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
May 27: Bob Dylan released The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan 1963
“..easily the best of [Dylan’s] acoustic albums and a quantum leap from his debut—which shows the frantic pace at which Dylan’s mind was moving.You can see why this album got the Beatles listening. The songs at its core must have sounded like communiques from another plane.”
~John Harris (Q Magazine, 2000)
” I think it was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all… And for the rest of our three weeks in Paris, we didn’t stop playing it.”
– John Lennon (about The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan)
You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard
But you don’t understand
Just what you’ll say
When you get home
Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
—-
Yeah, That’s a fantastic shot isn’t it? You know, that was a home-made lens, I made that lens. There was no lens like that then, it made marvelous distortions. I love it, the light would flare out.
~D.A. Pennebaker (from “Who threw the glass Magazine”)
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