Salut! Folk

The Rolling Thunder Revue tour closed with a benefit concert at New York’s Madison Square Gardens for Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, the subject of Dylan’s song Hurricane. Muhammed Ali, the heavyweight champion of the world, was there as the leading supporter of the campaign to free Carter from jail. And so was Salut! Folk writer Bill Taylor. In the third and final part of our Rolling Thunder Revue retrospective, Bill remembers that night.

Bill Taylor writes: It had to be one of the most unlikely stage pairings of all time…

Two heavyweights, of a very different kind, together in front of 14,000 roaring fans at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Bob Dylan and Muhammad Ali.

It was December 8, 1975, the dramatic finale of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour – a benefit concert for wrongly imprisoned middleweight boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the subject of Dylan’s song Hurricane.

And that gave the show its title: “The Night of the Hurricane.”
It had sold out weeks in advance, even with minimal publicity and tickets limited to two per person and only on sale at the Madison Square Garden box office.

But I went to the Garden, anyway. In those days, you could often pick up a ticket from a scalper for 10 or 20 dollars over face value, especially if you waited until after the show’s start time.

It was a pretty safe bet. Concerts never started on time in those days. So I was in my seat, a decent one, before the lights went down just before 8.30.

It was pushing one in the morning when the entire lineup came out to sing Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land.

And what a night it was.

Ali appeared quite early, made a bit of a speech and then talked on speakerphone to Rubin Carter at the New Jersey state prison.

It was only one notable moment in a marathon filled with them.

Performers included Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell (who cancelled a gig in Los Angeles to be there), Roger McGuinn, Robbie Robertson, Richie Havens, Roberta Flack, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, violinist Scarlet Rivera, virtuoso rock guitarist Mick Ronson and Ronee Blakley, fresh from playing a C&W superstar in Robert Altman’s movie, Nashville.

Coretta Scott King, widow of assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King, also came out on stage.

Dylan didn’t make an appearance until about 90 minutes into the show.

The other performers sang, either solo or backed up by Dylan’s band, led by Bob Neuwirth.

Mick Ronson was wearing, if memory serves, an emerald-green glittery one-piece jumpsuit. In the middle of one virtuoso riff, he took a flying leap and slid across the stage on his knees, head thrown back, as the other musicians watched almost without expression.

Dylan came out in white face, wearing a hat adorned with flowers. He kicked off with When I Paint My Masterpiece and sang half a dozen more of his songs before the intermission.

When the lights went down again, everyone thought Dylan was back. Until “he” turned around. It was Joan Baez, dressed identically. They did a couple of duets and then Baez sang solo for a while.

The evening ended with Dylan doing a second, longer set and then bringing everyone out, including Coretta Scott King, for the final chorus.

There was nothing left to sing after that. No calls for an encore. Just a great deal of fervent applause.

A concert unlike any other. A bunch of disparate performers who somehow worked quite brilliantly together. I think a lot of people in the audience were, if not exhausted, certainly dazed by what they’d just seen.

I know I was. To this day.

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Part One of the series is here, and Part Two is here. There’s an edited audio version of the concert on Youtube.

Post-script: Rubin Carter was released on bail in March 1976, and then jailed again after a second trial. It wasn’t until 1985 that Judge Lee Sarokin set aside the conviction, and freed him, on the grounds that the prosecutions had been “predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure”.

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