1975: A Golden Anniversary

As 1975 began for Bob Dylan, BLOOD ON THE TRACKS was released. He spent the year converting private upheaval, old friendships, and a burst of new writing into the most carnivalesque project of his career. He appeared with Neil Young and members of The Band at San Francisco’s SNACK benefit in March; traveled briefly to the French Alps; visited the imprisoned boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter in prison; and became unusually visible again in Greenwich Village. There he renewed acquaintances with Bob Neuwirth, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Allen Ginsberg, Roger McGuinn, and others, while meeting or drawing in new collaborators including Ronee Blakley, Jacques Levy, Scarlet Rivera, Sam Shepard, Patti Smith, and Rob Stoner. During ten concentrated days beginning July 5, Dylan and Levy wrote the songs that became DESIRE, which he mostly recorded in a two-day sprint in late July. On Chicago television, he debuted “Hurricane” and “Oh, Sister.” Then he assembled the cast that would become the Rolling Thunder Revue: not merely a tour but a traveling musical, cinematic, and aesthetic world. Beginning a half-mile from the Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts on October 30, Dylan, Baez, Blakley, Elliott, McGuinn, Neuwirth, Stoner, T-Bone Burnett, Mick Ronson, and others would “take the rock” through New England, Canada, and New York, while Dylan simultaneously filmed Renaldo & Clara. Visit these events and more from Dylan’s life in 1975, along with “20 Pounds of Headlines” surveying the wider world of 1975 and the latest news from Dylan’s world in 2026. In “Who Did It Better?” we ask listeners to vote at @RainTrains: Eric Clapton’s 1975 reggae-inflected “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” or Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue’s December 4 Montreal version? Join us for the golden anniversary of the year when the Thunder Rolled.