Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story By Martin Scorsese (2019) (Criterion Collection) UK Only [DVD] [2020]

Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue on Bob Dylan’s band of troubadours stopping over in small town American communities, playing mainly his latest album tracks (viz :- from Blood on the Tracks, Desire and assorted earlier tracks from 60s albums) was a kind of carnivalesque tour, a freewheeling variety show, a counter-cultural pilgrimage at the time of post-Watergate and the post-Vietnam protests. Dylan was at his considerable peak as a performer, using white face paint markings or masks (“you need one to tell the truth”[Dylan]). It evokes the spirit of Commedia Del Arte, a band of musicians playing around the central figure of the magnetic Pierrot, with poets and story tellers and Rolling Stone journalists and a filmmaker documenting these concerts of mainly small, intimate audiences. Dylan sings with great zest, animation and vigour, not far way from his brilliant 60s incarnation; but free of the lonely folk protest singer or the Band-electrified rock musician facing reverent or hostile fans. This Dylan is looser, relaxed, fun, integrated into the band he’s playing in, wearing a fedora with flowers along the rim band. Here the ordinary audiences love him. This was not a money-making venture; it was purely with a spirit of adventure this merry troop set forth, Bob Dylan is shown driving one of the tour buses between stops. We enter Americana, avoiding big stadiums.Dylan is perceived as both mystic and joker, with charismatic personality, drawing this band of mesmerized performers into his vortex, like Captain Ahab after the White Whale, Orson Welles doing his War of the Worlds fakery, or a pilgrim after the holy grail of the great American story told by Walt Whitman or Mark Twain. Hell, we won’t forget the French connection of Rimbaud (see Patti Smith) and Les Enfants du Paradis. Of the performers: Roger McGuinn, Mick Ronson, Scarlet Rivera, T Bone Burnet, Bob Neuwirth, Rob Stoner, Howie Wyeth and Ronee Blakely; add to this Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Patti Smith, as singers, musicians, poets (not forgetting Allen Ginsburg and Peter Orlosky). Only Bob’s mad sanity can hold all this chaos together. People had long looked at Dylan as a kind of salvation figure. This is more the Tambourine Man giving this mad troop a license to play, ready to go anywhere, ready for to fade down their own parade. This documentary of Dylan’s 1975-76 tour begins with the bicentennial celebrations. As Dylan says in an interview: “life isn’t about finding yourself … but creating yourself”. To do this Dylan delegates his vision to whatever group he’s playing with in a spirit of spontaneity: they want to be him so much they give him all they’ve got. Scarlet Rivera’s eyes keep a close watch on Dylan’s facial expressions as she plays alongside him. Baez dances like a whirling Dervish. McGuinn ‘knocks on heaven’s door’ with him. Joni Mitchell plays her song Coyote, a new song, with Dylan and McGuinn in a room of Gordon Lightfoot's house.Having worked on documentaries on The Band, The Stones and, previously, Dylan (No Direction Home), Scorsese takes the idea of movies as an illusion: Scorsese sees truth in this film as tricky, elusive, liable to change with each telling. He indicates fictional things woven among the real things. There is a sense of genius mixed in with tricks. Dylan reached back to the beatniks(and Ginsberg is resident poet of the tour) and to the 19th century radicals, he started up an old time revue- ragtag, vagabond, fake in fun ways, but real in a musical sense. We get a theatrical demimonde (the masks, the makeup, name and concept) of this created America. There are clips from Renaldo and Clara as part of the archival footage. Real characters have fictional anecdotes, as well as fictional characters, such as a filmmaker, a groupie and a concert promoter. Baez dresses up in one scene like Dylan, looking more like Dylan than Dylan does. Another scene from Renaldo and Clara, where Baez ,as The Woman in White, sits at a bar next to Dylan, and they converse about having married other people. But there is real warmth in the encounter. All this is done to frame the real performances, showcasing Dylan’s songs at length. Dylan had released Desire between two legs of Rolling Thunder (1976), so that the live versions of the songs are better than the studio versions. Dylan’s emotion is very real in One More Cup of Coffee, Isis and Hurricane, coming down to earth, connecting with the audience. The musicians are both tighter and looser. Dylan dances and smiles.Since seeing The Beatles pop energy and seeing The Byrds render Tambourine Man better than Dylan could, Dylan wanted his energy to flow outwards amongst a group of fellow musicians. He wanted to retain his vocal and breathy grasp of his own singing as in acoustic, but add guitars, drums, bass, organs. Scarlet Rivera says elsewhere that she was having trouble introducing the violin as a modern instrument. She realized this desire through seeing Dylan as a ‘'mythological hero who does things on a grand and mythological level. Many of the artists he’s chosen along the way fit into the mythological scheme, unfolding into a grand, mythological adventure.’' She was picked off the street by Dylan as she carried her violin case. Her violin playing on stage gives Dylan’s music (Desire) a new intensity and edge. Dylan does do protest songs, Hurricane, attempting to free the middle weight world boxing champion from prison for wrongful arrest. He visits him in prison. Ruben is interviewed in modern times, saying Dylan was always on the side of the outsider. This is prefaced by The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, another racial injustice. Dylan plays this in prisons and at an Indian reservation. The Native people cheated, displaced and killed. After a performance by Iroquois people in traditional dress, he walks among them playing” The Ballad of Ira Hayes” on acoustic guitar, with power and sincerity., about one of the marines to raise the flag at Iwo Jima, but who found when he got home, that his people’s water rights had been stolen. Dylan represents the invented self-the self you create as authentic. As Jimmy Carter says in praise: his America is “busy being born, not busy dying.” Behind the fake mask, the sincere art : Scorsese fashions a spell-binder.

Fantastic footage of Dylan on stage and off, he is on good form and seems to enjoy all the mayhem around him. Martin Scorsese has done a good job of covering this infamous tour and explaining a lot of what went on behind the scenes with some rare footage and interviews with the people involved, including the man himself (Dylan). It actually looks like this was meant to be part 3 of the brilliant documentary "No Direction Home" which would of made this a good follow up. My only complaint is that it would have been nice to see more of Dylans performances from this tour, without cut scenes, one has only to listen to the brilliant bootleg series volume 5 to hear the many great songs Dylan performed on this tour to realise there is so much more to be seen. But still this is very good and a must for any Dylan fan.

I bought the blu ray, and the only sound option appears to be surround sound. I wondered if it was the same with the dvd. As I don't have surround sound, I could do with a version that offers stereo, not surround.As someone else on this page pointed out, we no longer have the facility to ask questions about products, so I have taken the liberty of asking one in this review section. If someone cares to answer, perhaps they would care to do so in the same way.Cheers!

Some rock tours take on a life all of their own. The two gruelling treks that the Rolling Stones undertook across America in 1969 and 1972 became larger-than-life events for various reasons. Joe Cocker's 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen' tour in 1970 is another case in point. Bob Dylan's 'Rolling Thunder Revue' extravaganza has also entered the annals of rock history. Against the backdrop of the forthcoming US bicentennial in 1975, the band of merry-making troubadours, including Mick Ronson and Roger McGuinn, set out on the road and created mayhem midst a carnival atmosphere. Joan Baez, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Joni Mitchell and a host of other famous personalities from all walks of life contributed to the proceedings along the way. Despite all the chaos, Bob Dylan somehow managed to hold it all together. He even got a chance to drive the tour bus. Fortunately, Martin Scorsese was on hand to capture some concert footage and merry-making on film. Most of the songs performed on stage were taken from the 'Blood on the Tracks' and 'Desire' albums. Bob Dylan was still at the height of his powers in 1975 and this documentary shows him and his troop in all their glory.

I’d set the expectation bar pretty low as I’ve bought too many Dylan/ Cohen / Waits DVDs that are just badly cobbled together often overused snippets of video puffed out with rubbish unknown contributors.The Rolling Thunder Reveue in the mid 70s was / is one of my favourite Dylan eras and this captures it brilliantly. I’m a big fan of Scorsese as a director of musical films of bands and this is up there with the best.

Create something beautiful in your lifetime, that to me is the most important message of this musical and artistic document! It especially catches Bob Dylan's unique charisma and his humanitarian and musical importance for so many other artists and people all over the world. His music creates joy, sadness, pain and sorrow and lets you off with deep feelings of all kinds. Great document, very recommendable!

Great to have a cd which has all previously unrecorded material. Some tracks are repeated but this does not detract from the cds overall. An excellent addition to my Dylan collection which started when i purchased his first 12" LP many, many years ago!!!

'A Bob Dylan Story' indeed. Wonderfully restored RTR footage. Love it when Bob is getting into 'Masterpiece' and someone tugs his shirt (Bob Neuwirth?), Bob's response is priceless, he doesn't miss a beat! A thoroughly enjoyable watch.

Due geni, Dylan e Scorsese, potevano solo fare un capolavoro

Auch wieder so eine Erfahrung, die einen reicher macht. So soll das Leben stattfinden: frei mit Freunden und Spass an der Arbeit. JA richtig: dies ist eine Rezension über eine DVD von Bob Dylan.

Due sono i periodi della carriera di Bob Dylan dove il suo percorso musicale era "mondiale" (seguito da Tutto il mondo) ed esattamente gli anni '60 quelli della protesta e dei diritti civili. Il tour in tutto il mondo interrotto dal famoso incidente in moto. Poi ci sono il '75-'76. Il tour di sapore gipsy con concerti per tutti gli States in piccole location per portare le canzoni melanconiche di "Blood on the tracks" e specialmewnte le canzoni di "Hurricane" con l'inconfondibile violini di Scarlet Rivera. Questo è un documentario "d'autore" (Martin Scorsese) e rende benissimo il periodo, la follia di un tour in perdita economica, ma che rimane nei cuori e vende ancora libri, CD e DVD. Bellissima la fotografia, le inquadrature, le canzoni e le collaborazioni con grandi star. I sottotitoli in inglese semplificano la comprensione dei dialoghi e dei testi. IMPERDIBILE

Der Film zeigt anschaulich und nachvollziehbar was für eine Atmosphäre während der Rolling Thunder Revue herrschte. Einmaliges Zeitdokument passend zum 80igsten des großen Songpoeten.

imperdibile, irrinunciabile, imprenscindibile