DYLAN & THE BAND: "Before The Flood"

Original Released in 1974, June 20
US: 2LP Asylum AB 201 (later Columbia KC 37661)
UK: 2LP Island IDBD1
Recorded Live at the LA Forum,
between January 30 and February 14, 1974

Twelve million people applied for tickets for a forty-date tour, playing large arenas. Looking back, Dylan recalled that «it wasn't a tour where a bunch of guys get together and say let's go out and play. There was a great demand for that tour, and it had been building up, so we went out and did it. We were playin' three, four nights at Madison Square Garden, but what justified that? We hadn't made any records». He actually played one afternoon and two evening shows at Madison Square - it just must have seemed that way. Dylan had not toured since 1966 and it was now a different world; what had been adventure was now big business - «everybody had a piece of the action. The publicity people. The promoters. I had no control over what was going on». "Planet Waves" was slipped out about a third of the way through the tour, delayed by Dylan's change in title. He rarely played songs from it on stage. This led to disappointing sales of just over half a million, and Dylan returning to Columbia. This double live album - one of the first - was owed as a contractual obligation. It was been a subject of controversy among Dylan fans ever since. Rather than capture the ebb and flow of a live show, tracks were cherry-picked from four separate concerts. Even so, the album was brillantly programmed over four sides of vinyl, each with its own atmosphere, and it does convey the structure of eac show - Dylan with the Band, the Band solo, Dylan solo, the Band again and back together till the end of the show.

 On the front cover fans hold matches alight and aloft, while other shots of Barry Feinstein catch the six men onstage, intent and serious. A nightly highlight was Richard Manuel's hoarse, straining vocal on "I Shall Be Released" that is captured here on the Band's set. The critical dispute centres over the quality of the tour as a whole that was much the same from stadium to stadium. Dylan himself makes a comparison with Elvis, the 'sensitivity and power' of the Sun sessions as compared to the 'full-out' power of his 1969 TV comeback. There is an urgency and sense of rush here that makes this concert tour unmistakeable. For Michael Gray, «there is an over-speedy, breakneck quality here that does little justice to the lyrics» with Dylan simply throwing his head back and yelling, like a hound. Subtlety and nuance, forget 'em. Real fans have never liked it.

David Cavanagh revaluates the album: «it lacks the usual smugness shared by performer and audience of such affairs. This is feral, and Dylan is aggressive not cuddly. The verses are punched out... the four-man choruses are all but screamed. The next time people heard music this billious, it was being made by The Clash». He is backed upb by Tim Riley: «this is the nostalgia album that beat the oldies trap, a tour of 60s landmarks that made a glance backwards seem entirely contemporary». Paul Williams saw one of the concerts sampled here in real time and didn't enjoy watching a show from so far away - "about a mile in back of the singer's head" - is amazed how good it now sounds, and so well recorded, especially Levon's drums. It captures the moment when a great artist 'saw daylight. (Brian Hinton in "Bob Dylan Album File & Complete Discography")