Bob Dylan 23: Masterpieces and Budokan

Back before Street-Legal had been recorded, Bob and his new band embarked on a massive tour that took them through Australia and the Far East before hitting Europe and America. To promote the Down Under leg, Columbia in Australia put together a three-record set of hits, live alternates and rarities called Masterpieces. It’s not the best overview, particularly in such cases as the Isle Of Wight version of “Like A Rolling Stone” instead of the single, but collectors would have been happy to have such rare sides as “Mixed-Up Confusion” (Bob goes electric in 1962!), “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” from 1965, the amazing “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” recorded live in Liverpool with the Hawks, the Desire outtake “Rita May”, the standalone single “George Jackson” and the solo piano version of “Spanish Is The Loving Tongue”.

The album has been reissued several times in the same countries, but has never been available as an official American release. Some, but not all, of the rarer tracks would be included on Biograph. (And like that set, the six sides were thematically arranged thusly: hits, live, rarities, protest, poetry and love songs.)

After the tour had moved on from Tokyo, Sony put together an official live album from the shows. Just as with happened around the same time with Cheap Trick, enough copies were sold as imports from Japan to compel Columbia into releasing it Stateside. Unfortunately, unlike Cheap Trick’s album of the same name, Bob’s At Budokan wasn’t very good. The band had retained a few members from Rolling Thunder but added backup singers and the sax and flutes from Wrecking Crew legend Teenage Steve Douglas. The result was slick, not unfairly derided as “Vegas”—Lou Reed had a similar approach the same year—and the retooling of the songs was ill-advised. Some tracks stand up, like the ferocious “It’s Alright Ma”, but you have to endure reggae versions of “Don’t Think Twice” and “Shelter From The Storm” to get to it. (“Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” was also reggae, perhaps in a nod to Eric Clapton’s recent cover.) “Oh Sister” and “One More Cup Of Coffee”, two highlights from Desire, are pummeled here. At least he was smart enough not to screw with “Like A Rolling Stone”.

The LP did come with a poster—like all ‘70s double live albums should—and included, for the first time, lyrics on the inner sleeves. But these didn’t always match what was being sung, as in the drastically overhauled “Going, Going, Gone”. The audience claps politely throughout, but it’s still a sad waste of plastic.

Then, only 45 years later, somebody decided to commemorate the shows with a pricey package that, along with liner notes and other ephemera, presented the two remastered concerts as performed on four discs. The setlists are similar, each beginning with a startling instrumental arrangement of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, followed by an obscure cover—“Repossession Blues” for the first show, “Love Her With A Feeling” for the second. Along with the debut of “Is Your Love In Vain?” and a gentle “Girl From The North Country”, some startling choices include “One Of Us Must Know”, “I Don’t Believe You”, “Tomorrow Is A Long Time”, a reworked “The Man In Me”, and a still-evolving “I Threw It All Away”. Nowadays, of course, we should be used to Bob rejigging song arrangements and playing with the phrasing, but that was heresy in 1978. (We also know now that the shows’ promoter insisted on choosing the songs that would be performed. Since Bob needed the money after an expensive film flop and a messy divorce, he agreed, but certainly needed to play them his way.)

Hearing the music in context—as performed—does fill out the listening experience, but this band simply wasn’t the best to suit the material. Hindsight shows us he was in transition; soon enough, he would write all-new songs that wouldn’t need horns onstage, yet had plenty of room for full-throated female backup singers.

Bob Dylan Masterpieces (1978)—3½
Bob Dylan Bob Dylan At Budokan (1978)—2
Bob Dylan The Complete Budokan 1978 (2023)—2½