A fascinating performance by a magnetic renegade
~The New York Times (according to Clinton Heylin in “A Life in Stolen Moments”)
Meadowlands Brendan T. Byrne Sports Arena East Rutherford, New Jersey 27 October 1981
Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
Fred Tackett (guitar)
Steve Ripley (guitar)
Al Kooper (keyboards)
Tim Drummond (bass)
Jim Keltner (drums)
Arthur Rosato (drums)
Clydie King, Regina Havis, Madelyn Quebec (background vocals)
Setlist:
Gotta Serve Somebody
I Believe In You
Like A Rolling Stone
I Want You Thank you, you’re great. You all feel pretty good tonight huh? Oh heaven, I wish I felt that good. If I stay here long enough I might feel that good. Oh yeah? All right! So, how you doing? How far you’d come? Is that right? I might be acting a little strange right now. That’s because this is a mighty strange place. Oh yes, it is. I ain’t seen nowhere like this. Back in the dressing room there, I got a black mirror in my room! I was looking through it just half an hour ago, I see two eyes looking back at me.
Man Gave Names To All The Animals
Maggie’s Farm Thank you. You feeling all right? Am I singing on key tonight? I’ll try sing this one for you in key.
Girl From The North Country Thank you. Anybody here tonight paid to get in? What? I can’t hear you. Talk up, yeah. I’m glad you’re sitting there. Phew!
Ballad Of A Thin Man
Simple Twist Of Fate
All Along The Watchtower
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight We’re gonna do this song here. The songwriter who wrote it is here tonight. There’s a lot of famous people here tonight. I wanna just tell you that you may be sitting next to somebody that’s famous. I know you are. You definitely are. That man over there’s famous too, yes he is. [plays Let’s Begin] I hope we did that right Jim.
Let’s Begin (Jim Webb)
Forever Young It’s easy to say that, but hard to do it. Any gambling men out there? I guess there should be. Yeah! Don’t you have a big gambling resort around here somewhere. What’s it called? What’s that gambling town around here? Reno? Atlantic City. Big gambling town, yeah? Well here’s a gambling song for you gambling men. Gambling women too. I don’t think any women are gamblers though do you?
Gamblin’ Man (trad.)
The Times They Are A-Changin’
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Watered-Down Love
Masters Of War
Mr. Tambourine Man
Solid Rock
Dead Man, Dead Man
Just Like A Woman All right, all right. I want to play …. We had a single record released a while back. I think it sold about five copies. But I like it so much I just got to play it. Anyway, it sold about three copies right here.
Heart Of Mine All right. I wanna say hello to all the editors of Rolling Stone magazine, oh yeah. All the writers and editors are here tonight I think, checking me out. They’re gonna come back stage later, I’m gonna check them out.
When You Gonna Wake Up
In The Garden All right, hello. Thank you. I wanna say hello to Mr. and Mrs. Kooper who are out there tonight. Wherever they are, I wanna say greetings! I’m glad you could make it. Anyway this is Mr. and Mrs. Kooper’s relative on keyboards over here. A man I’ve known for quite some time now. I’m not gonna tell you his name but that’s him on keyboards. I should tell you his name anyway. Al Kooper is his name. Played with me twenty years. Maybe some of you heard of him, maybe some of you haven’t. A legend in his own time though. On the drums tonight, Jimmy Lee Keltner from Tulsa, Oklahoma. From New Jersey, state of I think he’s from, Ashbury Park, New Jersey, on the guitar, Steve Ripley. On the other guitar, Fred Tackett. All right, on the guitar, bass guitar Tim Drummond. On the backing vocals, Clydie, Regina, and Madelyn Quebec. On the other set of drums, also from New Jersey is Arthur Rosoto. Give Arthur Rosoto a big hand. I hope I sung something on key tonight, I really do.
—
Introduction by The President of The United States, Barack Obama: The man who was good enough to take time off from his never-ending tour, Mr. Bob Dylan!
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
The White House Washington, District Of Columbia 11 February 2010
Bob Dylan (acoustic guitar & vocal)
Patrick Warren. (piano)
Tony Garnier (bass)
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
I consider Bruce’s Darkness Tour of 78 to be one of the greatest “tours” ever….
This concert is one of the best from the tour I’ve heard.. and Yes, it helps that it was broadcasted on the famous rock station: WMMS-FM…
One of the reasons the 1978 Tour is so well-remembered, and often viewed as the peak of Springsteen and the E Street Band in concert, is that several complete shows were broadcast live on radio stations.
Setlist:
Summertime Blues
Badlands
Spirit in the night
Darkness on the edge of town
Factory
The promised land
Prove it all night [With long guitar intro]
Racing in the street
Thunder road
Jungleland First set:
Paradise by the C
Fire
Sherry darling
Not fade away
Gloria
She’s the one
Growin’ up here is Growin Up & Backstreets:
Backstreets
Rosalita (Come out tonight) Second set (“round two”):
4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
Born to run
Because the night
Raise your hand
Twist and shout
From Brucebase: Soundboard and radio broadcast tapes (WMMS) available – great show. It’s interesting to note that this show was remastered by Bruce’s management and given to KSAN in San Francisco who broadcast it as a replacement for a scheduled Winterland rebroadcast sometime in 1979. The remastered show has fantastic stereo separation and coupled with the fact that this is a good show in the first place, it has to rank as one of the best of the available shows in 1978. Clarence’s intro during “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” contains a snippet of The Village People’s hit “Macho Man”. Released on LP and CD. The most recent (and best quality) CD releases of this show are ‘Agora Night’ by Crystal Cat and ‘Just In Time For Summer’. ‘Agora Night’ is from the Pre-FM reels. Also available on CD ‘Agora 1978’ from Supersonic.
From brucespringsteen.it:Max Weinberg, many years ago said this was the best show the E Street Band ever did. Broadcast on WMMS and about 9 other FM stations It was a free concert for WMMS’ 10th Anniversary as a radio station. The introduction by Kid Leo and the final chords of Twist and Shout.
From Wikipedia:Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Darkness Tour was a concert tour of North America that ran from May 1978 through the rest of the year, in conjunction with the release of Springsteen’s album Darkness on the Edge of Town. (Like most Springsteen tours it had no official name, but this is the most commonly used; it is also sometimes referred to as the Darkness on the Edge of Town Tour or most simply the 1978 Tour.)The tour has since become viewed as perhaps Springsteen’s best in a storied career of concert performances. Biographer Dave Marsh wrote in 1987, “The screaming intensity of those ’78 shows are part of rock and roll legend in the same way as Dylan’s 1966 shows with the Band, the Rolling Stones’ tours of 1969 and 1972, and the Who’s Tommy tour of 1969: benchmarks of an era.”
