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One of the Most Talked-About Shows of the Rolling Thunder Revue
1976-05-03, The Warehouse, New Orleans, LA
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Today’s New Orleans tape—one of two that day—is perhaps the best-known concert we’ve hit so far, in large part due to the stellar soundboard. And we’ll get to that in a minute. But first, I want to talk about where Dylan and the entourage went the night before the show.
Answer: A Tom Waits concert! This syndicated news item ran in the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
Singer-songwriter Tom Waits had some special company during a recent show at Ballinjax Electric Bistro in New Orleans. After his first set, the Rolling Thunder Revue troupe—82 members and hangers-on-strong—strolled in, fresh from a party aboard the steamboat Natchez. All the principals were there—Bob Dylan (attired in turban, shades, black leather jacket and smoking a pipe). Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn and Kinky Friedman—and the latter three commandeered the stage for a stretch. First up was McGuinn, who did 30 minutes’ worth of tunes. Friedman followed with a four-song set, and then Baez—dressed in a two-piece white suit—stepped up to sing a cappella a new tune that she said would be the title song on her next album. A line in the tune drew the biggest cheer of the night: “Women are not equal to men—but you can never tell it by me.” Dylan didn’t budge from his front-row center seat, and he left shortly after Waits finally was able to see his way clear to the stage.
Waits apparently was not amused. He nicknamed them the “Rolling Blunder Revue” and complained to Rolling Stone a few months later, “They got up there for an hour just before I was supposed to begin my set. Nobody even asked me; before I knew it, fuckin’ Roger McGuinn was up there playing guitar and singing and Joan Baez and Kinky were singing. By the time I got onstage the audience was stoked. They were all lookin’ around the room and shit. I don’t need this crap—it was my show. I was drinkin’ too much on top of everything else.”
I guess Tom wished he wasn’t in New Orleans that night!
When I interview Rolling Thunder 1976 participants, the New Orleans shows come up a lot. Maybe more than any other 1976 show outside Fort Collins (which became Hard Rain). People mention them for a fairly wide variety of reasons too.
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