Unreal Live

Soundboard compilation of Bob Dylan's 1984 tour

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Today, we conclude our celebration of the 40th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s enormous 1984 stadium tour with Santana. (Catch up on all the other interviews and such here if you missed them.)

If you only know one thing from this tour, it’s probably the live album Real Live, which came out at the end of that year. I’ve been listening to a lot of 1984 tapes over the past couple months, and, as a document of the tour, Real Live does a decent job. It captures a number of the highlights, including the radically rewritten “Tangled Up in Blue”—maybe the single best song of the entire run—as well the band’s general balls-to-the-wall stadium-rock sound. It’s not my favorite era of live Dylan (I prefer the gospel tours that preceded it and the Petty tour that followed), but there are a lot of gems to mine, and Real Live presents some of the best moments.

There’s one big problem with Real Live though: It’s only ten tracks long. That leaves a lot of songs on the cutting room floor. So, like I’ve done with Before the Flood and Fragments, I’ve assembled a companion compilation. I call it Unreal Live and it includes entirely songs not on the official Real Live album. With this plus Real Live, you have almost every song he played on the tour in soundboard quality.

Yep, that’s another nice thing about the ’84 tour: Tons of soundboard recordings! A number of new 1984 soundboard tapes have surfaced in the past couple years (shoutout to bootleg label Zion for finding these), and a number more have circulated for decades. So I limited myself to soundboard tapes for this. Which wasn’t much of a limitation; given few setlist changes night to night, most of the 1984 songs Dylan performed are included.

The compilation is 29 songs long, and I tried to structure it roughly like the actual shows, with two solo-acoustic sets and the songs more or less where they would fall in a night’s setlist. The exception is the grand finale, a trio of “Blowin’ in the Wind” performances in three very different arrangements. On some nights with Joan Baez, they did it as an acoustic duet. When Baez left the tour, he first did an extended midtempo groove version with the band. Then it became a faster, louder, punk-rock song where Bob would—uncharacteristically—induce the audience to sing along.

Five of my favorite parts of this compilation:

1. If you liked the “Tangled” lyric changes on Real Live, you’ll find many more like them on “Simple Twist of Fate.” Plus, in this case, he’s singing those new lyrics with the full band. One sample verse (though the first two lines are a little muddled):

   [He lost his baby?] in the rain and snow
   [cold far?] those chilly winds blow
   He said: “I've taught you all you know,
   now don't bother me no more.               
   You know where to find the door.              
   Go on before it's too late
   and forget about that simple twist of fate.”

2. Like on Real Live, you get some Infidels tunes without the Mark Knopfler studio gloss. In this case, rough-and-ready versions of “Jokerman” and “Man of Peace.” The latter includes a funny intro where Bob polls the crowd to see if they’d prefer he play “Lay Lady Lay or “Man of Peace,” then claims the people voted for “Man of Peace” (yeah right).

3. The setlist formula for the tour was basically “‘60s hits + a few new songs + a few Blood on the Tracks tunes + more ‘60s hits.” So bless the three songs here that break the mold: “When You Gonna Wake Up,” “Every Grain of Sand,” and “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power).” Every one is a highlight, rough and punky and blasted to the rafters. If you ever wanted to hear a garage-rock “Señor,” this is the place.

4. This live “Like a Rolling Stone” sounds as close to the album version as you’ll ever find it. Which is normally not a selling point for us Dylan nerds, but, after all the song’s wild rearrangements, it’s almost refreshing to hear him belt the song as everyone knows it, with the same iconic guitar licks, organ parts, and everything.

5. I didn’t include every special-guest appearance on the soundboards, since some are better than others (cough Bono cough). But the two I did are great. Van Morrison reprising his famous Them version of “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue,” now trading verses with the man who wrote it, is a hoot. But just as good, even if you might be more inclined to overlook it, is local star and Paris concert opener Hugues Aufray joining Dylan to sing “The Times They Are a-Changin’”—in French!

Not every track here is a knockout; I think the criticism of the tour as fairly generic stadium rock is well-founded at points. But it’s not just that, and putting this together pointed me to a lot of hidden gems. Find your own below.

Unreal Live [FLAC]

Unreal Live [MP3]

Unreal Live Track List:

1. Jokerman (Madrid 6/26)

2. All Along The Watchtower (Newcastle 7/5)

3. Just Like A Woman (Rotterdam 6/6)

4. Shelter From The Storm (Slane Castle 7/8)

5. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Slane Castle 7/8)

6. To Ramona (Slane Castle 7/8)

7. It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) (Nantes 6/30)

8. Desolation Row (Rome 6/21)

9. Simple Twist of Fate (Paris 7/1)

10. Enough Is Enough (Madrid 6/26)

11. Man Of Peace (Rotterdam 6/6)

12. When You Gonna Wake Up (Rome 6/19)

13. Every Grain Of Sand (Rome 6/21)

14. Like A Rolling Stone (Newcastle 7/5)

15. Mr. Tambourine Man (Rome 6/19)

16. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Nantes 6/30)

17. With God On Our Side (Slane Castle 7/8)

18. Don't Think Twice, It's Alright (Barcelona 6/28)

19. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry (Nantes 6/30)

20. Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat (Madrid 6/26)

21. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (w/ Van Morrison) (Slane Castle 7/8)

22. Señor (Tales of Yankee Power) (Grenoble 7/3)

23. The Times They Are a-Changin' (w/ Hughes Aufray) (Paris 7/1)

24. I Shall Be Released (Rome 6/19)

25. Love Minus Zero (Brussels 6/7)

26. Knockin' on Heaven's Door (London 7/7)

27. Blowin' in the Wind (Joan Baez duet) (Hamburg 5/31)

28. Blowin' in the Wind (mellow band version) (Rotterdam 6/6)

29. Blowin' in the Wind (sing-along version) (Rome 6/19)

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PS. Catch up on some other 1984 highlights from past newsletters below