The Rolling Thunder Logbook

By Sam Shepard

Book Overview

In the autumn of 1975, when ''New England is festering with Bicentennial madness,'' Bob Dylan and his Rolling Thunder Revue-a rag-tag variety show that Dylan envisioned as a traveling gypsy circus-toured twenty-two cities across the Northeast. Swept up in the motley crew, which included Joni Mitchell, Mick Ronson, Allen Ginsberg, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, and Ramblin' Jack Elliot, was playwright Sam Shepard, ostensibly hired to write, on the spot, the script for a Fellini-esque, surreal movie that would come out of the tour. The script never materialized, but throughout the many moods and moments of his travels with Dylan and his troupe, Shepard kept an impressionistic Rolling Thunder Logbook of life on the road. Illuminated by forty candid photographs by official tour photographer Ken Regan, Shepard's mental-snap shots capture the camaraderie, isolation, head games, and pill-popping mayhem of the tour, providing a window into Dylan's singular talent, enigmatic charisma, and vision of America.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670603252
• ISBN13: 9780670603251
• Release Date: July 1977
• Publisher: Viking
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

True East

I gave this four stars because I don't think Sam would want it to get five. That would make it too perfect, and once you read Jack Kerouac's On the Road, you're always wary of making things too perfect. That also seemed to be the idea of the Rolling Thunder Revue: to let things fall together even though that means they may fall apart (and by Sam's reckoning they eventually did). Coupled with J. D. Salinger stream of consciousness writing, Sam dragged Kerouac's real time typing into the deconstructed stage with all four walls down. I only know Sam from his portrayl of Chuck Yeager in the Right Stuff from the book by Tom Wolfe-- the book full of Wolfian gimmicks but the film made the old fashioned way, his plays like True West, and the fact that his mom once toasted my fledgeling writing career-- I hope one day to make her proud. Sam was hired to make a film of the Revue tour, and wound up making a book. While that means it has pages, photos, and a cover, within that loose definition, it falls apart as much as it can. Sam uses the "f" word, but as a word, not for effect (it is a word). There are bits of writing like this: "Fans are more dangerous than a man with a weapon because they're after something invisible." The thing that galvanized the tour was fighting to get Rubin Carter released (which eventually happened), and Dylan penned the amazing "Hurricane", an absolutely riveting song when you hear it on the Bootleg Vols 1-3 CD set (or various other ways it exists), not only for the lyrics and music, but Dylan's delivery, at once cool and impassioned, the crazy quilt of images, skewed syntax, sprung rhythms, and well, Sam Shepardness of the whole thing. But was it all a museum set piece? More safely enshrined rock history? Or can it happen now? Will someone rise up today for Eric Volz? Let the thunder roll on.

A Keeper

The perfect companion to Sloman's book, especially given the great photography. Arm yourself with these two books and a circulating audience tape from late '75 and you will treated to the Essence of Bob Dylan.