25 Years Ago Today: The NeverEnding Tour Begins
It's been a while. Sorry about that, folks. I'll to be back more regularly. Here, to mark the 25th anniversary of the NET, is the "local" newspaper review of that opening concert. Not the most enthusiastic review, of course. But things got better quickly. There were two photos with this article when it ran in the paper, but I haven't been able to turn them up. Review is copyright 1988 San Francisco Chronicle
Bob Dylan Goes Through the Poses
Joel Selvin, The San Francisco Chronicle, June 9, 1988
Bob Dylan makes attitude part of his artwork. From the studied insolence of "Bringing It All Back Home" to the harsh romanticism of "Blood on the Tracks," he always gets across more with a flowing undercurrent, a tension beneath the specifics, than anything explicit.
But Tuesday at the Concord Pavilion, what Dylan displayed most of all was a nonchalant indifference that expressed very little other than that the magic is wearing mighty thin these days, perhaps even for Dylan himself.
Certainly the popular appeal no longer remains what it once was. Not only did little better than a half house turn up at Concord, but plenty of seats remain unsold for shows tomorrow at UC Berkeley's Greek Theater and Saturday at Mountain View's Shoreline Amphitheatre.
None of his albums during the '80s has hit the Top 10 and, where the release of a new Dylan album once qualified as major event, his latest, "Down in the Groove," slipped into the stores in the past couple of weeks with a barely a whimper.
The performance he gave, hardly more than a dozen songs in the 70-minute set at Concord, was no more than cursory. Not even the appearance throughout the brief concert of guest guitarist Neil Young could whip up any excitement. The crowd only took to their feet at the final moments of "Like a Rolling Stone," just before Dylan left the stage to return with an encore of "Maggie's Farm."
Backed by a quartet that included Young, guitarist G. E. Smith from the Hall and Oates band, bassist Kenny Aaronson (who looked like a refugee from the Stray Cats in his slicked-back pompadour) and veteran session drummer Christopher Parker, Dylan stumbled through the music. 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. He spoke nary a word to the audience other than a quick introduction of Young and one thank you when he returned for the encore.
His anti-show business sentiments notwithstanding, Dylan also did himself serious injustice in the program selection. Outside of an opening pair of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "Absolutely Sweet Marie" and the two closers, he stuck to an undistinguished lot of songs drawn from throughout his career.
He trotted out "Man of Constant Sorrow" from the first of his more than 30 albums during a three-song acoustic segment in the middle of the show, reworked "Gates of Eden" toward the end and offered "Gotta Serve Somebody" from his gospel period, just before playing "In the Garden," one of his most biblically drenched songs from his obscure second Christian album, "Saved." He handled "You're a Big Girl Now" from "Blood on the Tracks." And as for recent material, he tried "Driftin' a Little Too Far From Shore" from his 1986 album, "Empire Burlesque," but little else.
Standing pigeon-toed and knock-kneed, his wooly mane tousled by the breeze, he strummed guitar, looking confident and relatively poised but failed utterly to appear as if he cared in the slightest about what he was doing. Smith and Young scurried around behind him, holding frequent consultations during songs and trying mightily to keep things together, while the booming bass and busy drumming took the forefront of the instrumental sound. One meager spotlight served to dim the shadows created by the heavy-handed back lighting, but Dylan still managed to perform the entire set in relative darkness.
It may have been a personal appearance by one of rock's immortals, but the show offered nothing more than his physical presence. He boasts one of the deepest repertoires of great songs anybody could claim but roundly ignored the cornerstones, other than the obligatory "Like a Rolling Stone" (John Cougar Mellencamp gave a far more intense and heartfelt reading at his recent Bay Area concerts). There were no particular highlights or dramatic moments, just a flat, uninspired - almost rote - recitation of inconsequential selections.
The opening act, U2-ish Welsh rockers The Alarm, gave a more emotional performance during an opening set of Dylan-derived, new wave rock that was hardly anything out of the ordinary. At least they put their heart into their part of the show, more than Dylan could say for himself.
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 can no longer tell what is special about his work.
Showing posts with label NeverEnding Tour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NeverEnding Tour. Show all posts
Friday, June 07, 2013
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
How Bill Graham Jump-Started
The NeverEnding Tour
Bill Graham, who died in a helicopter crash 20 years ago this week, was one of rock's great entrepreneurs. His booking and promotion practices transformed the industry. His legendary music showplaces, Winterland and the Fillmores East and West, during their short but storied histories, presented runs of shows rivaled only by the greatest jazz clubs. He was affectionately parodied in the cult favorite film Get Crazy (which also features Lou Reed, in one of his first theatrical roles, as a certain reclusive singer-songwriter known as "Auden").
Graham, of course, had important connections with Bob Dylan. Their first encounter, at a 1965 press conference, is well-documented, and Graham's role as tour organizer (1974, 1984) and promoter (most notably for the 1979 and 1980 Warfield residencies). That he occasionally functioned as an advisor to Dylan is hardly obscure, but his intervention in the early days of the NeverEnding Tour is rarely remarked on and goes unmentioned, so far as I know, in the standard Dylan bios and concert books.
The NET began inauspiciously. Dylan had planned to promote the tour (and his upcoming album) with a performance on the Saturday Night Live season finale, but that was scuttled bu the TV writers' strike. The opening date in Concord featured some energetic work from the band and a lovely 3-song acoustic set, but Dylan's set was surprisingly short, barely stretching beyond the hour mark, and was described in the press as "cursory" despite Neil Young's unannounced appearance. Two days later, the Sacramento concert was nearly a debacle: Perhaps half the seats were sold (more likely only a third), Neil Young failed to show up, and Dylan delivered a short, perfunctory performance. The Sacramento Bee described him as "sleepwalking" and said he "practically spat in the faces of the small but devoted audience."
The next night's performance in Berkeley was a triumph, of course, one of the landmarks in Dylan's career, and a spectacular turnabout from the two desultory shows that preceded it. There's all sorts of speculation about Dylan's return to form, but Bill Graham's almost forgotten intervention likely played a central role.
Graham wasn't at those first two shows, but he heard the negative reports about them. He undoubtedly had his hand in Dylan's upcoming Bay Area appearances, and was concerned about potential weakness in both the ticket sales and the music. He had been disappointed in the Dylan/Grateful Dead shows, saying "I think the lack of attendance [in 1988] can be attributed to the qualitative merits of his recent visits. . . . I'm a big fan, and I'm very concerned about Bob and the merits of his performance. I've had problems with the conviction, the woodenness. . . . But I don't want to be negative about him -- on any given night, he's the best there is."
So Graham confronted Dylan. ""I spoke to him prior to the Greek show (in Berkeley),'' Graham told a reporter a few days later. "I talked to him about conviction and why you walk on stage. It was not an easy conversation. I don't know what it's like to be an entertainer, but I do know that if you buy a ticket, you should be entertained."
Graham was particularly upset over Dylan's refusal to play an encore in Sacramento. "I would have asked him to play more. Artists' feet are touching some other planet sometimes, and they need to be reminded that people love them, that they want another song or two." He remembered an occasion during Dylan's 1984 European tour when he stopped Dylan's departing tour bus and hauled him back onstage for a final song.
"Think of any artist you really enjoy," Graham concluded. "You go to friends and say 'Check this out, when you go you'll see why I love him.' And you go and it's not quite what you remembered. The third, fourth or fifth time, you're not gonna go back. I judge any artist not on how many people came last time, but by how those that came felt when they left."
No doubt the explanation for Dylan's sudden switch from a "sleepwalking" to a galvanizing presence in June 1988 isn't susceptible to an explanation as simplistic as "Bill Graham shook Bob up." But Graham was notoriously, and successfully, demanding with artists. On Dylan's 1974 tour, he managed to up the energy levels, and drive Dylan to connect with his audience, by unilaterally changing the lighting cues. For the legendarily abrasive Graham to acknowledge that the conversation wasn't "easy" signals a very serious concern, and one that even Bob Dylan would have found difficult to put aside.
The NeverEnding Tour
Graham, of course, had important connections with Bob Dylan. Their first encounter, at a 1965 press conference, is well-documented, and Graham's role as tour organizer (1974, 1984) and promoter (most notably for the 1979 and 1980 Warfield residencies). That he occasionally functioned as an advisor to Dylan is hardly obscure, but his intervention in the early days of the NeverEnding Tour is rarely remarked on and goes unmentioned, so far as I know, in the standard Dylan bios and concert books.
The NET began inauspiciously. Dylan had planned to promote the tour (and his upcoming album) with a performance on the Saturday Night Live season finale, but that was scuttled bu the TV writers' strike. The opening date in Concord featured some energetic work from the band and a lovely 3-song acoustic set, but Dylan's set was surprisingly short, barely stretching beyond the hour mark, and was described in the press as "cursory" despite Neil Young's unannounced appearance. Two days later, the Sacramento concert was nearly a debacle: Perhaps half the seats were sold (more likely only a third), Neil Young failed to show up, and Dylan delivered a short, perfunctory performance. The Sacramento Bee described him as "sleepwalking" and said he "practically spat in the faces of the small but devoted audience."
The next night's performance in Berkeley was a triumph, of course, one of the landmarks in Dylan's career, and a spectacular turnabout from the two desultory shows that preceded it. There's all sorts of speculation about Dylan's return to form, but Bill Graham's almost forgotten intervention likely played a central role.
Graham wasn't at those first two shows, but he heard the negative reports about them. He undoubtedly had his hand in Dylan's upcoming Bay Area appearances, and was concerned about potential weakness in both the ticket sales and the music. He had been disappointed in the Dylan/Grateful Dead shows, saying "I think the lack of attendance [in 1988] can be attributed to the qualitative merits of his recent visits. . . . I'm a big fan, and I'm very concerned about Bob and the merits of his performance. I've had problems with the conviction, the woodenness. . . . But I don't want to be negative about him -- on any given night, he's the best there is."
So Graham confronted Dylan. ""I spoke to him prior to the Greek show (in Berkeley),'' Graham told a reporter a few days later. "I talked to him about conviction and why you walk on stage. It was not an easy conversation. I don't know what it's like to be an entertainer, but I do know that if you buy a ticket, you should be entertained."
Graham was particularly upset over Dylan's refusal to play an encore in Sacramento. "I would have asked him to play more. Artists' feet are touching some other planet sometimes, and they need to be reminded that people love them, that they want another song or two." He remembered an occasion during Dylan's 1984 European tour when he stopped Dylan's departing tour bus and hauled him back onstage for a final song.
"Think of any artist you really enjoy," Graham concluded. "You go to friends and say 'Check this out, when you go you'll see why I love him.' And you go and it's not quite what you remembered. The third, fourth or fifth time, you're not gonna go back. I judge any artist not on how many people came last time, but by how those that came felt when they left."
No doubt the explanation for Dylan's sudden switch from a "sleepwalking" to a galvanizing presence in June 1988 isn't susceptible to an explanation as simplistic as "Bill Graham shook Bob up." But Graham was notoriously, and successfully, demanding with artists. On Dylan's 1974 tour, he managed to up the energy levels, and drive Dylan to connect with his audience, by unilaterally changing the lighting cues. For the legendarily abrasive Graham to acknowledge that the conversation wasn't "easy" signals a very serious concern, and one that even Bob Dylan would have found difficult to put aside.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Bob Dylan's Second Appearance on "Saturday Night Live"
Dylan's first appearance on SNL is well-documented and well-remembered, a benchmark in his career. It was the first exposure for most of his audience to the freshly-minted fire-and-brimstone preacher, on a TV show enjoying among the highest ratings of its long run, reaching perhaps fifty times as many viewers as people who had already bought the LP.
But who remembers even the build-up for his second appearance on the program, nearly a decade later, on the heavily promoted 1988 season finale, hosted by Gilda Radner. With an eagerly-awaited new album about to hit the stores, with his longest tour since 1978 to follow in just two weeks, Dylan surprised the audience as he fronted a small group featuring SNL bandleader G. E. Smith and delivered a riveting performance of his new single, "Silvio," as well as a sensitive acoustic rendition of another song from his new album, . . .
OK, that didn't happen. Never took place. I made it up -- but only sort of. It was on the schedule. It was planned. But the internal warfare in the entertainment industry kept it from happening. Somehow it's gone virtually unreported, even by those of us with the most determined interest in documenting Dylan's career.
In the spring of 1988, the late night TV show had narrowly avoided cancellation just two years earlier after a period of creative and popular decline; but now the retooled SNL was recovering smartly. Lorne Michaels, by the beginning of March, had mapped out a top-drawer season finale, featuring Gilda Radner as host, making her return to the show after eight years, and Dylan as musical guest.
And then in early March, the Writers Guild of America went on strike. While most of the 1987-88 TV season was unaffected, the scripted-on-the-fly, live or same-day taped series like Tonight and SNL were forced to shut down. The strike, the longest of its kind, dragged on until August.
When SNL production resumed in September, no effort was made to repackage any of the cancelled bookings. Radner never hosted the show; she died within the year. In a pair of striking if unimportant coincidences, she died on May 20, the date of the 1989 SNL season finale, and was buried on May 24, Dylan's birthday.
Dylan has not yet appeared again on SNL. While there were rumors of a Wilburys appearance during the 1988-89 season, it never happened, although the 1990 season finale featured Mark Knopfler's Notting Hillbillies. seen by some as a minor league version of the Wilburys.
The plans for Dylan's return to SNL were first reported, so far as I can tell, by AP reporter Kathryn Baker, who interviewed Dylan in August in Los Angeles and Michaels in early fall in New York, mentioning it in a nationally syndicated piece on the TV show's return to the air.
It's tantalizing to think about what might have happened. The SNL broadcast would have very high-profile, particularly with Radner's health drama and the tabloid focus on her failed marriage to G. E. Smith. A rousing performance by Dylan, along the lines of most of the early NET dates, would have washed away the memories of the televised Live Aid shambles and the less-than-exciting Farm Aid miniset. Then, a few days later, Down In The Groove would be released, to a chorus of mostly favorable reviews.
What's that, you say? Wasn't DITG scorned and castigated when it was released? Well, that's how it's remembered, but that's just not what happened. Rolling Stone's review may have been lukewarm, but its tone was friendly, and the high-circulation USA Today raved that the album was "a glorious achievement." Most newspaper reviews found it enjoyable if less than major. Its reputation has steadily declined, but its initial reception was warm and supportive.
So, in this history-that-never-happened, following a smash TV appearance and a happily received album, Dylan goes out on the road in June 1988, not seen as the haphazard 60's refugee that the US press saw after the Petty and Dead tours pf the two prior years, but as the "reborn singing songwriter and collector of great tunes" that USA Today praised. It's hard to see him playing to the string of half-filled smaller arenas that faced him in the real 1988. It's easy to contemplate a triumphant fall appearance at Madison Square Garden in October, perhaps with a Wilbury or four in tow for the encores.
Of course, he might have decided to play "Ugliest Girl In The World," "Had A Dream About You Baby," or even "Shenandoah." He might have stumbled over his lines in a Candy Slice sketch with Radner. Not every promising opportunity turns out as well as one would hope. Even if the TV show went well, would the suddenly higher visibility have been such a good thing? I doubt the Bob Dylan who wrote Chronicles would have thought so. The NeverEnding Tour, as it actually played out, has had a pretty good run after all, at least so far.
Dylan's first appearance on SNL is well-documented and well-remembered, a benchmark in his career. It was the first exposure for most of his audience to the freshly-minted fire-and-brimstone preacher, on a TV show enjoying among the highest ratings of its long run, reaching perhaps fifty times as many viewers as people who had already bought the LP.
But who remembers even the build-up for his second appearance on the program, nearly a decade later, on the heavily promoted 1988 season finale, hosted by Gilda Radner. With an eagerly-awaited new album about to hit the stores, with his longest tour since 1978 to follow in just two weeks, Dylan surprised the audience as he fronted a small group featuring SNL bandleader G. E. Smith and delivered a riveting performance of his new single, "Silvio," as well as a sensitive acoustic rendition of another song from his new album, . . .
OK, that didn't happen. Never took place. I made it up -- but only sort of. It was on the schedule. It was planned. But the internal warfare in the entertainment industry kept it from happening. Somehow it's gone virtually unreported, even by those of us with the most determined interest in documenting Dylan's career.
In the spring of 1988, the late night TV show had narrowly avoided cancellation just two years earlier after a period of creative and popular decline; but now the retooled SNL was recovering smartly. Lorne Michaels, by the beginning of March, had mapped out a top-drawer season finale, featuring Gilda Radner as host, making her return to the show after eight years, and Dylan as musical guest.
And then in early March, the Writers Guild of America went on strike. While most of the 1987-88 TV season was unaffected, the scripted-on-the-fly, live or same-day taped series like Tonight and SNL were forced to shut down. The strike, the longest of its kind, dragged on until August.
When SNL production resumed in September, no effort was made to repackage any of the cancelled bookings. Radner never hosted the show; she died within the year. In a pair of striking if unimportant coincidences, she died on May 20, the date of the 1989 SNL season finale, and was buried on May 24, Dylan's birthday.
Dylan has not yet appeared again on SNL. While there were rumors of a Wilburys appearance during the 1988-89 season, it never happened, although the 1990 season finale featured Mark Knopfler's Notting Hillbillies. seen by some as a minor league version of the Wilburys.
The plans for Dylan's return to SNL were first reported, so far as I can tell, by AP reporter Kathryn Baker, who interviewed Dylan in August in Los Angeles and Michaels in early fall in New York, mentioning it in a nationally syndicated piece on the TV show's return to the air.
It's tantalizing to think about what might have happened. The SNL broadcast would have very high-profile, particularly with Radner's health drama and the tabloid focus on her failed marriage to G. E. Smith. A rousing performance by Dylan, along the lines of most of the early NET dates, would have washed away the memories of the televised Live Aid shambles and the less-than-exciting Farm Aid miniset. Then, a few days later, Down In The Groove would be released, to a chorus of mostly favorable reviews.
What's that, you say? Wasn't DITG scorned and castigated when it was released? Well, that's how it's remembered, but that's just not what happened. Rolling Stone's review may have been lukewarm, but its tone was friendly, and the high-circulation USA Today raved that the album was "a glorious achievement." Most newspaper reviews found it enjoyable if less than major. Its reputation has steadily declined, but its initial reception was warm and supportive.
So, in this history-that-never-happened, following a smash TV appearance and a happily received album, Dylan goes out on the road in June 1988, not seen as the haphazard 60's refugee that the US press saw after the Petty and Dead tours pf the two prior years, but as the "reborn singing songwriter and collector of great tunes" that USA Today praised. It's hard to see him playing to the string of half-filled smaller arenas that faced him in the real 1988. It's easy to contemplate a triumphant fall appearance at Madison Square Garden in October, perhaps with a Wilbury or four in tow for the encores.
Of course, he might have decided to play "Ugliest Girl In The World," "Had A Dream About You Baby," or even "Shenandoah." He might have stumbled over his lines in a Candy Slice sketch with Radner. Not every promising opportunity turns out as well as one would hope. Even if the TV show went well, would the suddenly higher visibility have been such a good thing? I doubt the Bob Dylan who wrote Chronicles would have thought so. The NeverEnding Tour, as it actually played out, has had a pretty good run after all, at least so far.
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