Ever a man of moods, Dylan returns to blazing form with a terrific 95-minute, 17-song set. Again a wealth of songs are introduced, five songs in the electric sets being performed for the first time on the 1988 tour: “Joey,” “Watching the River Flow,” “Tangled Up in Blue,” “It Takes a Lot to Laugh,” and Glen Glenn’s “Everybody’s Movin’.” Also introduced into the acoustic set are “San Francisco Bay Blues,” which is met with whoops of recognition by the Bay Area audience, “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” and a sensitive “Rank Strangers to Me,” the second selection from Dou:n in the Groove. Neil Young joins the band for the second electric set, staying on stage for the remainder of the show.
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)
Greek Theatre University Of California Berkeley, California 10 June 1988
Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
G. E. Smith (guitar)
Kenny Aaronson (bass)
Christopher Parker (drums)
Neil Young guitar on songs 11, 12, 13, 14, 16 & 17
I think we were staying at John Hammond’s house. Sara was trying to get Bob to go to Princeton University, where he was being presented with an honorary doctorate. Bob didn’t want to go. I said, ‘C’mon, Bob it’s an honor!’ Sara and I both worked on him for a long time. Finally, he agreed. l had a car outside – a big limousine. That was the first thing he didn’t like. We smoked another joint on the way and I noticed Dylan getting really quite paranoid behind it. When we arrived at Princeton, they took us to a little room and Bob was asked to wear a cap and gown. He refused outright. They said, ‘We won’t give you the degree if you don’t wear this.’ Dylan said. ‘Fine. l didn’t ask for it in the first place.’ … Finally we convinced him to wear the cap and gown.
~David Crosby
“I wrote my fourth album [“Another Side of Bob Dylan”] in Greece, but that was still an American album.”
~Bob Dylan (to Robert Shelton June 1978)
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“Tom Wilson, the producer, titled it that,” [Another Side of Bob Dylan] “I begged and pleaded with him not to do it. You know, I thought it was overstating the obvious. I knew I was going to have to take a lot of heat for a title like that and it was my feeling that it wasn’t a good idea coming after The Times They Are A- Changin’, it just wasn’t right. It seemed like a negation of the past which in no way was true. I know that Tom didn’t mean it that way, but that’s what I figured that people would take it to mean, but Tom meant well and he had control, so he had it his way. I guess in the long run, he might have been right to do what he did. It doesn’t matter now.”
~Bob Dylan (to Cameron Crowe Sept. 1985)
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In May Dylan went to London for a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. Afterwards he and Victor Maimudes visited Paris and a small town in Greece, where Dylan worked on songs for his next album. Back in New York, June· 9, 1964, Dylan went into the recording studio with Tom Wilson, a couple of bottles of wine, and a small crowd of friends, and recorded his entire fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, in a single evening.
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan Performing Artist I: The Early Years 1960-1973)
The heavyweight music press was full of praise for the Wembley show. “Oh yes: this was a rejuvenated Dylan,” Melody Maker’s Allan Jones concluded, “the master in all his raging glory. Unforgettable, unsurpassable.” NME’s Gavin Martin enthused: “Tonight all the images of Dylan fused into the crucible of his raw genius …. Poet, seer, mystic, iconic rocker, ravaged salvationist, virulent misanthrope – such descriptions are paltry. The meaning of the songs weren’t simply buried in nostalgia or in the lyrics, it was in the way he played with inflections and the sounds of the words, the way he changes the timbre of his voice
to exact the most from the frazzling guitar cauldron or the weird, disfigured acoustic interludes … tonight he proved that on form he was still unimpeachable, miles ahead of pretenders both young and old.”
~Andrew Muir (One More Night)
William Royce “Boz” Scaggs (born June 8, 1944) is an Americansinger, songwriter and guitarist. He gained fame in the 1960s as a guitarist and sometime lead singer with the Steve Miller Band, and in the 1970s with several solo Top 20hit singles in the United States, including the well-known hits “Lowdown” and “Lido Shuffle” from the critically acclaimed album Silk Degrees, which peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Scaggs continues to write, record music and tour.
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