SEPTEMBER 14, 1976 – The Bob Dylan TV special “Hard Rain” aired on NBC. Dylan appeared on the September 11-17, 1976 issue of TV Guide and consented to a rare interview with the magazine to promote his first network television special.
It put Dylan, the former protest songwriter, front and center for American music and iconography. This would, in many ways, be the performance to cement him as a mega-star, the culmination of the legendary Rolling Thunder Revue, with the debut TV performance of his long-awaited album “Hard Rain.”After rehearsals at the Starlight Ballroom of the Belleview Biltmore Hotel in Clearwater, Florida on April 22, 1976, the program was recorded on May 23, 1976 at Hughes Stadium in Fort Collins, Colorado to replace aborted footage from Clearwater.Only four of the eleven performances heard in the television broadcast (“Maggie’s Farm,” “One Too Many Mornings,” “Shelter from the Storm” and “Idiot Wind”) were included on the nine track album of the same name released by Columbia records ten days before the special aired.The Rolling Thunder Revue tour included musicians Joan Baez, T-Bone Burnett, David Mansfield, Gary Burke, Roger McGuinn, Bob Neuwirth, Scarlet Rivera, Luther Rix, Kinky Friedman, Mick Ronson, Steven Soles, Rob Stoner and Howie Wyeth. Dylan thanks Arthur Rimbaud at the end and there’s a credit to poet Anne Waldman for the “headgear.”Unlike the early live shows, however, both the album and special received a universal shrug from critics.
The program fared poorly in the ratings and has never been released on DVD.“Hard Rain,” wrote Rolling Stone’s Janet Maslin, “seemed to come at a time when the Rolling Thunder Revue, so joyful and electrifying in its first performances, had just plain run out of steam.” There were also rumors that Dylan, who had been fighting with then-wife Sara (they would divorce a year later), was hitting the bottle pretty heavily that weekend.However, some say it was down to Dylan not enjoying the spotlight of being Bob Dylan again, having spent the last months on tour as part of a wider group of musicians, he was now becoming frustrated with the spotlight, the interviews, the magazines, and it had become tiresome again. Whatever the reasoning, the concert was never highly considered, and no one has ever bothered to release it on DVD.
SETLIST:
1) A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall2) Blowin’ In The Wind (Duet with Joan Baez)3) Railroad Boy (Duet with Joan Baez) –4) Deportees (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos) (Duet with Joan Baez)5) I Pity The Poor Immigrant (Duet with Joan Baez)6) Shelter From The Storm7) Maggie’s Farm 8) One Too Many Mornings9) Mozambique10) Idiot Wind11) Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
