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Today, the belated second entry in my decade-by-decade series about Bob Dylan concert posters. The 1960s were a wild ride, poster-wise. The 1970s, though, are more straightforward, largely because the tours were more discrete: 1974 with The Band, Rolling Thunder #1, Rolling Thunder #2, etc.
As I did with the 1960s entry, I’ll start with the standard poster formats—the ones that Dylan’s people used for many shows—then share some favorite one-offs at the end. (Credit as always to DylanStubs, where most of these come from.)
Disclaimer: I’m using the term “poster” a little loosely. “Printed concert advertising material” is more accurate, but makes for a cumbersome headline. Working off digital images of these decades later, it can sometimes be difficult to determine whether these were posters hung up on walls, flyers handed out, or even ads in magazines or newspapers. Where I do know, I’ll say.
When I interviewed director John Hillcoat a couple months ago about his work with Bob Dylan, he sent me a bunch of photos from his various shoots with Bob. One you can see above, from the secret 2017 Nobel performance-video taping outside Dublin. When I looked at this photo, though, something seemed off. That guy standing by the piano sort of looks like Dylan, but not quite, right? Then I noticed Hillcoat had typed a caption: “Stand-ins.”
A stand-in is someone who, as the term says, stands in for someone else. It’s common in the film world. You don’t want to make a famous actor just stand there for hours while the crew adjusts the lighting, so you find someone roughly the same height and build to do it. In Hillcoat’s photo, you see a bunch of other people standing in for Dylan and the band—people who are roughly the same size, wearing roughly the same clothes. In addition to fake Bob Dylan, you’ve got, from left, fake Donnie Herron, fake Charlie Sexton, fake Tony Garnier, and fake George Receli. (And, looking more closely now, I think that “piano” is a stand-in too.)
When I posted my Hillcoat interview on Instagram, one comment caught my eye. @music.city.conorposted: “Being Bob’s stand in was the best job I ever had!”
You know I had to find out more. So today, we hear from the guy standing in for Dylan in that photo.
When he’s not standing behind a fake piano, Conor Lumsden records under the name Music City (his new power-pop album Welcome To Music City just got a rave in Mojo). But, for a few days in 2017, he played a different role: Bob Dylan
This is a delightful entry from Ray and interviews with Conor and John and both well worth the read I thought. At once fascinating and funny at the same time what a life Conor and John H have had . . . subscribe and read on
Flagging Down the Double E’s is an email newsletter exploring Bob Dylan performances throughout history. Some installments are free, some are for paid subscribers only.
Bob Dylan has spent the last two nights performing at the famous Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California. Each night featured a slightly different setlist—the return of “I Shall Be Released” to close night one, and the perennial “Every Grain of Sand” to close night two.
Ian Grant attended both nights and reports in. Ian is probably well-known to many of you. He’s the co-host of two excellent podcasts, Jokermen and Never Ending Stories (and I’m not just saying that because I’m an occasional guest on both). Jokermen just finished their epic Beach Boys series (I talked about my favorite Brian Wilson solo album), and are taking a summer detour through indie punks Death Grips before revealing their next full series. Ian also writes for Aquarium Drunkard and GQ and has his own Substack, Hard Disk.
In the interests of Cross Postings! (it’s what we do here!) here is this interesting article from our Ray [Padgett that is - Flagging Down The Double Es]
In the midst of all the Rolling Thunder 1976 madness, I wrote this Bob's-birthday piece for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's new newsletter. Check it out if you're all caught up on RTR.
Bob Dylan turns 85 today. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s third class ever, in 1988, but his greatest Rock Hall performance didn’t come until a few years later.
For the first decade of its existence, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was not an actual place you could visit. But in September 1995, the museum opened in Cleveland, Ohio. Naturally, there was an all-star concert to mark the occasion. The announced lineup included The Allman Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown, and most notably, Bruce Springsteen reuniting with the E Street Band for their first public concert in eight years.
Surprise guests were promised too and, given the occasion of today’s newsletter, no prizes for guessing who one of them was.
Rumors about Bob Dylan appearing had circulated for weeks. Robbie Robertson told one newspaper that efforts were being made to reunite Dylan and The Band (minus pianist Richard Manuel, who died in 1986). Little Richard, who’d donned a hard hat and shovel for the museum’s groundbreaking in 1993, told The Hollywood Reporter he might play with Dylan himself. Then again — in other interviews promoting the event Little Richard said he hoped to perform with Springsteen, Prince, James Brown and Bon Jovi.
Dylan did not reunite with The Band, nor did he play dueling pianos with Little Richard. But he did show up, which was hardly a guarantee. His appearance was not only a surprise to the audience — it was a surprise to the organizers! The show’s producer Joel Gallen told me they’d been trying to get Dylan since day one, but he’d remained non-committal until the last minute. He played five songs, and, unusually for someone who has a tendency to throw curveballs at these all-star events, they were mostly greatest hits (the one exception was his 1985 rocker “Seeing the Real You At Last”).
Dylan apparently enjoyed his Rock Hall experience. There are photos of him grinning with Chuck Berry and James Brown backstage and signing autographs for a kid in an R.E.M. T-shirt. My favorite is a picture of him with the loquacious Allman Brother Dickey Betts, whoI interviewed about working with Dylan shortly before his passing. Betts is leaning over, hands gesticulating, while Dylan seems to be listening intently. Dylan, however, does not like the photo as much as I do. The photographer who took it, Sidney Smith, wrote that upon taking it, “You’d have thought I had poured muriatic acid onto Dylan. Little did I realize his complete disdain for photographers shooting him without permission.”
Bob Dylan and Dickey Betts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert in Cleveland, Ohio, 1995, photo by Sidney Smith
Dylan and Springsteen have only sung together once since the Rock Hall opening, a shambolic “Highway 61 Revisited” at Shea Stadium in 2003. But the mutual appreciation remains. Dylan reportedly rehearsed a mystery Springsteen cover with his band last year (alas, it remains unplayed…for now). And Springsteen is ending every show on his current tour with Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.” Tonight, he’ll play it in Boston on its writer’s 85th birthday. Three decades on from their Cleveland collab, they’re both still going strong. May they stay forever young.
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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.
one of the things I was ruminating on only the other day was how on earth does Dylan keep playing to sell out audiences? I mean is there EVER an empty seat? DO things ever bomb? How is that even possible? Ihad to save to see him the times I have managed it, borrow money or by fixed a tickets as in the last time at London’s Roundhouse back on 26 April 2009 with my driest old friend D.O.P Stephen Blackman who paid for four of us to go! But do they ever NOT SELL OUT? Or is it like here where . . . .well it’s complicated
One big difference between Rolling Thunder ’75 and ’76 I’ve mentioned before: The size of the venues. In 1975, for the most part, Dylan played small theaters, and tickets were hard to come by. In 1976, Dylan mostly played giant arenas and stadiums. Tickets were easier to get, and in a few cases the shows sold so poorly they had to be canceled.
Today’s show in Tallahassee is the first I’ve seen with that 1975 ticket energy. After the big outdoor show in Gainesville, Dylan wanted to play the university gym. Tickets, for once, went fast:
The show almost got canceled before it even began anyway. Dylan’s people were apparently pissed that word leaked out in the Tallahassee Democrat a few days early, in an article headlined “Dylan Coming to Town?” The tour’s advance man Josh Shorr was also concerned about a rumor he heard that an FSU fraternity had acquired a large block of tickets to resell. “He was very unhappy,” the local promoter told the paper. “They don’t want the university community to have more of a chance to get tickets than the ‘street people.’”
During the show, a large group of people who couldn’t get tickets sat on a hill outside the gym to try to hear what was happening inside. One fan remembers security opening a side door so they could hear better, and Joan Baez coming to the door to wave. Another remembers Baez actually pulling a speaker to the doorway to let them enjoy the music too.
Strangely, I found not one but two bomb threats connected to the concert. The first is, admittedly, a tangential connection:
Welcome to Flagging Down the Double E’s: Audio Edition!
For a change of pace, I’m sharing an audio conversation I had a few days ago previewing the Spring 2026 leg of the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, which kicks off one week from today. I chatted with Matt Simonsen, who’s reviewed a number of shows for the newsletter (most recently Eau Claire last spring) and will be reporting in about opening night.
We discussed The State of the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, hashing out questions like:
Are fans burned out on the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour by this point?
Have the Outlaw tours stolen some of Rough and Rowdy’s thunder?
Will the setlist change at all this spring?
Will the surprise covers return?
How different is it seeing the show in person versus hearing tapes?
What other songs should he bring in from Shadow Kingdom?
What makes any one Rough and Rowdy Ways show stand out?
Will he finally play “Murder Most Foul”?
Why, after all these years, is Dylan still so committed to these same songs and this same tour?
As I say in the intro, this is sort of a pilot episode. I’m not currently planning on producing a super-regular Flagging Down podcast, but audio could be a fun format for the occasional timely thing I’m not planning on writing about, and a good excuse to chat with some of the sharpest people I know in the Dylan world. The vibe I’m aiming for is the sort of conversation you might have at the bar with another fan before or after a Bob show.
Give it a listen and let me know what you think. If people like it, maybe I’ll do more of these. And feel free to comment with your own answers or predictions about what we’re due for this spring!
Matt Simonsen will be back next Sunday to report on opening night in Omaha. I’ve got a number of next-day reviews lined up this tour (including three of my own!). As always, new tour reviews go out to paid subscribers only.
Note: You should be able to listen to this episode in your favorite podcasting app as well as in your browser. There will be links to the various platforms (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc) on the episode page on flaggingdown.com. I’m unclear if those app links will appear immediately, or if the various services will need to each approve it first. Like I said, this is all an experiment. So if you don’t see the podcast-app links there yet, check back.
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