| The Rolling Thunder TV Special That Wasn't |
1976-04-22, Belleview Biltmore Hotel, Clearwater, FL [two shows]
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Before the second Rolling Thunder tour kicked off, Bob Dylan and the band spent a week or so rehearsing at the Belleview Biltmore Hotel in Clearwater, Florida. Here’s how a couple of the band members described those rehearsals to me:
“I flew down to the Belleview Hotel in Florida for rehearsals. It looked exactly how it sounds, almost that place in that Peter Sellers movie where he was Chauncey [1979’s Being There]. A real old school, sprawling wooden hotel with ballrooms and all this kind of stuff… [Bob] didn’t show up for a while. He was a real nighthawk. We soon learned, it’s not really worth it to come at 3:00 in the afternoon for a rehearsal when Bob isn’t going to be there until midnight.” — Gary Burke
“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.” — Rob Stoner
Three shows after the tour began, they returned to that same hotel ballroom, this time to record a TV special. This was to be the TV special from the tour. That later Colorado show, the one that became Hard Rain, was just supposed to be a regular concert. They only decided to film it last-minute, to replace this first attempt from Florida; Bob had a contract to deliver something to the television network, and he ended up hating what they did in Clearwater.
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He taped two shows, one early and one late. Neither was really a regular Rolling Thunder show, though combined they could become one. Fully half of the early show is solo-acoustic, almost like a 1966 show. Eight solo songs to open—he generally did two at the regular shows—then five Joan Baez duets (again, more than usual), then just a few songs with the band. The late show, on the other hand, is entirely full-band. No solo songs, no Joan duets.
When you watch the film, you can tell which songs come from which show from his headscarf. In a TV taping situation like this, you’re supposed to wear the same thing every time for continuity, but of course Dylan goes rogue. The early show, it’s orange; the late show, it’s blue.
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Despite the first three shows being sort of warmups for this taping, Dylan immediately plays a bunch of songs they hadn’t played before. In the early show, 7 of the 15 songs were tour debuts. In the late show, 8 of the 14 songs were. It’s typical Dylan to, when it comes time to tape the big TV special, throw out most of the songs they’d been practicing and throw in a bunch of stuff they hadn’t. Most of the full-band songs were holdovers from Rolling Thunder ’75, at least, but this is the only time the Rolling Thunder band ever played “Most Likely You Go Your Way”
For Ray
