Rolling Thunder Logbook [Paperback]

Sam Shepard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 14, 2004

In the autumn of 1975, when "New England is festering with Bicentennial madness," Bob Dylan and his Rolling Thunder Revue-a rag-tag variety show that Dylan envisioned as a traveling gypsy circus-toured twenty-two cities across the Northeast. Swept up in the motley crew, which included Joni Mitchell, Mick Ronson, Allen Ginsberg, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, and Ramblin' Jack Elliot, was playwright Sam Shepard, ostensibly hired to write, on the spot, the script for a Fellini-esque, surreal movie that would come out of the tour. The script never materialized, but throughout the many moods and moments of his travels with Dylan and his troupe, Shepard kept an impressionistic Rolling Thunder Logbook of life on the road. Illuminated by forty candid photographs by official tour photographer Ken Regan, Shepard's mental-snap shots capture the camaraderie, isolation, head games, and pill-popping mayhem of the tour, providing a window into Dylan's singular talent, enigmatic charisma, and vision of America.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A great read" -- Harp November 2004

"A narrative collage of short stories, notes, poems, hypothetical film scenes, and fan's dreams...visually and intellectually vivid writing." -- Flaunt Magazine March, 2005

"Entertaining as well as a fascinating look at a particular cultural moment." -- Creative Loafing-Charlotte 1/26/05

"Everyone was pretty stoned at the time, so the book is a bit strange." -- Library Journal 9/15/04

"Fascinating because it skips the minutiae and offers its own moodily entertaining narrative...Shepard captures Dylan and his motley circle." -- New York Times Book Review 10/24/04

"Shepard is equally wise to Dylan's fundamental mystery and his rock star bullshit. Shepard's vignettes are part awe, part irony." -- Relix February / March 2005

"[A] fascinating book filled with snippets of dialogue, lists, and random chunks of narrative." -- St. Paul Pioneer Press 1/27/05

About the Author

Sam Shepard is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of more than forty-five plays, including Buried Child and True West, as well as the story collections Great Dream of Heaven and Cruising Paradise. He has appeared in more than twenty-five films and received an Oscar nomination for his performance in The Right Stuff. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Shepard lives in Minnesota.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (December 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306813718
• ISBN-13: 978-0306813719
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,207,807 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sam Shepard was born in 1943 in Fort Sheridan, Illinois. He moved to New York from California just as the off-Broadway theatre scene was emerging. He has written more than forty plays, of which elev en have won 'Obie' awards, besides collections of stories, prose writing and screenplays. His plays include Buried Child, The Late Henry Moss, Simpatico, Curse of the Starving Class, True West, Fool for Love, A Lie of the Mind, and States of Shock. His screenplay for Paris, Texas won the Golden Pa lm Award at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival and he directed his own screenplay, Far North, in 1988. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Shepard received the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy in 1992, and in 1994 he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars True East, April 2, 2007

By 

Gord Wilson "alivingdog.com" (Bellingham, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Rolling Thunder Logbook (Paperback)

I gave this four stars because I don't think Sam would want it to get five. That would make it too perfect, and once you read Jack Kerouac's On the Road, you're always wary of making things too perfect. That also seemed to be the idea of the Rolling Thunder Revue: to let things fall together even though that means they may fall apart (and by Sam's reckoning they eventually did).

Coupled with J. D. Salinger stream of consciousness writing, Sam dragged Kerouac's real time typing into the deconstructed stage with all four walls down. I only know Sam from his portrayl of Chuck Yeager in the Right Stuff from the book by Tom Wolfe-- the book full of Wolfian gimmicks but the film made the old fashioned way, his plays like True West, and the fact that his mom once toasted my fledgeling writing career-- I hope one day to make her proud.

Sam was hired to make a film of the Revue tour, and wound up making a book. While that means it has pages, photos, and a cover, within that loose definition, it falls apart as much as it can. Sam uses the "f" word, but as a word, not for effect (it is a word). There are bits of writing like this: "Fans are more dangerous than a man with a weapon because they're after something invisible."

The thing that galvanized the tour was fighting to get Rubin Carter released (which eventually happened), and Dylan penned the amazing "Hurricane", an absolutely riveting song when you hear it on the Bootleg Vols 1-3 CD set (or various other ways it exists), not only for the lyrics and music, but Dylan's delivery, at once cool and impassioned, the crazy quilt of images, skewed syntax, sprung rhythms, and well, Sam Shepardness of the whole thing.

But was it all a museum set piece? More safely enshrined rock history? Or can it happen now? Will someone rise up today for Eric Volz? Let the thunder roll on.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another perspective on RTR, December 27, 2010

By 

Velma Lashbrook "velma" (Eden Prairie, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Rolling Thunder Logbook (Paperback)

For fans interested in the Rolling Thunder Revue, this logbook adds another perspective on what this tour was like. I would also recommend Larry "Ratso" Sloman's On the Road with Bob Dylan, Anne Waldman's beat poem "Shaman Hisses You Slide Back into the Night" in Kill or Cure, and the film Renaldo and Clara, as well as DVDs and CDs of the tour.

I was annoyed by Shepard's apparent lack of attention to detail with respect to Dylan song titles (e.g., "How Does It Feel?," "Everybody Must Get Stoned," "Hattie Carroll," "It Ain't Me," "My Masterpiece"...). It made me wonder about the accuracy of other information.

I did enjoy the journal-like quality and variety of writing styles (e.g., essays, lists, scripts, news clips) and diversity of focus for individual pieces (e.g., events, places, people). The variety sustained my interest and sometimes encouraged me to want to learn more.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shepard Pitch-Perfect with Sense of Time and Place, October 5, 2010

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Chris Bowen - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Rolling Thunder Logbook (Paperback)

I consider myself a pretty big Dylan fan. So much of the music is always playing on continual loops, rattling around inside me. And though I'm a big fan of the music, I've never been big on the books. I just don't need to know times and dates and historical record. My die-hard geek devotion to Dylan has never been statistical. It's always about song, the man's own words, and great anecdotes. But, when I stumbled on a book about my favorite Dylan period written by Shepard, I bought it right away.

And, it's dead-on. Shepard is right there. At all times. What's most impressive is how Shepard never compromises his own prose style ( it's all Shepard in tone and word choice ) and yet is somehow able to fade to the background and just lets the perfect moments rise to the top. Two particular moments blew me away. Shepard does a fantastic job of pulling you into Ginsberg reading a poem about motherhood to hotel guests, most of which are Jewish moms of another generation. I can feel them twitch and pause as Ginsberg pours his soul out over them. Shepard gives you a whole extra layer, making the great connection between Ginsberg, religion, and audience, tapping into more than most would have the skill or eye to do. The Shepard eye also does a phenomenal job of letting you just sort of sit with the Dylan mystique. I particularly like how Shepard discusses Dylan's great use of silence in conversations. It's a great, fast-paced read that harnesses the manic feel of a time and an idea. It's awesome.

Chris Bowen
Author of Our Kids: Building Relationships in the Classroom