Song selection, sound system disappoint Dylan fans at Akron
By Julie Fanslow
Youngstown Vindicator - Thursday, July 3, 1986
AKRON -- As the Grateful Dead have testified, "What a long, strange trip it's been." And, chances are, most of the 40,000 or so who attended Wednesday's concert featuring the Dead, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are still shaking their heads and wondering what just was said, played and sung last night.
In the '60s and '70s, stadium rock concerts were enormously popular. A music fan need only look to Wednesday's triple bill at the Rubber Bowl, probably this summer's most fiercely hyped and eagerly awaited show, to understand why concerts on this scale have fallen from favor.
The first and worst problem is an inadequate sound system, its ineffectiveness magnified by the open-air setting and Rubber Bowl's flabby acoustics. It's always been hard enough to understand Dylan; it was well nigh impossible Wednesday. Lyrics were muddled and in-between song patter couldn't be heard at all. Petty fared even worse -- the only time his voice carried clearly halfway across the stadium was during "The Waiting," the first half of which he did solo, just he and his electric guitar.
In Review: Dylan and Dead are alive and well
By Scott Mervis
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Monday, July 7, 1986
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The folks in Orchard Park will be talking about this one for a long time. The quiet community outside Buffalo holds Rich Stadium, which Friday was the setting of an historic concert with Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and Tom Petty.
Invite them to a party and the Dead take over. On the eve of the concert, Deadheads (the band's reverent following) invaded Orchard Park. The town's six motels were filled, spilling partying, but very mellow campers on the streets and parking lots. There was even a winding line to get inside the corner convenience store. For those few hours, that little town must have held the country's greatest concentration of tie-dyed clothing.
It was a two-day convention, Grateful Dead-style, and what better way to celebrate the Fourth of July than with the Dead's vagabond odes and Dylan's outspoken songs of freedom? It would be easy to write this off as a sojourn into the '60s, but with nearly 80,000 fan(atic)s and some of yesterday's and today's best music, it was too alive to be mere nostalgia.
Furthermore, these were people who refuse to let the times define their mood.
Dylan merges with Petty's band during tour
St. Joseph News-Press - July 12, 1986
"We're looking at this temporarily as just one group to itself," Tom Petty says about the merger of his band, the Heartbreakers, with legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan for a series of tours this year. "We just added another singer who happens to have a lot of songs."
A lot in this case means more than 25 years worth of Dylan's celebrated songs of protest and politics, material that grew out of folk and put social consciousness into rock 'n' roll. Well past his commercial prime, Dylan's legacy still makes him one of America's most revered performers.
Early on, some critics wrote that Petty and the Heartbreakers, a mainstream rock 'n' roll favorite for the past eight years, stole some of Dylan's thunder during the concert with a set of their own songs. Band members, however, say that's not the case, and their primary duty right now is to be Dylan's band.
All of which begs the musical question: What's it like to play with Bob Dylan?
"The trouble with that question is there's no real answer," Petty said with a chuckle. "I think it's one of the more interesting things we've done. Like playing with any songwriter, in a way, once you're all there and working, it's fairly normal. You can't really work with somebody if you're in awe of him."
Dylan Leaves 'em Hangin' Then Pulls The Crowd In
By Carlo Wolff
Schenectady Gazette - Monday, July 14, 1986
SARATOGA SPRINGS -- Count on Bob Dylan to leave you in the lurch, and then bring you home.
In his Saratoga Performing Arts Center debut, Dylan -- backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers -- drew 19,290 fans last night, figuratively keeping the rain at bay in a show of nearly three hours.
It was a spotty, unorthodox, often jerky performance; the first set, with Dylan and the band and those ecstatic backup singers Madlyn Quebec, Carol Dennis, Queen Esther Marrow and Louise Bethune, was largely negligible, despite a luminous "Shot of Love" and a pretty "I'll Remember You."
But the show began to catch fire -- and the sound to straighten out -- when the suave Petty and his stylish Heartbreakers snagged the crowd with the new "Think About Me" and a version of "The Waiting" that just avoided melodrama.
Editor's Note: The end of the article seems a bit abrupt. I put it up to sloppy editing.
Profile: Dylan again strikes responsive chords
By Mikal Gilmore
The Deseret News - Wednesday, July 16, 1986
Twenty years ago, Bob Dylan permanently and sweepingly altered the possibilities of both folk music and the pop-song form. In that epoch, the reach of his influence seemed so pervasive, his stance so powerful and mysterious, that he was virtually changing the language and aspirations of popular culture with his every work and gesture. But Dylan barely got started in rock 'n' roll before he got slopped. In the spring of 1966, he was recording "Blonde on Blonde" and playing fiery, controversial electric concerts with his backing band, the Hawks (later renamed the Band); a few months later, he was nearly killed in a motorcycle accident and withdrew from recording and performing for nearly a year and a half.
For many, his music never seemed quite the same after that, and although much of it proved bold and lovely, for about 20 years now Bob Dylan hasn't produced much music that transfigures either pop style or youth culture. To some former fans, that lapse has seen almost unforgivable. Consequently, Dylan has found himself in a dilemma shared by no other rock figure of his era: He has been sidestepped by the pop world he helped transform, at a time when contemporaries like the Rolling Stones attract a more enthusiastic audience than ever before. This must hurt an artist as scrupulous as Dylan, who, for whatever lapses, has remained pretty true to both his moral and musical ideals.
Music: Bob Dylan and Tom Petty
By Jon Pareles
The New York Times - July 17, 1986
Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers gave an oddly paced, willful concert Tuesday at Madison Square Garden. The joint tour, in which Mr. Petty and his band accompany Mr. Dylan and play two 20-minute segments on their own, opened its three-night stand in New York with a set that ran nearly three hours without an intermission. The show never gathered momentum, but along the way there were some magnificent rockers, some uninspired stretches and a few unexpected cover versions by Mr. Dylan, from Ricky Nelson's "Lonesome Town" to Ray Charles's "Unchain My Heart." As always, Mr. Dylan left listeners wondering what was forced, what was heartfelt.
The 45-year-old Mr. Dylan, who joked, "I must be the oldest person here," was in fighting trim, sporting such 1980's accouterments as a single dangling earring and bulging biceps. Although he maintained his usual deadpan scowl, he seemed to be in cheerful spirits - particularly after Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones came onstage - making the Heartbreakers grin and occasionally playing guitar. His singing started out stiff and grew more self-assuredly wayward, sliding around notes and hopscotching around the beat.
Mr. Dylan chose a handful of his mid-1960's classics and many of his lesser, more recent songs. At key moments, he sang his openly Christian material from the early 1980's. And both he and Mr. Petty emphasized lyrics about romantic strife.
For the occasion, the Heartbreakers played like two different bands -a rowdy, bluesy jam band behind Mr. Dylan (who also brought four soul-gospel backup singers) and a slicker, more understated band supplying melodic hooks and up-to-date electronic effects for Mr. Petty. Although Mr. Petty shows Mr. Dylan's influence - and could probably fill arenas on his own rather than deferring to Mr. Dylan - the show pointed up their differences. As a singer, Mr. Petty is closer to Roger McGuinn, a Dylan disciple, than to Mr. Dylan himself; as a songwriter, Mr. Petty concentrates on pop-song character studies of Southerners while Mr. Dylan leans toward moral pronouncements.
Dylan & Petty
By Jonathan Takiff
The Philadelphia Inquirer - July 18, 1986
What drew Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and Bob Dylan together for their historic tour?
"Money," suggests Petty dryly, in a conversation prompted by the duo's appearances at the Spectrum, tomorrow and Sunday. "It also helped," he adds, ''that Bob asked me."
The co-billed tour arrangement also made sense for another reason. "It kind of took the pressure off each of us, individually," says Petty.
Profound stuff, this is not. But at least it's honest.
Petty and the Heartbreakers have been hitting the performing road pretty regularly and with fair degree of success, thanks to their long and steady string of singles hits.
But Dylan, the folknik who first brought artistic respectability to the rock arena in the mid-1960s by going electric, hasn't toured the U.S. since 1983, hasn't exactly set the world on fire with his last half dozen records, and so is almost passe to today's rock and roll youth.
Together, however, B.D. and T.P. represent a clear line of musical continuity - one master, one disciple of the folk rock genre - and so are a unique supergroup, a (you should pardon the expression) money-in-the- bank proposition.
Concert Review: The times, Dylan style a-changin'
By Kevin Cramsey
Reading Eagle - Monday, July 21, 1986
PHILADELPHIA -- After Bob Dylan sang "Like a Rolling Stone" near the end of his 3 ½-hour performance with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Saturday nigh, he was securely in control of the Spectrum's near-capacity crowd.
When, moments later, Dylan started up "In the Garden" (a "born-again" song from his least-popular album, 1979's "Saved,") the excitement was suddenly gone.
This was a familiar scenario throughout the marathon performance, at least when Dylan was on stage. A rousing "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" would then give way to a somewhat tired-sounding "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine." And so forth.
Keeping audiences offbat is certainly a trademark with Dylan, who repeatedly challenged the audience to stick with him on unfamiliar material.
Tour may be no big deal for Dylan, but it is for Petty
The Montreal Gazette - July 24, 1986
NEW YORK (AP) -- Bob Dylan, whose live shows over the past 25 years have been acoustic, electric and always eclectic, shrugs off his worldwide tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, wondering what all the fuss is about.
"People forget it, but since 1974 I've never stopped working," he says.
"So for me, I'm not getting caught up in the excitement of a big tour," Dylan told Rolling Stone magazine in a recent interview. "I've played big tours and I've played small tours. I mean, what's the big deal about this one?"
The True Confessions tour, dubbed "the summer's hottest ticket" by many, marks Dylan's first U.S. tour since 1978 and follows Dylan-Petty shows in Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
Virtually every ticket on the U.S. tour has been sold; about one million people will see the show by its completion.
By latching onto Petty and Co., the reclusive Dylan has continued his string of unpredictable live performances.
"I mean, Dylan's just a guy like anyone else -- except he's a guy who has something to say," Petty told Rolling Stone. "And he has a personality that makes it his own."