I only started seeing Bob Dylan live in 1981 for a number of reasons: he did not tour from 1967 to 1974, I wasn’t able to attend either the ’74 Dylan and the Band Tour or the 1978 Street Legal tour, and the Rolling Thunder Revue never made it to the Philly area.
But to make up for those lost times, Dylan helped me out by beginning his so-called Never Ending Tour in 1988, and except for the pandemic, he has been touring non-stop ever since. So it was great to see the beginning of the Never Ending Tour, even though I didn’t particularly know it at the time.
Not long after he finished touring with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, along with a summer tour with the Grateful Dead, something clicked within Dylan in which he decided to go on stage all the time, playing a restructured mixture of newer material and classic hits, with stellar musicians, and to use those same musicians on his recordings.
My first encounter with the new Dylan live show was in the summer of 1988, at the Mann Music Center in Philadelphia, an older, smaller indoor/outdoor venue that also hosts Philadelphia Orchestra events.
Opening act was the Alarm, although I did not catch much of their set even though at the time they were one of the few new “message” bands.
Dylan’s set was a murky, quirky, distorted affair, in which he seemed determined to tear down his old classics, only to build them back up again. The set was heavily dependent on his 1960s material, along with Silvio, his current radio song from the Down in the Groove album, which was released in conjunction with the tour. But the brilliance of Dylan often lies in his looseness, unafraid to play however he wants.
I was able to go down to the front of the stage for the set-ending “Like a Rolling Stone,” and as he spit out the venomous lyrics it dawned on me what he was doing and it all made sense. Little did I know this was the start the phase of Dylan’s career still ongoing today, and I was lucky to be in on the beginning of it.
Below is the setlist.
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Just Like a Woman
Highway 61 Revisited
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
Gotta Serve Somebody
Love Minus Zero/No Limit
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
To Ramona
Trail of the Buffalo ([traditional] cover)
Silvio
I Shall Be Released
Like a Rolling Stone
Encore
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Maggie’s Farm