Album Review: ‘The 1974 Live Recordings – Bob Dylan and The Band’
On January 3, 1974, Bob Dylan and the Band thundered onto the stage at the Chicago Stadium, playing the opening night of a tour that would cover 30 dates in 42 days. After a hiatus of eight years—recuperating from his July 1966 motorcycle crash, spending time with his family, playing only a few small local gigs with the Hawks (who became the Band)—Dylan came roaring back with a vengeance, fueled by the supercharged, driving rhythms of the Band. That night’s blistering set, with the musicians delivering a raucous version of “Hero’s Blues” to open and only momentarily letting up on “Nobody ‘Cept You,” established the tenor for the rest of Tour ’74.
Now Dylan fans can experience almost every note of Tour ’74 in the new mammoth box set The 1974 Live Recordings: Bob Dylan and The Band on Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings. The 431 tracks spread across the 27 CDs in the set include 417 previously unreleased performances, newly mixed. The box set includes insightful liner notes by Elizabeth Nelson and stunning black and white and color photos by Barry Feinstein that bring to life many moments from these performances. In addition, Third Man Records has released a 3-LP box set—The 1974 Live Recordings—The Missing Songs from Before the Flood, which includes songs not included on the live album Before the Flood, which included 21 songs selected from a handful of these 1974 and released the same year.
On every show of the tour, Dylan and the Band played to over 18,000 fans in arenas and stadiums, delivering set lists that included only a few songs from Dylan’s 1974 studio album Planet Waves (which was released two weeks into the tour) but mostly familiar tracks such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “All Along the Watchtower,” and “Forever Young.” Beginning on January 11, 1974, many of the subsequent shows open and close with “Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine),” subtly signaling a valediction of sorts, as the Band’s star began to decline—they would part ways in November 1976—and Dylan’s own embrace of new creative directions. Dylan punctuates his sets with some seldom played songs such as “Song to Woody” and “Ballad of Hollis Brown.” Dylan growls aggressively in his delivery of many of the songs in these sets, and what’s distinctive over these performances is just how strong and commanding his vocals are; he’s taking on the mantle of a rock and roll singer in these electrifying performances.
The 1974 Live Recordings offers Dylan fans a chance to relive these performances and to listen for the differences in the deliveries of the same songs over these performances. The box set also offers a complete picture of Dylan making his return to the stage and moving decisively into a new musical direction.
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The 1974 Live Recordings: Bob Dylan and The Band is available HERE
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