Every musician who took part in Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour
In the history of musical tours, Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue feels like a mythical one simply because it was almost a miracle that it survived the mess.
Capturing Dylan at his mid 1970s era where the artist seemed to be endlessly in flux, his tour was like that too. Right as he was in the middle of making Desire, despite having shunned public life for quite some time now, the artist was suddenly overcome with the longing to properly reconnect with his fans. Now a huge star, his shows are huge too, and he didn’t want that.
Maybe it was the more raw sound of Desire and the result of a more folk-adjacent, band-oriented sound that made him want to pull it all back to basics. He wanted to play for the people, in smaller rooms and for cheaper ticket prices to make it accessible for all. With the idea for a tour planted in his mind, though, it quickly spiralled.
Dylan simply could not seem to stop inviting people. Initially planning to just tour with his band that he’d used to make Desire, quickly the group was growing as his friend Lou Kemp said that Dylan “would go out at night and run into people, and we’d just invite them to come with us”.
“We started out with a relatively small group of musicians and support people, and we ended up with a caravan,” Kemp said as Dylan was throwing around those invitations. Musicians, artists, writers, poets, filmmakers and beyond. If you were a creative person and you bumped into Dylan sometime in the late summer and autumn of 1975, you likely would’ve got an invite too.
Some people politely declined it, though. Bruce Springsteen said he was too busy with his own touring plans to make it. Meanwhile, despite their newfound friendship and despite Patti Smith encouraging the tour, she turned down the invite to join the gaggle on the road.
From the sounds of it, though, people were conscious of the chaos they’d be signing up for. “I’ve known these guys for a long time and I love them dearly, but everybody is slightly unstable,” Joan Baez said. By the time the tour was coming together though, she was well accustomed to being on the road with him, yet warned others, “He’s relatively impossible to follow and that’s a challenge, but I need that.”
From start to finish, the entirety of the Rolling Thunder Revue seemed like a weaving and winding ride that followed Dylan’s whims. From the loose rehearsals that started it, to the affairs and fallouts along the way, it was a wild ride. But it was always bound to be, given the crew on the tour bus.
So, which musicians took part in the Rolling Thunder Revue?
Let’s begin with the simplest cohort: Dylan’s actual band. The idea for the tour began here as Dylan was working on Desire and turned those sessions into rehearsals. Some of them were his classic players like guitarists Bob Neuwirth and Steven Soles, bassist Rob Stoner, drummer and pianist Howard Wyeth and a young T-Bone Burnett who was new to the group, along with David Mansfield. Violinist and vocalist Scarlet Rivera majorly influenced on the sound of Desire, so she was a vital part of the touring band, too.
There was one notable addition here though as one of his wild invites played off. Dylan managed to bag Mick Ronson, stealing one of Bowie’s spiders from Mars for his backing band.
But beyond his own band, part of the point of the Rolling Thunder Revue was to also bring a gaggle of special guests on the road, too. Joan Baez joined them, returning to working with Dylan after an incredibly complex emotional connection had gone somewhat sour at the end of the 1960s. Joni Mitchell also signed up for the tour, writing her track ‘Coyote’ on the road with the gang. Also joining them was Roger McGuinn, Ronee Blakely and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.
There were notable non-musical tour members too. Allen Ginsberg was brought along and crafted the title of the tour’s sage. Sam Shepherd was along for the ride to capture it all, as was Rolling Stone journalist Larry “Ratso” Sloman.
As the tour rolled on, the cast rotated with people coming and going. But by the time it wrapped up in May 1976 after 57 shows, they’d not only pulled off a coup out of organisational chaos, but they’d made cultural history from it.
Who played Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue?
- Bob Dylan
- Bob Neuwirth
- Steven Soles
- Rob Stoner
- Howard Wyeth
- T-Bone Burnett
- David Mansfield
- Scarlett Rivera
- Joan Baez
- Joni Mitchell
- Mick Ronson
- Roger McGuinn
- Ronee Blakely
- Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
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