Remembering Dylan's "Special Delivery"

Getting to re-live and re-listen to Bob in Boston Garden 50 years ago

The sounds from half a century away were somehow familiar. The snarl of Robbie Robertson’s guitar. The tinkling of the piano keys at the end of “Ballad Of A Thin Man.” Levon Helm’s bass drum. And that voice, coming from the smallish man with the brown curly hair, standing at the center of the stage at Boston Garden and he wasn’t so much singing as delivering.

Magically, it showed up on the Internet the other day. Here it was, a crystal-clear recording of Bob Dylan and The Band’s afternoon show at Boston Garden and I was there. My first time seeing Bob in person. And it was all coming back.

On January 14, 1974, I was a 21-year-old college student, thinking maybe of becoming a writer, working part-time at a grocery store, walking everywhere since I had no car, about ankle-deep in Bob Dylan.

By then, I had most of his studio albums — “Blonde On Blonde” and “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Another Side of Bob Dylan.” I had read Anthony Scaduto’s “Dylan” and was in search of bootleg albums of Bob’s unreleased material, things I’d read about. I remember buying Brian Stibal’s “Zimmerman Blues” newsletter and wondering just how much Dylan stuff there was still out there I hadn’t heard.

Then suddenly, there I was, sitting to the left of the stage in Boston Garden, hearing that voice take command of the ancient arena where the Bruins and Celtics and countless other acts had played through the years. It filled the room, impressive for such a diminutive character.

The Band, all wearing suit jackets, grown-ups, it seemed, were buoyant, watching Bob’s every move as if playing this music was filling themselves with energy, electricity, they came to life with every note. And Dylan himself, slight but somehow strong, was in the middle of all of it, confident, especially so since he hadn’t been out on the road for a long time.

The music was good natured, rich and full and Robertson’s stinging guitar was following Bob flawlessly on every song or so it seemed. It was thrilling, rebirthing these classic hits of his, certainly his finest work, and it seemed he was bringing each one back out to show us, to relive it with us, to affirm its worth and value.

He was proud of them, it seemed and as he ran through each number, the Band was adding their own personal stamp to songs that they hadn’t played on in the original versions, tunes like “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and “I Don’t Believe You” and “It Ain’t Me, Babe” songs re-imagined with a lively Band arrangement. He hadn’t played some of these songs in years but he knew we knew them, every single tune, stretching all the way back to when he started and maybe it wasn’t the case but it seemed he fed off of our excitement, hearing these wonderful songs once again.

Maybe because it was they’d already visited Chicago, Philly and Montreal, they had themselves a set list and it wasn’t like they were playing these songs because they were obligated, it seemed — on this afternoon, anyway — it was these were the songs they wanted to share with us and their creator, who hadn’t done much creating lately.

Then, a little over an hour into the show, it was just him, alone in the spotlight on the Boston Garden stage with his guitar and harmonica, his weapons of choice to try to change the world. He would never say that, of course and he’d give anybody who even hinted at that seven kinds of Hell. But didn’t he? Even just a little?

Lovingly, it seems to me now, he gave us five acoustic songs — “The Times They Are A-Changin’” over a decade old then. And instead of singing it like a warning, the way he originally did it, this version was more like a gentle reminder of the seriousness of his original and how right he actually was.

For “Don’t Think Twice,” which followed, his deliberate guitar strumming and absolutely delightful harmonica — yes, he can really blow when he feels like it — put a smile on everyone’s face. That’s an old song, too, you thought but somehow it’s timeless, didn’t seem to come from as far back as “Times.”

After a crowd-pleasing “Just Like A Woman” with a fairly radical musical shift or two, he launched into two of his most literary songs and the arena was spellbound. “Of war and peace, the truth just twists, its curfew gull just glides…” — Oh my! It was “Gates Of Eden” and instantly, you thought who in the world writes songs like this? Who would ever DARE to write a song like this…."Of war and peace..”

And then he got to the last verse, a verse I later used as my inscription next to my picture in my Rivier College yearbook a year later, still hearing his voice in my ear.

“At dawn, my lover comes to me to tell me of her dreams, with no attempt to shovel the glimpse into the ditch of what each one means. At times, I think there are no words but these to tell what’s true. And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden.”

Then, a silent moment and sitting there, seeing that guy with his guitar taking on the world — I don’t care if he ever thought that, I thought that — and whenever I’d read things about this messiah complex thing or people thinking Bob Dylan had the answers and that people were coming to his house, bugging him, demanding more and more and more…well, I understood that, then. And would I have to write about this kind of stuff some day? Would I have to write? I think so…

And then Dylan swung into “It’s All Right, Ma” — as dazzling a bit of word play, poetry, commentary, wisdom, slash, dash, crash — there was NO STOPPING THIS GUY…he HAD to DELIVER this…it wasn’t about singing, anybody could sing. This was a SPECIAL DELIVERY…

“Goodness hides behind its gates but even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.”

That line brought a huge roar from the Garden crowd, loud enough almost for President Richard Nixon to hear, sweating Watergate for a few more months in the Oval. It brought the same roar all across America.

The Band returned for four more songs with Dylan, including the only two from the new album “Planet Waves” — “Forever Young” and “Something There Is About You.” Then the house lights came up, Robbie turned towards Bob and nodded and they roared into his unofficial national anthem, “Like A Rolling Stone,” this time sung in celebration, not in anger like on the famous “Judas” moment or like so many other — “Well, I guess we’d better do ‘Rolling Stone’ instances played out on stages over the next many years until he stopped playing it all together.

Here it was, all of us singing, “How does it feel?” because we were with him, WITH HIM, BOB DYLAN, finally, back from self-imposed exile, burn-out, not-going-to-Woodstock no-f-ing way, on stage FOR us. Right now. Right HERE.

And though it might have been an accident, I’m pretty sure I saw him catch Rick Danko’s eye and smile on the chorus. How did it feel, indeed?

They returned for one more number, a song that, beginning with the next show, would open and close almost all of the remaining Bob Dylan and The Band 1974 tour performances, the lead track from “Blonde On Blonde” — “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)” a benediction and a wry prediction of sorts from the guy.

The ensemble sound of Bob and The Band lingered in my ears on the way out of the old Garden and there was an air of triumph about the performance. Just eight years earlier — seems like an entire life happened in between — they had played most of these songs on stages across the pond and across America and were booed and hollered at and resented from Robbie’s first note.

But now, Dylan was back and they were no longer “The Hawks,” they were a formidable unit of their own, “The Band” with an impressive catalog and impeccable reputation. And for these dates across the land, Bob Dylan and The Band showed America once again what so many didn’t seem to understand or appreciate the first time around.
It was exalted music, powerful, sounds that came from their souls and experiences of all of the Band and Bob and together, sharing their music with the world, getting turned back, recouping, reconfiguring, then sharing it with us one more time. And THIS TIME, we understood. Imagine seeing the world turn around to YOU?

The recordings are great, clear, Robbie’s guitar rings like a bell. But being there in Boston Garden then and letting those sounds back into my ears now, 18,505 days or a half century later, it was, sort of ‘Welcome home’ — you know?

(Thanks to Evan Glaudow’s “Cult Following” where I spotted this.)

FOR FURTHER READING: The third edition of my “Bob Dylan: A Descriptive, Critical Discography 1961-2022” is available for you on Amazon. The full box set of Dylan and The Band’s 1974 Tour will be released September 20.

HERE’S THE CONCERT FROM BOSTON GARDEN, JANUARY 14, 1974