Mike Johnson
In 1988 Bob Dylan left behind the bands he’d been playing with, Tom Petty and The Grateful Dead, and launched his own four-piece band, beginning a remarkable musical odyssey known as the Never Ending Tour that would last thirty-one years, only coming to an end when covid closed the venues at the end of 2019.In this first volume, Mike Johnson picks up the story the year before the NET began, follows it through its rocking beginnings, how it faltered in the early 1990s before hitting a rising curve that would build to the superb performances of 1995, and rising again to 1999, the first of three peak performance years.Johnson discusses the performances, and evolution of the songs in performance, and provides dozens of sound files so the reader can hear all the versions he highlights.