Bob Dylan astonished 1000’s of followers at Willie Nelson’s sold-out Farm Help competition with a shock late-night efficiency Saturday (Sept. 23) on the Ruoff Music Middle in Noblesville, Indiana.
Joined by members of The Heartbreakers, the black-clad Dylan walked onstage with none introduction and performed a brief however intense set of “Maggie’s Farm,” “Positively 4th Avenue” and “Ballad of a Skinny Man.” Enjoying the guitar, in opposition to the stark backdrop of a silhouetted windmill, he took a spot within the competition lineup between units by Farm Help co-founders Neil Younger and Nelson, who closed the present close to midnight.
The looks befell 38 years after Dylan conceived the thought for what turned Farm Help.
On July 13, 1985, in Philadelphia, Dylan had taken the stadium stage of Stay Help, the mega-benefit organized to boost funds for Ethiopian famine aid. Between songs, he mused to the occasion’s world viewers: couldn’t an analogous profit assist America’s household farmers?
“The query hit me like a ton of bricks,” Nelson recalled to Billboard in 2015. The musician was on the street that day, watching Stay Help on his tour-bus TV, and started wanting into the financial disaster that was then forcing household farmers off their land and into chapter 11. Then he referred to as his mates, together with the musician who made the suggestion.
Dylan was among the many outstanding lineup of nation and rock musicians who performed the primary Farm Help in Champaign, Ailing., on Sept. 22, 1985, a invoice which additionally included Nelson’s fellow Farm Help founders Neil Younger and John Mellencamp, together with Johnny Money, John Fogerty, Don Henley, Billy Joel, Loretta Lynn, Roy Orbison, Bonnie Raitt and plenty of extra — together with Tom Petty, who died in 2017, and Petty’s band, The Heartbreakers.
Three a long time on, Farm Help stays music’s longest-running live performance for a trigger, having raised greater than $64 million to help household farmers and a sustainable meals system.
Farm Help’s guiding board now contains Dave Matthews and Margo Worth, and Saturday’s invoice additionally featured the Grateful Lifeless’s Bobby Weir & the Wolf Bros. that includes the Wolfpack, Lukas Nelson, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Evening Sweats, Allison Russell, The String Cheese Incident and Particle Child. Additionally on the invoice: Clayton Anderson, The Black Opry that includes Lori Rayne, Tylar Bryant and Kyshona, the Jim Irsay Band, that includes Ann Wilson of Coronary heart, Native Satisfaction Productions and the Knowledge Indian Dancers.
At Farm Help in 1985, Dylan carried out with Petty and The Heartbreakers.
“At the moment, Tony Dimitriades, Tom’s supervisor, was in a enterprise partnership with [the late] Elliot Roberts in Lookout Administration” who represented Dylan, recalled Invoice DeYoung, a music critic, writer and Petty historian, in a 2017 interview with Billboard. DeYoung for a few years labored on the Gainesville Solar, the newspaper in Petty’s Florida hometown.
“Dylan wanted a band for the primary Farm Help,” stated DeYoung. “Every part else sprang from that.”
“Every part else” included the True Confessions Tour that Dylan and Petty launched collectively early the next yr, in February 1986, throughout which the Heartbreakers backed Dylan for some 60 exhibits in Australia, Japan and america — together with two nights at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. and three nights at Madison Sq. Backyard.
The singers additionally carried out on the second Farm Help on July 4, 1986 — by way of satellite tv for pc from their tour cease at Wealthy Stadium, outdoors Buffalo, New York. A second outing, the Temples in Flames tour, adopted in 1987.
And the artistic friendship between Dylan and Petty — born at Farm Help — flourished.
In 1988, Dylan welcomed Petty, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison to his studio in Malibu to report the tune “Deal with Me With Care.” Initially meant because the B-side to a single from Harrison’s Cloud 9 album, the tune as an alternative turned the inspiration for the tongue-in-cheek supergroup The Touring Wilburys.
So, from Farm Help, Dylan discovered a potent touring associate and a success recording collaboration. On Saturday, the legendary singer contributed to the objective of serving to America’s household farmers, which he had first steered on stage 38 years in the past.
