Remember when a double album—two vinyl LPs, each with about 30 minutes of music—was a big deal? Those days are long gone. Not only have recent years witnessed a plethora of four-, five- and six-CD boxed sets, but we’ve occasionally seen some truly over-the-top releases, such as the 38-disc Woodstock: Back to the Garden, the 16-disc R&B in DC and the 20-disc The Memphis Blues Box. And then there’s Bob Dylan, whose contributions to the mega-box world include The 1966 Live Recordings, a 36-CD set issued in 2016, and now, The 1974 Live Recordings, which fills 27 CDs.
Like the earlier box, the new one captures Dylan on a whirlwind tour with the Band (though, in 1966, they weren’t known by that name and weren’t famous). It’s the same 40-concert, 21-city tour that was featured in 1974’s two-LP set, Before the Flood, but that collection had a playing time of about an hour and a half whereas the new one clocks in at around 29 hours.
Despite the mind-blowing size, The 1974 Live Recordings does not contain everything from the tour. As the liner notes awkwardly explain, quite a few of the shows were officially recorded, and “what’s presented here are as many of those official recordings that remain.” Unlike the 1966 box, this one does not make room for the material on low-quality audience tapes. Nor does it embrace numbers that feature the Band sans Dylan, eight of which are on Before the Flood.
Related: Robbie Robertson on the 1974 tour
Given how much The 1974 Live Recordings does include, however, no one is likely to gripe about omissions. On the contrary, casual fans might well complain that the collection is bloated: because Dylan didn’t vary his setlists all that much, it incorporates only 37 compositions among its 431 tracks, including umpteen versions of many songs. Though nine numbers show up only once or twice, 11 appear at least 20 times, the record-holder being “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine),” which shows up in a whopping 34 versions.
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
Why feature so much repetition? The answer—which also explains the length and multiple renditions in The 1966 Live Recordings—apparently has to do with European Union copyright law: music not issued on record within 50 years of its performance winds up in the public domain. Dylan and his label, in other words, would have lost the rights to anything from the concert series that they didn’t include here. That said, the collection is priced as if it were somewhat smaller than it is; and serious fans will appreciate the often subtle differences between various versions of the songs, nearly all of which are previously unreleased.
Moreover, many of the numbers have been reimagined to the point where they bear little resemblance to the earlier studio recordings. The box features a wide range of stellar material from throughout Dylan’s career to that point, starting with “Song to Woody” from his eponymous debut LP. Also here are classics from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (“Girl from the North Country,” “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”), Another Side of Bob Dylan (“To Ramona,” “I Don’t Believe You [She Acts Like We Never Have Met]” and “It Ain’t Me, Babe”), and The Times They Are A-Changin’ (the title track, plus “Ballad of Hollis Brown,” “One Too Many Mornings” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”).
Dylan delivers the lion’s share of Bringing It All Back Home (“She Belongs to Me,” “Maggie’s Farm,” “Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Gates of Eden,” “It’s Alright Ma [I’m Only Bleeding],” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”) and much of Highway 61 Revisited (the title cut, plus “Like a Rolling Stone,” “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry,” “Ballad of a Thin Man,” and “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”).
Blonde on Blonde yields “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine),” “Just Like a Woman” and “Leopardskin Pillbox Hat,” while Dylan draws one song each from Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”), John Wesley Harding (“All Along the Watchtower”) and Nashville Skyline (“Lay Lady Lay”).
He also plays four numbers from Planet Waves, his then-current release (“Tough Mama,” “Something There Is About You,” “Wedding Song” and “Forever Young”) and serves up three rarities: “Hero Blues” and “Mama You Been on My Mind,” both of which date from his early 1960s Witmark demos, and “Nobody ’Cept You,” a Planet Waves outtake that would appear on 1991’s The Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3.
These concerts capture Dylan at a key juncture. Aside from the Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid soundtrack, which appeared the previous summer, he had not issued any new music since 1970’s underrated New Morning, a Top 10 hit but not an album that garnered the sort of praise associated with his 1960s masterpieces. Nor had he toured since 1966, when he performed the shows preserved in the earlier box.
Anyone who counted him out was proven wrong, however: the 1974 tour sold out large stadiums and garnered deservedly excellent reviews. A couple of weeks after the concert series began, moreover, Dylan released the aforementioned Planet Waves, which features backup by the Band and quickly became his first #1 album in the U.S. It would be followed in short order by such other classics as the chart-topping Blood on the Tracks and Desire and another blockbuster tour, 1975’s Rolling Thunder Revue, which is itself the subject of a gargantuan 16-disc box set.
Bob Dylan and the Band: The 1974 Live Recordings is available to order in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.
A top editor at leading consumer and trade magazines for more than 40 years, Jeff has interviewed dozens of musical luminaries, including Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, Roger McGuinn, John Sebastian, Wolfman Jack, Tommy James, Tom Waits, the Righteous Brothers, and the members of Steely Dan.
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