Complete List of Bob Dylan's Live Albums

Extracted from Dylan's Tour '74 with The Band, this double LP was the D man's only record to be cut under the Asylum label during his short break from Columbia, quickly snagging the No. 3 position on the Billboard charts (no doubt because this was Dylan's first tour since 1966). The bulk of tracks were recorded at the February 13-14 shows at the Los Angeles Forum, but a few are from other January and February dates in NYC, Seattle and Oakland. With the album jacket crediting “Bob Dylan/The Band,” of the 21 tracks, eight were exclusive Band songs, including “Up on Cripple Creek,” “Stage Fright,” and “The Shape I'm In.”

Dylan's second live album was largely taken from a performance at Hughes Stadium in Fort Collins, Colorado on May 23, 1976. The show was filmed, despite a vicious storm, to fulfill a contract with the ABC television network for a taping of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, which aired the same day of the album release. Constituting the second to last Rolling Thunder performance, the nine-track album features the motley cast and lineup of Dylan's gypsy road show, including the Desire studio/touring band. Despite a couple of high moments, clearly the magic of Rolling Thunder had long fizzled out of the tour by the time of this recording.

Another live double album, Dylan's Japanese venture was recorded shortly before his conversion to Christianity, and features a selection of his hits reworked with lots of brass and backup singers. Recorded on February 28 and March 1 during the fourth and fifth performances of an eight-show run at Tokyo's Nippon Budokan Hall, the 22-track album showcases the Street Legal studio band, including Dylan tour vets Rob Stoner and David Mansfield. Reviews were divided right down the middle, with half the critics loving and the other half loathing these reworked versions of Dylan's biggest hits.

With former Rolling Stone Mick Taylor on lead guitar and the Faces' Ian McLagan on keys, Real Live was recorded during the United Kingdom leg of the Infidels tour, marking Dylan's return to secular music. Most of the album was taken from the July 7 Wembley Stadium performance, except for “License to Kill” and “Tombstone Blues” which were recorded in Newcastle on July 5, and “I and I” and “Girl from the North Country” which came from Ireland on July 8. As a special treat, Carlos Santana appeared on “Tombstone Blues.” The album features acoustic versions of “It Ain't Me Babe,” “Girl From the North Country,” and “Tangled Up in Blue,” with Dylan reworking the lyrics of the latter into third-person.

Recorded during a string of 1987 shows with the Grateful Dead during a layover from his tour with Tom Petty, Dylan and the Dead suffered cruel attacks from the critics (Rolling Stone only gave it 2 ½ stars), despite an overwhelming reception from fans. The album features seven Dylan songs that the Dead had already been covering heavily during their long strange trip, so it wasn't a huge leap throwing Dylan in front of the band. In many ways, the album injected new energy into Dylan's flagging career, as a new generation of Deadheads latched onto the music of the counterculture's poet laureate.

It was all an upswing for Dylan at this point. After winning his 1994 Grammy for World Gone Wrong, Dylan still had both feet steeped in traditional folk when he was asked by MTV to guest on their hugely popular Unplugged series. Despite his pleas to make the session a folk tribute, MTV insisted he do the hits. Released on album and VHS, the recording was taken from two intimate performances at Sony Studios on November 17-18, 1994. With standout performances on “Desolation Row” and “Dignity,” the release solidly locked Dylan in with the MTV generation.

The reason the title is wrapped in quotation marks is because the performance didn't occur at the Royal Albert Hall as bootleggers have been misled over the years, but rather at Manchester's Free Trade Hall. The recording took place on May 17, 1966, featuring an opening acoustic set, followed by a full electric set with Dylan backed by the Hawks (soon to become the Band). Used in Martin Scorcese's 2005 documentary No Direction Home, footage from this show was shot by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker, and features the scene when a fan screamed out “Judas!” with Dylan classically retorting, “You're a liar.”

Released in 2002, this long-awaited album was the most complete document of the Rolling Thunder Revue since the 1976 live album, Hard Rain. A two-CD set with 22 tracks, early buyers were treated to a limited-edition DVD featuring live versions of “Isis” and “Tangled Up in Blue.” Taken in November-December 1975 from performances at the Forum du Montreal, Cambridge's Harvard Square Theatre, the Boston Music Hall, and one track from Worchester's Memorial Auditorium, the recordings represent the peak experience reached during the tour's early stages. Simply powerful stuff.

Another of Dylan's most renowned performances, the Halloween show at New York's Philharmonic Hall captures the 23-year-old Dylan at a pivotal point in his career, when he began transitioning away from topical folk songs to more literary forms. Mixing up protest songs like “With God on Our Side” with poetically charged tunes such as “Gates of Eden,” it was the old Bob meets the new Bob. Or as Sean Wilentz wrote, “The show was in part a summation of past work and in part a summons to an explosion for which none of us, not even he, was fully prepared.” The album features three duets with Joan Baez.

Recorded on October 26, 1963 at New York's Carnegie Hall, Dylan's six-song set clocked in at a whopping 31:53, featuring acoustic versions of “The Times They Are A-Changin',” “Ballad of Hollis Brown,” “Boots of Spanish Leather,” “Lay Down Your Weary Tune,” “North Country Blues,” and “With God on Our Side.” This vintage performance showcases Dylan smack at the zenith of fame during his protest music phase. Becoming bored with the limitations of the genre, forever after, Dylan would embark on a restless journey as a musician hungering after a never-ending artistic evolution.

While old school hippies were aghast, Starbucks lovers felt special. Emerging from his controversial Victoria's Secret commercial with his career soaring, Dylan upped the ante, distributing Live at the Gaslight exclusively through the coffee megachain for its first 18 weeks on the shelf. Although Starbucks is a far throw from the hip Greenwich Village venue where the recording took place in October 1962, the slick coffeehouse allusion was all too obvious. But despite the commercial luster, the recording stands as one of the finest documents of vintage Dylan, featuring early performances of “Hard Rain” “Don't Think Twice” and “John Brown,” with the remaining seven tracks consisting of traditional covers like “The Cuckoo” and “Barbara Allen.”

This seven-song disc was released as a limited-edition exclusive, available to anyone who pre-ordered The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9: The Whitmark Demos, 1962-1964 through Amazon.com. The reels to this recording were discovered at the home of the late music critic, Ralph J. Gleason, when the family put the home up for sale in 2009. Recorded on May 10, 1963, the disc features seven tracks, including "Honey, Just AVllow Me One More Chance," "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," "Ballad of Hollis Brown," "Masters of War," "Talkin' World War III Blues," "Bob Dylan's Dream," and "Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues."