The infamous Hartford 1980 show

I went to the Hartford show with the full realization of what I was going to see.

I went to the Hartford show with the full realization of what I was going to see.  I wasn't unreceptive to the idea, though I was then and am now, basically a Jewish atheist, just like Jerry Wexler. I was brought up that way. 

I'd been expecting something like this (the born again phase) for a long time, certainly since John Wesley Harding and much of the Basement Tapes, which I thought were clearly spiritual in nature.  In fact some time after Slow Train Coming came out, I read the entire Bible cover to cover, just so I'd know what it was all about. 

The biggest revelation was discovering "I Pity the Poor Immigrant" came from in Leviticus.  It's well known now, but when I read it, I went “holy fucking shit!” and haven't been able to view the song in any other light since. For the previous 11 years, before Slow Train Coming I'd been trying to figure out what it was about - and not one of the interpretations by anyone else made any sense. 

What took me aback about Slow Train Coming was Bob's vehemence and just all of the god of vengeance shit. 

I was a big fan of the Pasolini film, "The Gospel According to Saint Matthew," and was hoping Bob's vision of Jesus would be like that. It was filmed in grainy black and white (just like Don’t Look Back) and since Pasolini was a communist, Christ is portrayed as kind of a radical mobilizer who also pulls off miracles.  Almost all the actors are people he saw in the street.  The music for the film is incredible, the African mass, "Misa Luba," and Blind Willie Johnson and Odetta among other stuff.  It's a powerful film. 

Years later I opened for Peter Case, a great singer-songwriter and musician, who at the time (and may still be) was a born again playing with some of the same crew of musicians around Bob at that time, T-Bone Burnett, Steven Soles.  We ended up having a couple of beers and I had a big talk with him about religion and I told him about that film.

The Hartford show was the closest any of the gospel tours came to Philly.  While Dylan may have daringly opened in San Francisco, he didn't (and I suspect) didn't dare bring the all gospel shows to any of the major cities of the East Coast.  That didn't happen until 1981 when at least half the show, and probably more, was the old songs. And even then he didn't actually play NYC, though the East Rutherford, NJ show at what was then the Brendan Byrne arena, but was usually called the Meadowlands, could kind of count as a NYC, since it's just across the Hudson river, maybe 15 minutes from Manhattan if you're not stuck in traffic. 

Hartford, Connecticut, Bushnell Memorial Hall 7 May 1980

01 - Gotta Serve Somebody
02 - I Believe In You
03 - When You Gonna Wake Up
04 - Ain't Gonna Go To Hell For Anybody
05 - Cover Down, Break Through
06 - Precious Angel
07 - Man Gave Names To All The Animals
08 - Slow Train
09 - Ain't No Man Righteous, No Not One
10 - Do Right To Me Baby (Do Unto Others)

Gospel rap

11 - Solid Rock
12 - Saving Grace
13 - Saved (Bob Dylan/Tim Drummond)
14 - What Can I Do For You?
15 - In The Garden

(encore)

16 - Are You Ready?
17 - Pressing On

At the time I was a volunteer disc jockey at the University of Pennsylvania radio station and went to the show in a van with some kid from there. So I went with a friend who had never seen Bob (some introduction!) and to this day I'm not sure if the other kids in this van were into Bob or into Christ or both.  I was just glad I didn't have to drive. 

The show was in this weird, old, fairly small theater in a strange part of town.  As you went into the show, there were people outside handing out religious tracts.  If you ever saw the film Wiseblood, where Harry Dean Stanton plays a fairly demented, basically evil preacher, they totally reminded me of that.  They were creepy and scary.  We had seats in the balcony.