2024: The Year in Bob Dylan

Dec 31, 2024

There were four major Bob Dylan events in 2024:

The 1974 Live Recordings Box Release
The Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour
The Outlaw Tour (w/Willie Nelson)
A Complete Unknown (The Movie)

Let’s look at each of them, and then talk about some broader issues.

The 1974 Live Recordings

Dylan’s 74 tour with The Band is a milestone for bringing Bob back to the stage, publicly reuniting him with The Band after nearly a decade, and for the spectacle that tour was. We’ve had a live album forever, but this we got close to the whole enchilada.

Like the ‘66 and ‘75 boxes before it, these are really for the hard-core fans as they’re full of repetition, and the streaming ‘sampler’ is really enough for many. The box itself was likely driven by copyright issues as much as short term demand and revenue (and it was recently supplemented with a proper ‘Copyright Release’ that extends the bounty with another 23 full or partial shows). Plus there was bonus vinyl release from Third Man records.

If it suffers from anything, it’s that we’re drowning in recently released Dylan, with massive bootleg series releases and the extra box sets flying at us just about every year for over a decade it often seems beyond even the most dedicated fan’s ability to listen, live with, contemplate, absorb, and fully process this much music. A wonderful but real problem.

A few great articles:

How Bob Dylan Reassembled Himself
(Elizabeth Nelson / GQ)
Inside Bob Dylan And The Band’s Historic Tour
(Steven Hyden / Uproxx)
A Show-By-Show Listening Guide to the '1974 Live Recordings' Box Set
(Ray Padgett / Flagging Down The Double E’s)
More of our favorites in our “Best of 2024 Articles Database”

The Tours

Timothée Chalamet attended the Dylan show in Brooklyn show last year and I’m sure he would agree that objectively the miracle of Bob Dylan’s performance that night - one he essentially repeated on stages all across the world this year - was the most significant Bob Dylan event of this year. It was the act of creation, of reinvention, and of art - a thing of beauty and power - night after night after night (with some going beyond even all that.)

Super interestingly, Dylan treated us to a completely different and very weird tour in the middle of this super-polished and reverent tour. The Outlaw shows were spartan, full of unusual covers, and while they produced highlights mostly they were just good old summer fun. Another piece of the touring legacy, with their looseness and strangeness somehow more enjoyable because of how it sat in between the tight polish of the R&RW shows.

We don’t know if there will ever be another Bob Dylan album, and most would agree that if we don’t Rough and Rowdy Ways is an outstanding final release. And we also have to contemplate that future touring is uncertain (although rumors are already flying) but if Dylan is never on stage again, he couldn’t possibly have finished any stronger.

A few great articles:

Last Night in Austin (Spring Tour)
(Lee Renaldo / Flagging Down The Double E’s)
Last Night in Bethel (Outlaw Tour)
(Anne Margaret Daniel / Flagging Down The Double E’s)
Cacked Ritual from Rock Elder (Fall Tour)
(Mark Kidel / The Arts Desk)
More of our favorites in our “Best of 2024 Articles Database”

The Movie

We were all scared. It was a crazy thing to try and do. There were so many ways it could go wrong or fail.

But it was done with passion, intensity, heart, and incredible talent. A few hate it, of course, and have written long screeds on why it’s not what we needed or deserved. But most people love it and the outpouring of joy (since everyone is a reviewer these days) has been incredible. It seems certain that the reputation of this work will only grow over time, with reverberations felt for decades.

That paragraph could describe just about everything Bob Dylan has ever done. How incredibly impressive that it describes this movie about him too.

A few great reviews:

Astute Portrait of Dylan’s Rise
(Dorian Lynskey / Mojo)
Timothée Chalamet Goes Electric
(Manohla Dargis / The New York Times)
Film Of The Week
(Ann Margaret Daniel / Hot Press)

A Singular Year in a Singular Career

So the best Bob Dylan thing this year was 83 year old Bob Dylan blowing people’s minds on stages all over the world, and the second best Bob Dylan thing (which let’s be honest has 1000x the cultural footprint of the first) was a movie about the first four years of Bob Dylan’s career emotionally satisfying his lifelong fans and grabbing the attention of millions of young new fans (plus a bunch of the older ones who never got hooked before). Just incredible.

Behind The Curtain

While this is all due to the magnificence of Bob Dylan, I want to also shout out two other fellows.

Albert Grossman had a lot to do with those incredible first years of Dylan’s career being managed and optimized nearly perfectly. And the years between ‘Down In the Groove’ and this peak we’re on have been managed by Jeff Rosen, who more than anything (it seems) has to get a lot of the credit for building the legacy and the ‘brand’ just about flawlessly.

There is no unwritten Bob Dylan book that I’d love to see more than a deep dive on the working techniques and accomplishments of these two men in terms of the business and brand aspects of managing Dylan. Many might dream of a deep dish from Sara (obviously more of the personal and tabloid) but I think ‘Managing Dylan’ would be mind blowing. I also do not think there is any chance of it happening.

Still, hats off and deepest thanks to Mr. Grossman and Mr. Rosen.

Thanks Bob.

We’ll continue to look back on 2024 with a summary of the best in Dylan writing, podcasts, events, covers, videos, and more - for the rest of this week.