Bob Dylan - 1975-1981 Rolling Thunder and The Gospel Years
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Jerry Wexler, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Regina McCrary, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Scarlet RiveraBrand: Highway 61 Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Subtitled)
Format: Best of, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 240 minutes
Published: 2005
DVD Release Date: 2006-04-04
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 1003
Studio: Mvd Visual
Product features:
- Concert Video Clips 1975-1981
- KDKA TV Interview Unearthed
- Rundown Studios Revealed
- Muscle Shoals Sound Studios Visit
- Revealing, First Time Insider Interviews, including Rubin Carter
Movie Reviews of Bob Dylan - 1975-1981 Rolling Thunder and The Gospel Years
Movie Review: Many Interesting Moments..
Summary: 4 Stars
While true that rubber duckies and wads of cash floating across the screen do seem a little hokey, to focus on that instead of the quite incredible story that is emerging first-hand from many of these interviews (that of Ruben 'Hurricane' Carter after whom the song was named, or Rob Stoner, who was de facto band leader during the RT tours and after, for example) seems petty compared to what these interviews actually do give us in startling detail - the history behind a famous song, an album and the tours that followed in the mid-70s. For many people this is an era of great interest and in spite of the sometimes goofy approach to it I found the subject matter engaging... dismissing this video on those accounts is tossing the baby with the bath water.
The time frame in terms of albums, starts with Desire and spends a lot of time with the social issues that helped bring it into being and there is some mention of Blood On The Tracks all through the documenting of the Rolling Thunder tours in the mid-70s. The film moves on to discuss the film Renaldo and Clara, staring Dylan and Joan Baez, also filmed toward the end of the Rolling Thunder tour and after. Famous scriptwriter, Sam Shepherd, had been hired originally to do the screenplay but gave up due the 'free form' and total lack of screen play the cast had taken to under Dylan's (lack of?) direction. Filmed during the tour, the 5-hour film flopped after the first week of its showing.
Next it's the World Tour '78. Listening to Stoner's accounts of putting a band together for the Japanese leg of the tour which required Dylan play all his hits (something he'd been avoiding during Rolling Thunder) is very entertaining. Rob Stoner and the band he'd brought would work out new versions of Bob's old hits (Rob acting as a surrogate Bob during rehersal) only to have Dylan drop in later at night to go over the material. 'Street Legal' takes us into the 'big band' era of the '78 world tour and the new direction that Dylan was taking at the time.
Not long after this, we start getting some interviews of people from or related to the Vineyard, a low-key but sincere Christian group which offered services to the artistic sector in an LA communitiy and which Dylan came to originally. We get something of a feeling for what they were about (they never even owned a building). There is some discussion as to what the born again experience involves from one of the gospel singers who worked in the Slow Train entourage, and others. Not much mention of psychedelics here surprisingly.. although that era was largely over by 1978. It goes on to discuss the production of Slow Train Coming and the people involved in that. We hear from some of the singers and technicians that worked at the Muscle Shoals studio during the production of that album. It gets a little longish at this point I found, but there are some interesting moments on the recording process by producer Jerry Wexler.
It starts picking up again at the retelling of the Warfield theatre concerts when Dylan plays the new music to a pretty much stunned crowd. We even get several short clips of Dylan himself responding to complaints of the religious nature of the material - "the Bob Dylan gospel tent" as one disgruntled fan puts it.
There are numbered sequences in the video relating to different parts, much like chapter marks you'd find in a written biography which help organize the layout of the program. 4 hours is a still a long time for a documentary. There's no Dylan music in it either. It would have been fantastic to have his songs in all of this but that's what an unauthorized biography gets you. In spite of this being 'unauthorized', most people interviewed definitely had something of a legitimatly authorotative view on the subject (with the exception of 'Dylanologist' Weberman I'll agree..), or at least on what THEIR role was in this section of Bob Dylan history. For that reason I think this marathon documentary has merit, with many interesting moments (and some tedious ones as well), and is worth a look for those interested in the historical background of what was going on between '75 and '81 in Dylan's personal and professional life. It wasn't the first time he shocked audiences and fans with a radical change in style and for many people, this period in his career is at least as interesting as when he put down the acoustic and picked up the electric. It could have been cut by about 30 minutes, but I found it very informative and quite interesting most of the time.
Summary of Bob Dylan - 1975-1981 Rolling Thunder and The Gospel Years
Director & Producer Joel Gilbert (Bob Dylan 1966 World Tour The Home Movies, 2003 and Bob Dylan World Tours 1966-1974Through the Camera of Barry Feinstein, 2005) weaves the story of this monumental period of Dylans life and music through revealing insiderMusic Video & Concerts DVD Video
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