July 1st 1978. I had recently been discharged from the YPA.
I started working as a young architect in an architectural bureau. As a subtenant, I moved every few months. And chasing boredom.
The late Mare comes with the news that Bob Dylan will have a concert in Nuremberg in early July. Are you ready to go?
Bob has been a favorite of mine since his first appearances. I had his photos pasted on the wall in my room. Like some teenage girl.
And so that Saturday morning I got on the bus and set off with other enthusiasts. Among them was Željko Bebek, the then vocalist of the Bijelo dugme ensemble. After a long drive, we arrived at the venue.
It was Bob’s World Tour 1978.
For the tour, Dylan assembled an eight-piece band, and was also accompanied by three backing singers. Highlights of the European leg of the tour were Dylan’s first concerts in Germany where he had never wanted to play because of the Jews’ persecution by the Nazis. However, after concerts in Dortmund and Berlin, he performed on July 1 on the Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg for 80,000 people. It was the spot where Adolf Hitler had appeared prominently on his “Reichsparteitage”, the party convention of the NSDAP. Dylan’s stage was placed opposite to the rostrum where Hitler had given his speeches. After the concert, Bob Dylan said that it was a very special event for him, which he had marked by appearing in normal street clothes instead of the usual stage clothes.
When the concert started, my first impression was, he can’t sing. He plays the guitar as an amateur. Arrangements of songs different from what I knew from records.
But.
The longer the concert went on, the better it got. At the end of the concert, after almost two hours, he had the whole crowd under control. Charisma.
When he finished, he walked off the stage. The crowd naturally expected an addition. And indeed, after about ten minutes, Dylan returned to the stage. He stepped up to the microphone and said in his boring, strained voice, well, we’re going to play two more and to add to the atmosphere, my good friend Eric Clapton is here with me.
The crowd went wild. Clapton was a surprise, nobody knew he was around. Can you imagine, Dylan and Clapton on stage together. To this day, when I think about it, I get goosebumps.
For the last song, Forever young, he was joined on stage by all his staff.
And finally, fireworks somewhere nearby.
On the way back, tired of the good music, we slept in a small hotel in Munich. Mare and I went to a nearby Chinese restaurant for lunch the next morning. And drank a bottle of white wine.
Forever Young!