2. Bob Dylan/The Band/1974 - Chicago Stadium, Chicago, IL, January 4, 1974
"Knockin' On Heaven's Door"
“Mama, wipe the blood from my face
I'm sick and tired of the war
Got a lone black feelin' and it's hard to trace
Feel like I'm knockin' on heaven’s door…”
The second show of Tour ‘74, January 4, was the second night in the friendly confines of Chicago Stadium. This concert has the distinction of being the first live performance of Dylan’s now-turned-standard, “Knocking On Heaven’s Door.” The sonic distance between them, and Dylan’s last performance of the song, this tour may only be calculated by quantum time. Forty-two days lay between this performance and the last, performed at The Forum in Inglewood, CA on February 14. This first performance is naked, devoid of the charms of Robbie Robertson’s lead guitar, which would develop gradually over the six weeks of the tour.
Originally included as part of the soundtrack to the Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 movie, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), in which Dylan himself acted as the bit character “Alias.” Scriptwriter Rudy Wurlitzer approached Dylan to contribute a few songs to the movie. Peckinpah was so taken with Dylan’s song “Billy,” he offered him (Dylan) a part in the film and filling out the rest of the soundtrack with songs ultimately inspired by the movie. Dylan’s spare soundtrack fits Peckinpah’s vision of the West, post-The Wild Bunch (Warner Bros., 1969). On “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” Dylan sings from deep in the reverb, accompanied by a plaintive band and three female background vocalists mixed up front. It is all Hollywood artifice, excellent, but still artifice.
Dylan laid waste to the Hollywood with this first performance. Thin, short and sweet, the mournful introductory vocals eschewed, Dylan sings the song straight with three of the finest vocalist in rock music backing him up. What changes between is first reading and that on Before the Flood (Asylum, 1974) is the richness contributed by Garth Hudson’s organ and Robbie Robertson’s ever changing guitar. Did I mention that Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature? I still get a kick from the people who ask why he won, because “he was just a songwriter.”