‘Rolling Thunder’ revives Dylan mythology
Bob Dylan wanted to jettison all the conventions of rock concerts when he conceived the Rolling Thunder Revue. He had only returned to performing the previous year after an eight-year absence, but in 1975, Dylan set out on an unwieldy, improvised tour that more closely resembled a roving circus than rock band.
The tour is the subject of the new Martin Scorsese documentary, “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story,” available Friday on Netflix and opening in select theaters. (It played June 11 at the Wexner Center for the Arts but no future Columbus dates are planned).
The tour rambled around Canada, New England and the Mid-atlantic from October to December 1975. Shows were announced 48 hours before they took place; were booked in small, out-of-the-way halls; and
featured Dylan amid a sprawling ensemble that included Joan Baez, Roger Mcguinn of the Byrds, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and other figures from the Greenwich Village folk scene. The camaraderie was so contagious that Joni Mitchell appeared at one show and hopped on the bus to play the rest of the dates.
All this was filmed for a project that was supposed to be written by playwright Sam Sheppard, who also went along for the ride. However, the resulting four-hour 1978 film “Renaldo and Clara,” roundly deemed unwatchable by critics, wound up mainly ad-libbed. A 1976 TV concert special was also edited from the footage, but nothing that came before was anything but meager appetizers for the Scorsese feast.
Scorsese has not simply salvaged the footage. He has transformed the film into a gleaming portrait of the artist as a young man caught in a transitional moment in his life and career. Backed by a giant, rollicking band that included T Bone Burnett, long before he became a famous record producer, and David Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson, Dylan, who can be Bob Dylan in “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story”
quite indifferent in the performance of his own songs, is captured singing with uncommon passion and a jazz soloist’s sense of nuance.
Throughout the film, Scorsese lets the music play — long, generous, intoxicating takes of Dylan and the walloping band behind him. Great music is performed in the two hour and 20-minute movie, and not all of it by Dylan. A luminous Baez lights up “I Shall Be Released” with Dylan. With Mcguinn and Dylan strumming along at Gordon Lightfoot’s house, a timid Mitchell digs assuredly into the groove of her song “Coyote.”
The film follows the tour from Studio Instrumental Rentals rehearsals in midtown Manhattan through various New England towns. But the emotional peak arrives when the band comes to Clinton Correctional Facility in New Jersey to play “Hurricane,” Dylan’s eloquent appeal for unjustly imprisoned prizefighter Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who was held in the facility. Dylan bears down on this singular epic piece from that period of his career, Scarlett Rivera’s violin flashing like lightning between verses, and sings it like he is saving someone’s life. And he was. The spotlight that Dylan put on the case eventually led to Carter’s release.
Scorsese obviously launched the project a number of years ago, as Carter, who died in 2014, was interviewed for the film. Mostly, the director shies away from talking heads, letting musical performances and backstage footage tell the story, although Dylan, Baez and others help him.
The entire original Rolling Thunder tour — outside of three arena shows in Canada and the Madison Square Garden finale — was seen by fewer people than one weekend with Dead and Company at Shoreline. Of course, the tour was a disastrous money loser, although it certainly wasn’t Dylan’s money.
Scorsese has done nothing less than rescue this evanescent moment and brought it into the light, 45 years later, a glorious and slightly miraculous resurrection of a transcendent enterprise that would have otherwise passed into the mists of time. Although the film is headed for its natural home on Netflix, this might be one to catch on the big screen.