll never forget those opening strums on “Most Likely.” Am really looking forward to hearing all the Planet Waves songs that were left off Before The Flood.
Oh for the days when you could see Bob Dylan in concert and actually recognize his hits!!
I caught them in Toronto on a cold winter night at Maple Leaf Gardens coming down on the bus from the north, none of my buddies wanted to come ,I went alone,,