The Rolling Thunder Revue was a famed U.S. concert tour consisting of a traveling caravan of musicians, headed by Bob Dylan, that took place in late 1975 and early 1976; the prevailing theory was that the tour was named after the Native American shaman Rolling Thunder. Others maintained that tour was named after Operation Rolling Thunder, the U.S. aerial bombardment campaign conducted during the Vietnam War. But according to Dylan, there was a simpler explanation "I was just sitting outside my house one day thinking about a name for this tour, when all of a sudden, I looked into the sky and I heard a boom! Then, boom, boom, boom, boom, rolling from west to east. So I figured that should be the name". The January 1976 release of Dylan's album Desire fell between the two legs of the tour.
Among those featured in the Revue were Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Kinky Friedman and Bob Neuwirth. Neuwirth assembled the backing musicians, including T-Bone Burnett, Mick Ronson, David Mansfield, and Steven Soles, and, from the Desire sessions, the violinist Scarlet Rivera, the bassist Rob Stoner, and the drummer Howie Wyeth.
The tour was thoroughly documented through film, sound recording, and in print.
Read more about Rolling Thunder Revue: Origins, The Fall Tour of 1975, The Spring Tour of 1976, Aftermath, Tour Dates
Famous quotes containing the words rolling and/or thunder:
“I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy!”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“Here’s neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all. And another storm brewing, I hear it sing i’ the wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)