Bob Dylan’s Hard Rain Turns 50

Bob Dylan’s Hard Rain captured the Rolling Thunder Revue in concert in 1976, combining performances from Fort Collins and Fort Worth as the live album reached the charts alongside an NBC television special.

by Paul Cashmere

Bob Dylan’s Hard Rain turns 50 this month, marking five decades since Columbia Records issued one of the most revealing documents of the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue. Released on September 13, 1976, the live album drew from concerts in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Fort Worth, Texas, recorded in May that year. The Fort Collins performance was also filmed for a one-hour NBC television special, creating a simultaneous album and broadcast event around Dylan’s touring band.

Hard Rain occupies an unusual place in Dylan’s catalogue. The Rolling Thunder Revue had begun in 1975 as an expansive travelling show involving Dylan and a shifting cast of musicians and performers. Its first year was subsequently documented in greater depth through later archival releases, but Hard Rain remained the principal official live recording of the 1976 leg for many years.

The album’s 10 tracks were selected from two May concerts. Six performances came from Hughes Stadium in Fort Collins on May 23, including “Maggie’s Farm”, “One Too Many Mornings”, “Shelter from the Storm”, “You’re a Big Girl Now” and the extended “Idiot Wind”. Four others were recorded at Fort Worth on May 16: “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”, “Oh, Sister”, “Lay, Lady, Lay” and “I Threw It All Away”.

The Fort Collins concert was the penultimate show of the tour and became the centrepiece of the NBC broadcast. Despite substantial promotion, including a TV Guide cover, the television special attracted disappointing ratings. The album itself received mixed critical responses, illustrating the different assessments of Dylan’s live performances at the time.

The recording features a substantial ensemble. T-Bone Burnett contributes guitar and piano, David Mansfield plays guitar and pedal steel guitar, Bob Neuwirth provides guitar and backing vocals, Scarlet Rivera supplies strings and Mick Ronson plays guitar on “Maggie’s Farm”. Joan Baez contributes guitar and vocals, while Rob Stoner, Steven Soles, Howard Wyeth and Gary Burke are also part of the musical lineup.

The album’s chart performance nevertheless demonstrated Dylan’s continuing commercial reach. Hard Rain peaked at No. 17 on the US Billboard 200 and No. 3 in the UK. It also reached No. 10 in the Netherlands, No. 15 in Norway, No. 24 in New Zealand, No. 38 in Germany and No. 41 in Sweden. The album eventually achieved gold certification in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.

Criticism of Hard Rain centred partly on the relationship between the performances and the Rolling Thunder Revue itself. Some contemporary reviewers considered the 1976 concerts less compelling than the energy associated with the 1975 shows. Others viewed the album as a more conventional rock presentation of a touring concept that had initially been distinguished by its theatrical and communal character.

The distinction between the two phases of Rolling Thunder has become clearer through Dylan’s archival programme. The 1975 performances were documented in 2002 by The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue. In 2019, a 14-disc collection, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, expanded that documentation alongside Martin Scorsese’s film Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese.

That later archival attention has also placed Hard Rain in a different historical context. In 1976, the album represented the contemporary record of the second Rolling Thunder leg. Fifty years later, it functions as a snapshot of a specific point in Dylan’s touring history, capturing performances that were selected from two concerts rather than presenting either complete show.

Several Hard Rain performances subsequently gained further catalogue life. “Lay, Lady, Lay”, “Idiot Wind” and “Maggie’s Farm” were included on the 1978 Masterpieces compilation, while “Shelter from the Storm” appeared on the 2000 live collection Live 1961-2000: Thirty-Nine Years of Great Concert Performances.

The original album remains concise by modern archival standards, with a total running time of just over 51 minutes. Its anniversary provides an opportunity to reassess the record not as a definitive account of Rolling Thunder, but as a document of one particular moment in Dylan’s performing career, when an ambitious touring production was being translated simultaneously to vinyl and network television.

Tracklisting
“Maggie’s Farm”
“One Too Many Mornings”
“Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”
“Oh, Sister”
“Lay Lady Lay”
“Shelter from the Storm”
“You’re a Big Girl Now”
“I Threw It All Away”
“Idiot Wind”