Bob Dylan’s return to touring after a seven-year hiatus in 1974
Bob Dylan was a broken man when he finished his world tour in 1966. For the last few years, he’d consistently been on the road, which had finally fatigued him. Dylan was desperate for a moment’s peace, but his commitments continued to pile up before a motorcycling injury left him unable to tour.
While the scale of Dylan’s injuries in the crash has been widely contested, with some claiming he wasn’t hurt at all and others suggesting it was only a minor accident. In his autobiography, Chronicles, Dylan explained the truth: “I had been in a motorcycle accident, and I’d been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race. Having children changed my life and segregated me from just about everybody and everything that was going on. Outside of my family, nothing held any real interest for me, and I was seeing everything through different glasses.”
In all likelihood, even if Dylan wasn’t involved in a crash, he would have still needed an extended break from touring due to exhaustion. He was no longer getting the same thrill out of performing, and his priorities shifted to his family. In reality, Dylan should have been loving life following the positive reaction to his recent album, Blonde On Blonde, but instead, he wanted to close himself off from the wider world.
Dylan had tasted success, and it no longer nourished him like it once did. However, despite losing interest in touring, he never lost his creative appetite. The Band would regularly visit his Woodstock home to record during the early stages of his hiatus, which removed him from his rut. Together, they made The Basement Tapes, which marked Dylan’s first musical endeavour of this period, even though the project stayed unreleased until 1975.
After he’d regained his mojo by working with The Band, Dylan finally left his Woodstock abode and travelled to Nashville to work on the Western-themed John Wesley Harding. This release set his career on a new trajectory, and he followed it up with the masterpiece Nashville Skyline.
Although he wasn’t touring in 1969, Dylan broke his live hiatus to headline the Isle of Wight Festival. His heroic comeback was attended by John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Syd Barrett, and more star-studded names from the British music scene.
However, despite the success of Dylan’s comeback at the Isle of Wight, the concert didn’t tempt him to return to the road. Over the next few years, the musician continued to work at a prolific pace, with two records released in 1970, and he shared another two albums in 1973, which brought his deal with Columbia to an end.
After penning a contract with Asylum Records, Dylan recorded Planet Waves with The Band and announced a 40-date tour with the group of North America to promote the record in 1974. The run of shows throughout indoor arenas marked Dylan’s first set of concerts in seven years, and millions unsuccessfully tried to see him live.
The tour included three concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden and another three shows at The Forum in Inglewood. It was a trailblazing run which helped establish a blueprint for the future of touring on a sizeable scale for artists of Dylan’s stature and shifted the future of live entertainment.
While it’s now common for artists to undertake a tour of this magnitude, at the time, it was a pioneering venture by Dylan and masterminded by concert promoter Bill Graham. According to an article from The New York Times in 1974, the mammoth run of dates grossed over $5million in ticket sales alone.
In the same piece, Graham quashed security fears about the shows and said: “Dylan attracts a mature kind of fan. We’ve had ticket requests from 40‐year‐old college professors as well as young kids. This is a musical concert, and we think we’re going to get musical fanatics. A musical fanatic isn’t a physical fanatic, like some bands attract. I don’t think anybody is going to climb walls.”
Although The Rolling Stones played a dozen more shows on their North American tour in 1972, they grossed over a million dollars less than Dylan, who proved how ridiculously lucrative the industry could be for artists.
In the middle of the tour, Dylan shared his new album, Planet Waves, and earned his first number-one record. However, he wasn’t happy with his working relationship with Asylum Records and left the label after only one studio release. In addition to Asylum releasing Planet Waves, they also packaged the live album, Before the Flood, mostly recorded at The Forum in Inglewood.
While the reception to the tour and album was mixed because Dylan shifted the arrangements of his classic songs, the comeback is a crucial part of his legacy. Since 1974, Dylan has almost permanently lived with his feet glued to the road and won’t stop until he draws his final breath.
In an interview in 2022 with The New Yorker, Dylan explained why he continues to tour despite being in his 80s and revealed the important role it plays in his life by keeping him grounded. He commented: “I keep touring because it is a perfect way to stay anonymous and still be a member of the social order. You’re the master of your fate. But it’s not an easy path to take, not fun and games.”
In an alternate reality, Dylan didn’t tour to promote Planet Waves in 1974 and remained a reclusive artist who rarely performed live. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and the musician let his itchy feet take him on a journey across America. In the seven years when Dylan refused to tour, he devoted himself to his wife Sara, and they had four children together while he was off the road. However, the bohemian within himself eventually won the battle, and Dylan’s quiet life ended.
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