Author(s): Sam Shepard

Music

Sam Shepard's memoir of the Rolling Thunder tour with Bob Dylan and friends...In the autumn of 1975, when New England was festering with Bicentennial madness, Bob Dylan and his Rolling Thunder Revue--a rag-tag variety show that Dylan had envisioned as a traveling gypsy circus--toured twenty-two cities across the Northeast. Swept up in the enormous entourage, which included Joni Mitchell, Mick Ronson, Allen Ginsberg, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and many more, was Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Sam Shepard, ostensibly hired to write, on the spot, the script for a 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. Culminating in a blockbuster benefit concert (with Muhammad Ali--a benefit for imprisoned boxer "Hurricane" Carter), Shepard's mental-snap shots capture the camaraderie, isolation, and pill-popping mayhem of the tour, as well as provide a window into Dylan's singular talent and enigmatic charisma.