Bob Dylan and The Band - The 1974 Live Recordings

1974 was a great year for music, especially live music. This was the era of the big tour. The shows you had to see. It probably started with the Stones 1969 U.S. tour and ended sometime in the mid-80’s with Springsteen’s “Born In The USA” tours and U2’s “Joshua Tree” tour. I’m sure the timing can be debated but that era has certainly passed.

This year, 1974, marked the return of Eric Clapton after a three-year hiatus, much of it spent in seclusion and struggling with heroin addiction. He came back strong with “461 Ocean Boulevard” in the spring and toured that summer. The Allman Brothers were out on their extended tour supporting “Brothers and Sisters”. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young reunited for their summer stadium tour. I saw all these shows at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, NJ.[1]

The year kicked off with one of the biggest tours of all: Bob Dylan and The Band. This was Dylan’s return to touring after eight years away, following the infamous 1966 tour of England (with The Band). In January and February of 1974, Dylan and The Band toured the U.S. culminating in West Coast dates and multiple shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City. I was getting deeper into music around this time and was starting to see more shows. As I mentioned, I saw quite a few in the summer of ’74.  Somehow, I missed this tour. A big miss.[2]

Nearly a year ago now, at the end of 2024, “The 1974 Live Recordings”, a massive 27-CD box set, was released, documenting most of the shows from the 1974 tour. It doesn’t include The Band’s sets, only Dylan’s performances. The tour started on January 3^rd in Chicago Stadium and ended on February 14^th at the Forum in L.A. I say most of the shows because a map included in the box shows the locations of all the tour stops. This map reveals that 11 shows were not included in this package including two shows at The Nassau Coliseum in late January and some of the Midwest shows before the final West Coast swing. The liner notes imply that not all the shows were recorded.  Even so, 27 shows will keep us busy enough. It’s been a year, and I haven’t listened to all 27 shows yet and probably won’t. After listening to the first ten shows I have started cherry-picking the later shows for new songs in the set. I’m currently through the Madison Square Garden shows (Disc 19, where “Highway 61” was added to the setlist).

The tour typically featured an opening electric set, an acoustic set, and a concluding electric segment. Each disc (show} has about 18 to 19 songs. Early in the tour, Dylan began opening and closing the shows with the same song, “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)”.  It’s interesting to hear how that song evolves as the tour wears on. The opening electric sets remain consistent.  “Lay Lady Lay”, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” and “All Along the Watchtower” are mainstays. The closing electric segment is built around “Forever Young”, “Something There Is About You”, “Like A Rolling Stone” and the opener/closer “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)”.

The acoustic sets, however, vary quite a bit, which is where a lot of my interest lies. One of the most powerful recurring acoustic performances is “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”. Written during the mid-60’s, the line “even the president of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked” gets a roar of applause each night, as Richard Nixon was sliding into the abyss of Watergate. Other acoustic highlights include “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” 

In many ways, this tour feels like the last time Dylan truly leaned into his back catalogue. There’s a lot of material from the classic 1965–66 period (“Bringing It All Back Home”, “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Blonde on Blonde”) along with a few newer songs like “Something There Is About You” and “Forever Young” After this tour, Dylan would play his classic material less consistently, though some of it resurfaced during the Rolling Thunder Revue in late 1975 and 1976.

As for sound quality, it varies. The liner notes provide some information about how the shows were recorded (half inch tape and cassette from the sound board). Some performances are a bit uneven sonically. The Philadelphia shows, for example, sound almost like bootlegs. But overall, the recordings are quite listenable, and most of the material was previously unreleased. The official 1974 live album "Before the Flood" leaned heavily on West Coast recordings and included The Band’s sets.

I consider myself a Dylan fan, but this box set is really for the Dylan aficionados. The shows don’t change dramatically and songs cycle in and out of the setlist, mostly the acoustic sets. The difference from show to show is one of nuance, shifts in phrasing, emphasis, and intensity. The Band is in fine form throughout providing a dense sonic backdrop for Dylan. Robbie Robertson’s guitar work is front and center, Levon Helm’s drumming is strong and steady, and Garth Hudson’s organ cuts through beautifully.

One last note: some early reviews described Dylan on this tour as vocally aggressive, even confrontational at times, and you can hear that on certain nights. This is also mentioned in the liner notes. Dylan sounds revved up, almost shouting and laughing out the lyrics through some performances.

Overall, this is an important historical document, a snapshot of Dylan’s triumphant return after years largely out of the public eye; living quietly in upstate New York and rarely appearing on stage, though still making records. This box set, which documents most of the two-month tour with The Band, is worth having. It’s not cheap, but if you’re a Dylan fan, it belongs on the shelf. It’s a piece of history from a truly great year in music.

[1] An old minor league baseball stadium. A dump like no other but all the big bands stopped there in the summer until they built the Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ. Roosevelt Stadium was torn down soon thereafter.

[2] I didn’t end up seeing Dylan until November 2022, which was a very different experience altogether. Still, you’ve got to see Bob at least once.