Shelter From The Storm: Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Years
by Sid Griffin

The circus is back in town

Releasing two stunning albums and a ferocious live record across 1975/76 (Blood On The Tracks, Desire, Hard Rain) would be enough for most. Dylan, however, attacked his second purple patch with vigour in the mid-70s, embarking on two markedly different legs of The Rolling Thunder Revue and piecing together a four-hour epic movie from some of the best live performances the man ever gave… and some of the worst acting and heavy-handed non sequitur symbolism ever committed to tape.

That film, Renaldo & Clara, depicts a psychodrama from a man whose marriage was in collapse at the same time as he hit one of his highest artistic peaks; a mix of soul-baring onstage exorcisms and a poorly-executed awareness/benefit campaign for jailed boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. In tow were the likes of Roger McGuinn, Mick Ronson, Joni Mitchell, estranged wife Sara and old-time lover Joan Baez.

“Maelstrom” doesn’t quite cut it, yet Griffin pulls all these disparate, sometimes desperate strands together for their open-air conclusion in September 1976, where a bedraggled, notably fraught Dylan battles Biblical rain to get a television special recorded before disbanding the carnival. A scene-by-scene analysis of R&C proves one conceit too far, however: if you found the film itself a slog, having it described to you with the author deciding which scenes should be kept or cut won’t entice you into watching it again any sooner.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

ISBN 9781906002275, 254 pages

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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