Given enough time, every one of Bob Dylan’s transgressions in taste is bound for reappraisal. Self Portrait, the double LP that Greil Marcus infamously dismissed upon its release with “What is this shit?,” had its reputation restored through The Bootleg Series, Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971). Dylan’s misunderstood Christian phase sounded fiery and invigorating on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979-1981. It would seem at least possible that The Complete Budokan 1978 could perform a similar feat, challenging conventional notions about a Dylan album that critic Dave Marsh claimed was “his worst record by such a wide margin it’s hard to fathom it.” The 1978 double-LP live set At Budokan, one of the beloved artist’s least beloved releases, is the next maligned Dylan album ripe for critical revision thanks to this new 4xCD box containing all of the source recordings for the original LP.
The Complete Budokan 1978 comprises two concerts, held February 28 and March 1 in Tokyo, at the beginning of the tour Dylan launched in 1978 with the express intent of raking in badly needed cash. Fresh off a divorce and tapped out from making Renaldo and Clara—his rambling four-hour half-fiction, half-documentary film about his touring extravaganza Rolling Thunder Revue—Dylan turned to Jerry Weintraub, the manager who’d greased the wheels for Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra’s transitions into stadium-conquering touring juggernauts in the 1970s.
Bassist Rob Stoner, who played on the Rolling Thunder Revue and stayed on through the 1978 world tour, remembered that “Weintraub told Bob, ‘If you want to take it to the bank, you gotta do one of these slick, money-making tours. Just go out for a year, bust your ass, then you can go back to doing whatever you want.” Dylan heeded his manager’s advice. He expanded a basic band retained from Rolling Thunder with a trio of backing vocalists and saxophonist/flutist Steve Douglas, dressing the entire ensemble in matching stage outfits. When he received word that the Japanese promoter insisted he haul out his greatest hits for the tour’s opening stretch at Budokan, Dylan responded by reworking the tunes to showcase the full range of his band’s skills.
Aware of the shifting tides of the business and the culture, Dylan aimed these rearrangements at an audience that was maturing toward the middle of the road, partially inspired by witnessing a Las Vegas spectacle by Neil Diamond—another Weintraub client—in 1977. “Vegas” became a common buzzword in the reviews that greeted both At Budokan and the tour once it arrived Stateside later in 1978, an intended pejorative surely stoked by the spectacles staged by Weintraub. Time may have softened those Vegas associations, yet a listen to The Complete Budokan 1978 shows they’re warranted. A galloping soft-rock instrumental rendition of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”—a hoedown performed as a show tune—sets a suitably loungey tone, one sustained by the snazzy flourishes scattered throughout the concerts. “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” punctuates each verse with stabs of horns; the blues of “Maggie’s Farm” is reduced to a glitzy stomp; “I Shall Be Released” gets consumed by swaths of saxophones. Hints of modern radio drift into the arrangements: The tropical gale blowing through “Shelter From the Storm” evokes Jimmy Buffett and the island vibes intensify on the reggae bounce of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” As telling as the specific arrangements are the straightlaced performances of Dylan and the band: They’re dutifully hitting their marks, playing the songs the same way both evenings.
Dylan was still in the process of road-testing his band and these arrangements, which could explain some of the restraint heard throughout The Complete Budokan 1978. The North Carolina show from December 1978, captured on the bootleg Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, showcases a band playing with energy and verve absent from the Budokan concerts. Compared to the original At Budokan release, the expanded length does offer glimmers of a livelier set, primarily in a pair of blues covers performed early each show to help loosen up the band: from the first night, “Repossession Blues” by Roland James, and from the second, Tampa Red’s “[You’ve Got to] Love Her With a Feeling,” both played with a raucous vigor that makes the rest of the record feel straightlaced.
Those two blues covers vaguely hint at the roadhouse ramble that came to characterize Dylan's Never Ending Tour a decade later, as do the startling rearrangements of familiar songs. A case can be made that the 1978 world tour is the genesis of Dylan’s latter-day incarnation as a restless and mercurial road warrior. That knowledge doesn’t change that, as an album, The Complete Budokan 1978 isn’t just a drag, it’s often dorky, too. Hearing the band galumph through an attempt to turn “All I Really Want to Do” into a cheerful shuffle crystallizes how Dylan’s attempt to entertain just winds up as enervation.
