Bob Dylan Earls Court London Sat 17 June 1978
This was a big event for me. It had been a long time since Dylan had played in the UK, and I was determined to see him, as I hadn’t done so before. It was clear that there was going to be massive demand for tickets for these gigs, which were a string of concerts at the vast Earls Court Arena in London. Buying tickets in those days was very different than it is today with the use of the internet. It was announced that tickets would be on sale by personal application only, with a limit of four tickets per person. The tickets were to be sold at various box offices around the country and went on sale of a Sunday morning. Sadly, there was no box office in the North East of England, the nearest being Leeds, Glasgow or Sheffield. So I decided to go to Leeds to queue for tickets. I figured that I would need to arrive early so I drove to Leeds on Saturday morning, one day before tickets were due to go on sale, to buy tickets for Marie and I to see the great man. Tickets were on sale from a music shop (think it was called Barkers?) in the Headrow, which is the main street in Leeds. When I arrived at the shop, there was already a queue, as some fans having arrived on Friday night. At some point during the day, the shop decided to give us all numbered tickets to mark our place in the queue, and asked us to move on, to prevent crowding and return later to form the queue when the shop closed. This meant I was more or less guaranteed a ticket! So I had a look around Leeds and returned to join the queue around 6pm. We then got ourselves in order according to our number on the ticket (looking back it seems amazing that this worked!). It was a cold, long night queuing outside the shop, but everyone was friendly and the time passed quite quickly, although I didn’t get much sleep. There was evidence of touts, who were staying the night in hotels, and had some young kids queueing for them. By the morning the queue was massive, and curled round and round the streets. I bumped into a couple of mates from town, and agreed to buy their tickets as I was only buying two. We were soon in the shop and bought the tickets. There was some disappointment because the tickets which were sent to Leeds were for seats way up the back of the arena, but hey hey at least we were in. Also they had only sent a small number of tickets (around 1,000 or so I think) so only the first couple of hundred of people in the queue got tickets, leaving hundreds disappointed. I later talked to some friends who went to Sheffield to buy tickets, and the queue was much smaller, and they got better seats! Some others went to Glasgow and there was hardly any queue, with tickets left some days after they went on sale! 
Come the night of the show Marie and I took our seats up the back of Earls Court. The friend how I had bought tickets for kindly bought me a cassette copy of Street Legal, which was good (I still think it is a great album). Dylan was wonderful, and much better than I had hoped. The sound and the view weren’t great from our seats; sounds systems weren’t so good in those days, and video screens weren’t widely used (I don’t think there were any for this gig, but can’t be certain). Dylan was this tiny figure in a waistcoat singing those great songs. He was playing long sets at this point in his career and covered all of his classic songs, along with a selection from the Street Legal album. His voice was strong, and every time he played his mouth organ there was a great cheer from the crowd. This gig started me as a lifelong Dylan fan, and this was the first time of many I was to see the guy in concert. I will review those other gigs over the next few days.
Setlist: A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall; Love Her With a Feeling; Baby, Stop Crying; Mr. Tambourine Man; Shelter From the Storm; Love Minus Zero/No Limit; Tangled Up in Blue; Ballad of a Thin Man; Maggie’s Farm; I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met); Like a Rolling Stone; I Shall Be Released; Going, Going, Gone; Rainy Day Women #12 & 35; One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later); You’re a Big Girl Now; One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below); Blowin’ in the Wind; I Want You; Señor (Tales of Yankee Power); Masters of War; Just Like a Woman; Simple Twist of Fate; All Along the Watchtower; All I Really Want to Do; It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding); Forever Young; The Times They Are A-Changin’
Archive for the ‘Bob Kerr’s Whoopee Band’ Category
9 Oct
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