Bob Dylan’s Thunder Rolls Back In

Bob Dylan’s traveling musical caravan tours of late 1975 and early ’76, dubbed the Rolling Thunder Revue, will be revisited this June with a documentary from Martin Scorsese about the roadshow and an extensive 14-disc box set of live recordings from various shows, plus numerous rehearsal takes. Band members and guests on the two legs of the trek included Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Roger McGuinn, T Bone Burnett, Mick Ronson, Bob Neuwirth, Allen Ginsberg (shown here with Dylan at Jack Kerouac’s gravesite), Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Kinky Friedman.

Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story has been in the works for over a decade. It’s not known what percentage of it is previously unseen and how much (if any) of the footage comes from the self-indulgent, critically panned, four-hour Renaldo and Clara jumble of musical performances, interviews and dramatic vignettes filmed during the ’75 leg, or the Hard Rain concert film for NBC shot at the tail end of the ’76 leg. What is known is that Netflix will air it beginning June 12. The previous night, it will have a one-time theatrical screening in theaters in 20 cities (not Atlanta, of course), and will have an extended run in theaters in New York and Los Angeles.

Like the two-disc Bootleg Series document released in 2002, Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue, the considerably more extensive Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings will only focus on the first leg of the traveling circus. Set for release June 7, it will include five complete shows, three discs of rehearsals and a bonus disc of oddball tracks from various shows. Aside from tracks previously included on the 2002 collection and the 1985 Biograph box set, the rest of the contents have never been officially released.