Don’t be bewildered by the Never Ending Tour chatter, there was a Never Ending Tour but it ended with the departure of guitarist GE Smith. [Smith played his last concert with Dylan on October 19, 1990]
~Bob Dylan (Liner Notes to 1993’s World Gone Wrong)
The Never Ending Tour 1990 started off with a leg called the Fastbreak tour where Dylan performed:
- Jan 12, 14 & 15 – United States – one small club (Toad’s place) & two east coast colleges
- Jan 18 & 25 – Brazil (two giant festivals)
- Jan 29, 30, 31 & Feb 1 – Paris, France @ Theatre de Grand Rex
- Feb 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8 – London, England @ Hammersmith Odeon
He plays 98 songs in 15 shows, 56 of which were only played one or two times.
It starts in a small club with 700 people, where Bob plays 50 songs in five hours, many of them covers never heard before or since.
On January 12, as a warm-up for two stadium shows in Brazil and ten further dates in Paris and London, he played his first club gig in over twenty-five years, at Toad’s Place in New Haven. The seven hundred lucky witnesses saw this forty-eightyear-old man play for a total of four and a half hours.
Starting at a quarter to nine, with a cover of Joe South’s ‘Walk a Mile in My Shoes’ (‘before you accuse, criticize, or abuse I walk a mile in my shoes’), Dylan finally left the Toad’s stage at twenty minutes past two in the morning, after four sets, interspersed by three breaks of just twentyfive minutes each, having played fifty songs in total, only eight of which derived from his supposed halcyon days of 1963-66.
~Clinton Heylin (Behind The Shades)
Toad’s Place
New Haven, Connecticut
12 January 1990
- Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
- G. E. Smith (guitar)
- Tony Garnier (bass)
- Christopher Parker (drums
The show had 4 sets:
| Set | songs | time |
| I | 1-11 | 55 |
| II | 12-20 | 40 |
| III | 21-34 | 65 |
| IV | 35-50 | 80 |
1, 4-7, 14, 21, 30, 40 are all live debuts.
- Walk A Mile In My Shoes (Joe South)
- One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below)
- Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
- Trouble No More (McKinley Morganfield)
- I’ve Been All Around This World (trad.)
- Political World
- Where Teardrops Fall
- Tears Of Rage (Bob Dylan & Richard Manuel)
- I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
- It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
- Everybody’s Movin’ (Glen Trout)
— - Watching The River Flow
- What Was It You Wanted
- Oh Baby It Ain’t No Lie (Elizabeth Cotten)
- Lenny Bruce
- I Believe In You
- Man Of Peace
- Across The Borderline (Ry Cooder/John Hiatt/Jim Dickinson)
- Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
- All Along The Watchtower
— - Tight Connection To My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)
- Political World
- What Good Am I?
- Wiggle Wiggle
- Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
- Pay The Price (Moon Martin)
- Help Me Make It Through The Night (Kris Kristofferson)
- Man In The Long Black Coat
- Congratulations
- Dancing In The Dark (Bruce Springsteen)
- Lonesome Whistle Blues (Hank Williams-Jimmy Davies)
- Confidential (Dolinda Morgan)
- In The Garden
- Everything Is Broken
— - So Long, Good Luck And Goodbye (Weldon Rogers)
- Where Teardrops Fall
- Political World
- Pretty Peggy-O (trad. arr. Bob Dylan)
- I’ll Remember You
- Key To The Highway (Charles Segar/Willie Broonzy)
- Joey (Bob Dylan & Jacques Levy)
- Lay Lady Lay
- I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
- When Did You Leave Heaven? (W. Bullock/R. Whiting)
- Maggie’s Farm
- I’ve Been All Around This World (trad.)
- In The Pines (Huddie “Leadbelly” Leadbetter)
- Highway 61 Revisited
- Precious Memories (arr. by Bob Dylan)
- Like A Rolling Stone
After almost four hours of singing, Dylan launched into a stinging Highway 61 Revisited and the wistful Precious Memories, from Knocked Out Loaded.
Finally, after a few false starts, Dylan swung into Like A Rolling Stone, requisite even on such an unprecedented night.
hough his voice was starting to show signs of fatigue from its arduous workout, and the audience was exhausted,
it was a final, exultant moment, releasing everyone for home at 2:30 am.
Dylan is only one year away from his 50th birthday and his 30th year as a recording artist. Yet here he was, in close contact with his fans once again, still experimenting with new songs, still working on numbers he has been playing for decades. It was an awe-inspiring performance, as close to a comprehensive retrospective as Dylan is ever likely to offer onstage.
–Rolling Stone, 8 March 1990
The single weirdest show in Dylan’s career. This four-and-a-half-hour marathon set was a warm-up before the 1990 leg of the NET kicked off. Extreme rarities like “Man Of Peace” and “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” are mixed with shocking covers like “Dancing In The Dark.” By the end he’s taking requests, and playing whatever the crowd yells for. You have to hear it to believe it.
-Andy Greene (rollingstone.com – May 10, 2011)
—
Recreation Hall
Pennsylvania State University
State College, Pennsylvania
14 January 1990
10. Gotta Serve Somebody
11. Across The Borderline (Ry Cooder/John Hiatt/Jim Dickinson)
–
McCarter Theater
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey
15 January 1990
5. Lakes Of Pontchartrain (trad.)
—
Sambodromo
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
25 January 1990
12. One Too Many Mornings
Check out:
- January 29: Bob Dylan performing “Don’t Think Twice” & “Man Gave Names To All The Animals” – Paris, 1990
- January 30:Bob Dylan Theatre de Grand Rex Paris, France – 1990 (audio)
- Bob Dylan concert in Paris Jan 31, 1990
..and why not include John Brown from Paris Jan 31, 1900
-Egil
Great post; great stuff! Outstanding versions of a bunch of songs, especially Hwy. 61. I heard it the way he’s doing it in 2017 last night in St. Paul and it sounds like a different song. New, drum-heavy arrangement, of course, as he is providing with Tangled Up in Blue, Trying to Get to Heaven, It Ain’t Me Babe and several others. As Bob warned us with his first number: Things Have Changed. …
What sounds now so much like 1990 is Dylan’s voice — startlingly fresh and strong these days after so many years otherwise. The Sinatra covers seem to have reminded Bob that it’s OK to hold and/or stretch out a note, to modulate and really sing! I’ve heard dozens of Dylan shows, but never before have I heard him sing with such clarity. Surprised he could hit some of those notes — a treat and totally unexpected! His crooning, holding the mic stand at center stage a la Rod Stewart, was decent, too. I have to point out it was a disjointed show — a wispy September of My Years followed by a down-home Early Roman Kings, for example — but Bob tied it all together by having him and his band deliver random, constant and discordant notes after the lights went down between songs throughout the evening, like an orchestra tuning up. When the lights came up, if he was center stage a Sinatra number was next, if he was at the piano you could expect a Dylan song. He gave us some deep cuts such as Thunder On The Mountain, Honest With Me and Summer Days and also offered Blowin’ in the Wind, Desolation Row and a dynamite Ballad of a Thin Man, but he skipped many of his best-known songs such as Like A Rollin’ Stone, Rainy Day Women, Don’t Think Twice, Lovesick, Watchtower, etc.
Despite the upcoming release of his gospel stuff, there was nothing from that time. All in all, however, a fine concert. Combine that with Mavis’ crowd-friendly 45-minute opening set and this go-round of the Dylan Road Show is highly recommended.