Bob Dylan – Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (Live at Madison Square Garden) Review

All the greats play Madison Square Garden and this piece from Bob Dylan is a defining moment. A tour with The Band is looked back on without the praise it deserves. High ticket prices, a question mark lingering over the interest of the tour in the first place and the reasons for Dylan avoiding the stage for so long, are all part of the experience. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues benefits from this period, as do many of the classic tracks Dylan fans know and love from his heyday. Where Planet Waves was quietly tucked away to provide big band appeal to tracks like Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, the change-up is necessary. These are the in-demand songs and would mark some of the great moments of Dylan in the 1970s. This Live at Madison Square Garden piece is one of them. 

Here is the partnership between Dylan and The Band laid bare. Those obvious highs can be heard through this performance – a steady reliance on the additional guitar layers The Band provide. Madison Square Garden is a big arena. Filling it with a song like Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues feels risky. We know its quality. We do not know what The Band can do to amplify it. Well, we do now. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues holds a scorching guitar solo within it and allows Dylan to relax into the lyrics to follow that little bit more. He has dependable musicians, a group who would go off on their own musical venture after this partnership had run its course, and rightly so. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues is a hard track to serve justice to, especially in as big a setting as this. 

But The Band and Dylan excel with this performance. A bold and ambitious adaptation of the Highway 61 Revisited track where the pop for New York City is as welcome as it is obvious. More guitar to follow and yet the real hero of this is the percussion hammering away in the background, keeping the floor open for all this now notorious guitar work. The 1974 Live Recordings are just around the corner, the floodgates are opening and within is an expectation of all songs being as good as this one. There is a chance it will happen, and to be fair to Dylan and The Band, their live shows are some of the finest of any artist. Pieces like Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues go a long way in proving this.  

Enjoy the instrumental build, and feel for the emotive performance Dylan provides these lyrics and wait for it all to come together. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues is an encapsulation of not just sharp playing from the band on stage but of how important a receptive audience is. Time and again, those attending the show can let the artist and later those listening from home, down. But it is the lightning-in-a-bottle experiences we cling to as we sift through bootleg after bootleg – and the official releases are starting to build, better and better. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues sounds great, offers a fantastic full band experience and feels like a major piece in The 1974 Live Recordings.