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ROLLING THUNDER REVUE: A BOB DYLAN STORY BY MARTIN SCORSESE
June 12, 2019  | By David Bianculli  | 1 comment

Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET

 

MUSIC DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: In 1974, the then-reclusive Bob Dylan embarked on a comeback reunion tour of sorts, joining with his “Basement Tapes” cohorts The Band on a high-intensity, high-volume national tour. I saw one leg of that tour, at a January 1974 concert in the Everglades in Hollywood, FL. The following year, Dylan gathered a new set of cohorts, and began what he called the Rolling Thunder Revue. At first, it was an ad hoc adventure on a rather small scale, then morphed into a bigger deal, playing stadiums and concert halls across the country. I saw that latter incarnation of the Rolling Thunder Revue as well, in April 1976, at the University of Florida, and covered it for The Gainesville Sun. (I remember Joan Baez, who was performing her beautiful “Diamonds and Rust” song on that tour, coming back onstage in skimpy costume and red wig as a cartoonishly trampy backup singer, identified only as “Rusty Diamond.” Our photographer that day didn’t get a shot of it, but it’s true. I swear.) Well, from the first, more intimate part of that Rolling Thunder Revue, director Martin Scorsese uses found footage, and conducts new interviews, to shape an account of Dylan’s manic menagerie that included, at various points, not only Baez, but Allan Ginsberg, Joni Mitchell, Roger McGuinn, Ronnie Hawkins, Scarlet Rivera – and also makes room for Sharon Stone, Patti Smith, Jacques Levy, Ronee Blakely, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, among others. Having directed No Direction Home: Bob Dylan in 2005, Scorsese is on very strong ground here, even as Dylan is determined to build his legend on quicksand…


 
 
 
 
 
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1 Comments
 
 
E. Lomke
I am 1 of the few fans of the close-to-the-bone "Renaldo & Clara" (full version), so who knows about *judgment*; but having been treated to the preview of this quasi-documentary, among the other notices I looked at online, the "Guardian" publishes a decent description/analysis https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/11/bob-dylan-rolling-thunder-revue-martin-scorsese
Jun 12, 2019   |  Reply
 
 
 
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