DUKE OF EARL
Richard Williams witnessed the first of six shows at Earls Court: “This was beyond our previous experience of Dylan on stage with a band”
AS if to banish immediately any misconception that the presence of three backing singers in evening dress and an eight-piece band, including a saxophonist, on stage at Earls Court might represent an excursion into territory somewhere between the Las Vegas Strip and E Street, Bob Dylan opened his first London concert in a dozen years with an instrumental version of “A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall”. Then he stepped up to the microphone to deliver “Love Her With A Feeling”, a 12-bar blues written and recorded by Tampa Red before World War II. We were firmly in Dylan’s territory, simply with expanded boundaries.
This was June 15, 1978, the first of six consecutive nights in West London with which he kicked off the European leg of a world tour. Anticipation and uncertainty were running high. Although Street-legal was released that very day, few arriving at the old exhibition hall that evening could have heard it.
It was soon clear was that this was outside our previous experience of Dylan on stage with a band. This was neither the maximum rock and roll he performed with the Hawks nor the gypsy music of the Rolling Thunder troupe. The Dylan of 1978 was looking for a more disciplined setting for his songs, one that could be provided by a band featuring Billy Cross and Steven Soles on guitars, David Mansfield (violin and mandolin), Alan Pasqua (keyboards), Jerry Scheff (bass guitar), Ian Wallace (drums), Bobbye Hall (percussion) and Steve Douglas on soprano and tenor saxes, with Helena Springs, Jo Ann Harris and Carolyn Dennis on backing vocals.
The black lightning bolts down the sideseams of Dylan’s white flares were the first sight of a sartorial preference that would become habitual. Playing a black Stratocaster throughout, he restricted his harmonica solos to a couple of songs, “Love Minus Zero” and “Just Like a Woman”.
Each of his studio albums, with the exceptions of his 1962 debut and 1970’s New Morning, contributed to the 26-song set. “Baby Stop Crying” was the first of only two selections from the new release. I remember the second because when he sang the opening couplet – “Señor, señor, can you tell me where we’re headin’/ Lincoln County Road or…” – the word “Armageddon” came into my mind to complete the line before it was out of his mouth. Was that, I wondered to myself, because Bob Dylan was becoming predictable, or simply because it was the perfect choice? The latter, of course.
Some people were made uneasy by the polish of the performance, symbolised by the addition of the backing chorus to a song like “Mr Tambourine Man”. For me, all reservations were blown away by a new version of “Like A Rolling Stone”, with revised cadences so successful that no one who arrived hoping for a carbon-copy of the sacred original could have been disappointed. Along with a saloon-bar version of “I Want You” and a heavy-metal recasting of “It’s Alright, Ma”, it’s still ringing in the head 45 years later.