"I still adore Bob Dylan. But don't tell Joan."

'Real Live' Promoter Interviews #2: Hermjo Klein, Germany

Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in Munich, West Germany, June 1984

Today, the second in my series of interviews with three of the promoters who helped put on Bob Dylan’s giant Real Live stadium tour in 1984 with Santana and, at some shows including today’s, Joan Baez. (If you missed the first installment, it’s here).

For this one, I spoke to Hermjo Klein. He and his late partner Fritz Rau were giants in the German live-music scene. We talked about the five German shows on the 1984 tour—Hamburg, Munich, Offenbach, West Berlin, Cologne—as well as working with Bill Graham and his long working relationship with Joan Baez.

Had you ever worked a Bob Dylan show before that '84 tour I'm focusing on?

Yes. And that time I was part of Lippman & Rau and we did all Dylan tours. I still remember an unbelievable open air concert in Nuremberg [in 1978]. It was in the field where Hitler did his first really big speech. And I know that Bob didn't like that so much, to sing in the same field, until my partner Fritz Rau told him, “But Bob, look, opposite of the stage is where Hitler spoke. When you sing, the people who listen to you turn their back to Hitler.”

So then he went on stage and it was an unbelievable concert. It was still daylight, and when Bob entered the stage, took out his guitar and started the first song, the sun came out and shined on him. It was an amazing moment. Fritz and myself were sitting on the stairs to the stage and just crying. It was like God had waited until he went on stage to put the sun on.

Did they host other shows in that Nuremberg venue, or was this sort of a special thing?

We also did a couple of open-airs, with the Scorpions and others, but that was really the big thing. I think we had 80,000 people there, which at that time was amazing.

That's enormous. Also enormous were those 1984 shows with Santana. If I'm not mistaken, you did five of them around Germany. What do you remember about those shows?

Well, it was Santana and Joan Baez. She left before Paris. She was still on in Germany. And I must say that Santana, he was like the good point in the whole show. Because between Joan and Bob, they was sometimes a fight going on. And Santana was really the quiet point. He was fantastic. He calmed everybody down.

Joan wrote about in a later book that she left the tour early, because she was basically so pissed off at how she was being treated by Dylan. Did you witness any of that?

I was in the middle of it.

How are you in the middle?