portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Saturday, February 17, 2024

This from Flaggin Down The Double Es :: Valentine’s Day Special by Ray Padgett

The Grand Finale of Bob Dylan's 1974 Comeback Tour with The Band

1974-02-13/4, The Forum, Los Angeles, CA

RAY PADGETT





“Man this is so fuckin’ funky I think I'm gonna go out of my mind.” — Neil Young 

“It was bloody fantastic, the best concert I've ever been to. They had you with six rockers in a row.” — Ringo Starr 

"I was so ecstatic and it was so wonderful, I thought I was going to have the baby right then!" — Carole King, eight months pregnant 

“The greatest show I've ever seen.” — Ramblin’ Jack Elliott 

“Man, it got me fuckin' off!” — David Crosby 

After tonight, how is anybody going to do a concert tour?” — Neil Diamond


Those are all quotes from attendees of Bob Dylan and The Band’s final show of Tour ’74 at Los Angeles’s Forum. There were so many celebrities in the building it’s amazing any regular people could fit in the room. Roger McGuinn couldn’t get a ticket; Jerry Garcia showed up at the box office to find someone else had claimed his


And what of the LA shows themselves? You might know them better than you think. Almost the entirety of Before the Flood comes from these three final concerts, despite them taping multiple shows elsewhere (New York, Seattle, Oakland). Levon Helm wrote that the final night in particular was the best show of the whole run. I’m not sure that’s borne out by the tape, but you can understand why it might feel that way to those in the room. Whoever picked the Before the Flood tracklist clearly thought so too. . . . . . . . . .  

read on here . . . . .



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