What Bob Dylan’s Supper Club was really like

I simply cannot believe it when I see people putting down the Supper Club or calling it over-rated. It just fucks me up. Those shows were as close to the real thing as you’re gonna get.

A composite image of Dylan at The Supper Club

I saw November 16th late show which as far as I’m concerned is the best show I’ve seen on the NET. I think the Queen Jane from that is also amazing. My favorite song from early that night is Ring Them Bells. On the other recordings where you can hear the audience, you can hear someone be amazed.

I totally lucked out in seeing those shows. At the time, I was production manager of the paper I worked for which meant basically doing the layout for the front editorial section. A grueling day usually as something would always fuck up at the place where we put the paper together. If it was the early show, I couldn’t have done it or it would’ve been real tight.

What amazes me is people who dismiss these shows. I suspect that even now some of the recordings may be a tad fast speedwise. But Bob was REALLY singing that night and the fact that he was able to condense his entire career up to that point in one hour long show while basically ignoring most of the classics except for the later classic Forever Young is still incredible. Also the Delia’s are fantastic. And on the show I saw, Jack-A-Roe, I will never forget, the way he starts out low on the first verse, kind of realizes it ain’t right and then ups his singing and gets the energy happening.

What happened was all the other guys in my band at the time, The Fumblers, all worked together at Tower Records in Cherry Hill, NJ. My bass player Paul had been at Tower the longest. The Supper Club was free and tickets were being given out at the original NYC Tower at 8th St. and Lower Broadway. My bass player had worked at various Towers and had friends all over and luckily had a friend at the NYC store who put 2 tix aside for him. The other two guys in the band TOLD HIM OUTRIGHT that if he wanted to stay in the band, he better offer that ticket to me. :-)

So the day before at work, he called me and asked me if I wanted to see Bob at a club in NYC the next night. It was my first club show. Actually I don’t recall Bob ever playing a club before that since the early ‘60s days. So we get to NYC, me driving get the tix and go uptown. We get in a long line (we probably arrived around 10-ish). The club itself was real small with a balcony and the film crew was all over the place. We found a table at the back wall and of course had to sit with other people. Luckily the other people had a few small white papers rolled up that they were very willing so share with us. :-)

Bob came out, all acoustic except for the pedal steel, and it was obvious from the first note of the upbeat Ragged & Dirty he was on. The crowd was going NUTS the entire time which you can hear on the recordings. It was my first time seeing Bob with Paul (my bass player). We may have also seen some of the Patti Smith shows together. When he did Queen Jane and held the notes close to 66 style, I couldn’t believe it. It was the only NET show that came close to the transcendence of the last totally amazing Bob show I saw at the Meadowlands in ‘81 where I was in the farthest corner of the highest balcony and Girl From The North Country was so amazing the woman I was with gasped. I was high off the Meadowlands show for at least a month.

1981: The Last Really Great Dylan Tour?

There’s been good shows since and many great moments, particularly MSG 2001, but for an entire astounding show that came close to what he’s capable of when he puts his mind to it, the last one I saw was Supper Club and it’ll (sadly) probably stay that way.

I saw the late show first night (16th). That was the first of the soundboards to appear a few years ago. There were quite a few highlights that night from Queen Jane to Jack-A-Roe and the rocked up Ragged & Dirty wasn't bad either.

Overall, I seem to remember my original impression when I got all the Supper Club boots which I got all at the same time probably in NYC that the fourth show probably was the best, but they all have something to offer.

The Ring Them Bells the first show is magnificent and on the original boot you can hear somebody gasp at one point. One of the things I dig about the original boots is the audience. A lot of people don’t like that about them, but at the show I attended (and probably the others as well) the crowd was totally into it. Dylan playing a club at that time (and for free no less) was simply unheard of.

I simply cannot believe it when I see on the various forums people putting down the Supper Club or calling it over-rated. It just fucks me up. Those shows were as close to the real thing as you’re gonna get.

Watching the Unreleased Supper Club Tapes