When it first appeared in 1979, the Bob Dylan Live at Budokan release garnered mixed reviews. It did go gold and receive some praise, particularly in Europe, but many listeners derided its radical rearrangements of classic material as well as its use of backup singers and brassy, big-band instrumentation. Dylan may have been in Japan, but it seemed to a lot of people as if he’d gone to Las Vegas.
Of course, when he gave these performances, he already had a history of reinventing his material in concert—just listen to his renditions of songs like “Lay Lady Lay” and “Shelter from the Storm” on 1976’s Hard Rain, for example. So, nobody should have been shocked by his Budokan renditions.
That said, these performances—culled from Dylan’s first concert series in Japan—are a million miles from the songs’ original studio versions. His group occasionally sounds like the 1970s Saturday Night Live house band, and the beginning of “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)” could be mistaken for something out of Fleetwood Mac. “All Along the Watchtower,” meanwhile, features prominent flute while saxophone plays a major role in many other tracks.
A new, limited-edition boxed set called The Complete Budokan 1978, which expands dramatically on the original release, gives us a fresh opportunity to consider what to make of such renditions. While the 1979 album offers 22 tracks, the box serves up 56—two complete shows from February 28 and March 1, 1978—including 36 previously unreleased performances. Everything has been remixed and remastered for this handsomely packaged anthology, which includes a 40-page, LP-sized booklet with previously unseen photos and new liner notes, as well as two large posters, replicas of the tour program and tickets, and other memorabilia.
Dylan’s desire to shake things up does not extend to the setlists: most songs appear in both concerts in the same order and with the same arrangements, with the two versions of most of them clocking in within only about 10 seconds of each other. Still, there are a few differences, and there are a dozen songs that the 1979 album didn’t include: “I Threw It All Away,” “Girl from the North Country,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” “To Ramona,” “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later),” “You’re a Big Girl Now,” “Tomorrow Is a Long Time,” One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below),” “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” and “The Man in Me,” plus covers of Tampa Red’s “Love Her with a Feeling” and Roland Janes’ “Repossession Blues,” neither of which Dylan has performed since 1978.
The Complete Budokan 1978 is not likely to result in the sort of wholesale reappraisal that Self-Portrait underwent after the release of The Bootleg Series, Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969–1971). Some of these arrangements still seem to make little sense—even some that sound terrific—because they clash with the lyrics. The sax and organ on “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” for instance, seem at odds with the song’s apocalyptic vision, and brassy approaches to “Maggie’s Farm” and “Ballad of a Thin Man” rob them of much of their venom. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” similarly loses its sarcasm in a flute-spiced version with a reggae-influenced beat.
Related: Our review of the Dylan Mixing Up the Medicine book
Still, there’s a good deal more to like here than many early critics acknowledged. Dylan’s vocal work is excellent throughout. So is the backup from his band, which includes nearly all the players who showed up less than four months after these shows on the seriously underrated Street-Legal (which, one hopes will someday be the subject of a reputation-mending Bootleg Series release). That album’s “Is Your Love in Vain?” sounds great in the live versions here, as do a sax-and-chorus-augmented “Like a Rolling Stone,” “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later),” and quite a few of the other tracks. Missteps notwithstanding, in fact, there’s more than enough good stuff in this box to suggest that it belongs in any Dylan fan’s collection.
Dylan continues his “Rough and Rowdy Ways 2021-2024” tour with North American dates this fall. Tickets available here and here.
