Joan Baez & Bob Dylan … Mama, you´ve been on my mind … — with Beatty Zimmerman and Ronee Blakley at Massachusetts.
Mama, you´ve been on my mind … — with Beatty Zimmerman at Massachusetts.
Bob Dylan1976 … night of the hurricANE … astrodome, houston/tx …. — with Bob Neuwirth
PHOTOGRAPHER: KEN REGAN
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez at Mama Fresca’s Dream Away Lodge, in Becket, Massachusetts, November 1975. The owner, the larger-than-life Mama, is a huge Joan Baez fan, and takes the dungaree-clad Joan upstairs and gives her a present—her wedding dress. It fits like a glove. They shoot scenes for Renaldo & Clara with Joan in the dress, and eat home cooked food.
One of the images book: Rolling Thunder: Photographs by Ken Regan
The Rolling Thunder tour was different from Dylan’s previous in that he invited many musicians to tour with him, including The Byrds’ lead singer Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell, T-Bone Burnett, Mick Ronson, and others.
Photographer: Ken Regan
bill graham (impressario of the Rolling Thunder Review)
“Everybody’s wearing a disguise
To hide what they’ve got left behind their eyes…”
On a sultry, slow July afternoon, a gypsy called Scarlet Rivera left her Lower East Side Manhattan flat, violin case in hand.
She was heading for a friend’s place to kill time before a rehearsal with an obscure 10-piece Latin band that paid her $100 a week.
“Then this car comes up and cuts me off,” said Scarlet, picking up the story.
“Some ugly green car. The guy driving asked me if I really knew how to play the violin.”
He never showed his face, but the impassive profile was unmistakable.
“Actually, he had this woman next to him ask me,” Scarlet corrects herself.
“He asked her to ask me for my phone number, but I told her to tell him that I didn’t give out my number to somebody stopping me on the street.”
No, not even to Bob Dylan.
“Come downtown and rehearse with me,” Dylan finally said for himself.
“I’m heading uptown,” Scarlet snapped and brashly requested a ride.
She was beckoned in, Dylan turned downtown and hijacked her to his studio.
The rest is rock legend.
Shortly thereafter, Scarlet was to become an indispensable member of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder caravan, and it is her writhing, poignant improvisations that so deepen the nine cuts of his current chart-topping album, Desire.
There is one other bizarre switch to Dylan’s pickup.
As Scarlet recalls the green car encounter, “He started making up this entire fantasy all about him being some gypsy musician named Danny who had just gotten off the boat from Hungary.”
Of course, if truth be told, Rivera’s Romany roots are as fanciful as those of her fabled chauffeur.
Scarlet comes not from an Andalusian cave but from suburban Chicago. Scarlet Rivera was born, Donna Shea and is of Irish-Sicilian ancestry.
By Jim Jerome
People Magazine Archive
February 23, 1976 Vol. 5 No. 7
Bob, Sara, Joan … together rolling thunder
PHOTOGRAPHER: FRED W. MCDARRAH
From left, American musicians Rob Stoner, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan (born Robert Zimmerman), and Eric Andersen perform on stage at Gerde’s Folk City, 130 West 3rd Street, New York, October 23, 1975. Playing in honor of club owner Mike Porco’s 61st birthday, the performance was in effect a dry run for Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue concert tour, which began in earnest a week later
Bob Dylan – Patty’s Gone To Laredo (New York City – October 1975)
Bob, Joan and “Jackson Brown” … rehearsals … but it´s Eric Andersen
getting ready for the show…
“the crew” of MAYFLOWER, Plymouth
Richie Heavens: “Finally I had the song.
“So I took the three crumpled-up pieces of paper back to the Broadway Central and spent eight hours a day for three days learning the thirteen verses and working out my own arrangement.
“… I got to sing at what I would call my first ‘legitimate’ coffeehouse where people like Odetta and Pete Seeger got to play … The audience responded wildly with almost deafening applause. A few minutes later, standing in the dark behind the audience, a young man stepped up in front of me with tears coming down his face. He was moved.
“‘Oh, man,’ he said, choking on his emotion, ‘that … that … that was my favorite version of that song.’ I could barely say thank you before I had to get away from him too. I wasn’t used to this kind of reaction. ‘Way too heavy for me,’ I whispered under my breath, heading for the dressing room, which was downstairs.
“Dave Van Ronk was blocking my way, waiting for me.
“‘Hey, man, do you know who that was who came over to you just now?’
“I didn’t have a clue. ‘No, I don’t,’ I answered.
“‘He wrote the song you just sang,’ he said.
“‘No, he didn’t,’ I said. ‘Gene Michaels wrote that song.’ I was so sure.
“‘The hell he did! The guy you just met wrote that song,’ Van Ronk said firmly. And he was right; he was right.
“Hell of a way to meet Bob Dylan!
“For a whole month, I’d been telling everybody that somebody else wrote his song and then on my first night in a real coffeehouse, I get the chance to tell Dylan himself that somebody else wrote ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.’” (New York, 1963)
Dylan & Scarlet
Bob Dylan & Ronee Blakley
backstage
The Rolling Thunder Review- The Rolling Thunder Revue Tour was a traveling caravan of musicians, including Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Bob Neuwirth assembled the backing musicians, Mick Ronson, T-Bone Burnett, David Mansfield, Steven Soles, and from the Desire sessions, violinist Scarlet Rivera, bassist Rob Stoner, and drummer Howie Wyeth. The tour included American northeast and Canada in the fall of 1975, and the American south and southwest in the spring of 1976. See link for featured videos Tangled Up In Blue & One More Cup of Coffee…
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