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"These Dylan people have a big goon at every corner"
1976-04-20, Bayfront Civic Center Auditorium, St. Petersburg, FL
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On night two of Rolling Thunder ’76, Dylan shifts back towards his comfort zone. After an opening night where only three songs of the 22 had been played on Rolling Thunder ’75, Dylan swaps in five different songs, all of which were reprises from the previous fall. That includes the solo opening duo “Mr. Tambourine Man” (which would remain the opening number most subsequent nights) and “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).” Later on in the set, he added a three-pack of ’75 staples: “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You,” “Just Like a Woman,” “It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.” All three seem to retain their 1975 arrangements (though tape speed fluctuations here make it sound like some unhinged tempo changes have been added). After an opening night where he took such big swings, perhaps he felt a need to return to the familiar.
A reporter for the Miami News met up with Joan Baez backstage. She told him, “Rolling Thunder is Dylan’s baby. It’s all his doing. If I was in charge of it I’d be like a camp counselor. Strict as hell. But Bob’s not that way. He’s very loose. We had one rehearsal and halfway through we broke up laughing. It was shaggy to say the least. Dylan looked at us and said: ‘Don’t worry, everything is going to be alright.’ And damned if it wasn’t.”
Slight exaggeration there; there were five days of rehearsals at the Belleview Biltmore Hotel (where they’d return a week into the tour to tape an aborted TV special). But, as a featured performer rather than a member of the backing band, Baez might not have been there for all of them.
You know who else wasn’t there for all of them? Dylan! Bandleader Rob Stoner told me:
The rehearsals were kind of nonexistent. We had gone down to Clearwater Florida and taken over this hotel to ostensibly rehearse, but Bob hardly ever showed up. So we didn’t know what the hell he wanted! As the bandleader, I would call rehearsals anyway. We’d show up and rehearse without Bob. I’d be singing the songs in his keys as a stand-in.
Even though Bob wasn’t there, we tried not to replicate what we’d already done. We knew that was totally redundant. When you hear, say, the Hard Rain album or anything from that time, you’ll notice that the tunes have been dramatically reworked. That came from basically the rehearsals we did when Bob wasn’t present. Then he’d finally show up and he’d say, oh yeah, this is a nice change of pace. [Or] Bob would have ideas about how to totally rework the tunes. He’d come in and show us one time and then we’d subsequently work on them.
So it’s honestly impressive that the tour is off to as strong a start as it is. Not perfect, though. Before playing “Seven Days” on this tape, Dylan tells the crowd, “This is a new song. We only played this one once before. We didn’t do too well. We’re gonna try and do it better this time.”
(I listened back to the Lakeland version and the main problem seemed to be that Dylan couldn’t keep up with the fast-moving tempo, particularly on the “kissing in the valley” bridge. There, his stumbling over the words devolved into incoherent yelling. He does somewhat better tonight.)
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