When Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue “rolled into Lakeland” on Sunday, April 18, 1976, the show lasted nearly four straight hours, according to Jeff Kline, staff writer with The Ledger.
“The Rolling Thunder Revue featured a potpourri of music from folk to hard rock,” Kline wrote at the time. “It also featured a potpourri of musicians, many unknown, most not understandable because the group’s speaker system was pushed beyond its limits.”
He noted that the “capacity crowd” of fans mostly in their 20s also included “ample representation of those over 30 (like Dylan and therefore not to be trusted, as he once said) and a good number of fans under 20 years, drawn perhaps by the Dylan mystique as much as anything.”
According to Kline, when several musicians lit cigarettes onstage, many in the audience followed suit, “and soon the air inside the Arena was a grey haze of tobacco and marijuana smoke.” The show led to 60 arrests for possession of marijuana, wrote Kline, compared with 65 on the night before during a Doobie Brothers concert at the Civic Center.
For 50 years, that 1976 show lived only in the memories of those who were there, written accounts like Kline’s, and a poor-quality recording taken that night from the audience.
On Nov. 6, Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, will release a 39-disc box set, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1976 Live Recordings — and the first disc captures an official recording of Dylan’s Lakeland performance. The set will retail for $159.99.
Playing for the people
Bob Dylan conceived the Rolling Thunder Revue on the heels of “Tour ‘74” — a reunion between Dylan and The Band that played 30 dates in 42 days, filling arenas and often performing two sets per day.
In 1975, however, Dylan set out “to ‘play for the people,’ the people who never get the choice seats at a Dylan concert because they’re occupied by flacks and celebrities,” according to a 1975 story by Larry Sloman for Rolling Stone.
“He wanted to reconnect with fans and his normal vaudevillian type thing, and go on this small ramshackle tour to all these little towns and small auditoriums,” said Lakelander and Dylan fan Daniel Mattioli.
Dylan invited friends to join him on tour, including Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, Joni Mitchell, Ronee Blakley, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Allen Ginsberg.
“They would just roll into town and sell tickets the day of. No announcement, nothing,” Mattioli said. According to Sloman, “In Dylan’s words, the revue is playing in places other than large auditoriums because ‘the atmosphere in small halls is more conducive to what we do.’”
The tour didn’t make any money, but Dylan and the musicians wanted “to recreate the magic” in 1976, Mattioli said.
By that time, Ginsberg and Elliott had were no longer on the tour, “but the core band is the same,” according to Mattioli. “They go to Clearwater. They stay at the Biltmore Hotel for a couple weeks in April. Do rehearsals for, I think it’s two weeks, and then the first show is in Lakeland, April 18. It’s the second time (Dylan) ever played in Florida.”
A trove of debuts
Dylan would go on to make seven more appearances in Florida as part of the 1976 tour, but Mattioli said the Lakeland performance stands out.
“Because it was the first of the tour, we get a ton of live debuts of songs and some pretty big ones,” he said. “A couple from Blood on the Tracks, which was this big album in ‘75: ‘If You See Her, Say Hello,’ it’s the first time ever played in Lakeland; ‘Idiot Wind,’ which is a really big one because he’s only played that five times to this day.”
“It’s the first time for ‘Mozambique,’” from the album Desire, Mattioli said, “one of the only Desire songs he had never played before.”
According to Mattioli, the Lakeland Rolling Thunder Revue show included nine debuts and other notable performances, including the unreleased “Seven Days” and Dylan’s second performance of “I Pity the Poor Immigrant,” which he’s played live only 17 times in his career.
“He also plays a Hank Williams cover for the first and only time ever in Lakeland. It’s called ‘Weary Blues from Waiting,’” Mattioli said.
Anna Toms is a reporter for LkldNow, a nonprofit newsroom providing independent local news for Lakeland. Read at LkldNow.com.
