Legs 5 | No. of shows 114 | |
 | ||
Location North America, Europe,
Oceania, Asia Start date February 20, 1978 (1978-02-20) End date December 18, 1978 (1978-12-18) | ||
The Bob Dylan World Tour 1978 was a concert tour by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In 1978, Dylan embarked on a year-long world tour, performing 114 shows in Japan, the Far East, Europe and the US, to a total audience of two million people. For the tour, Dylan assembled an eight piece band, and was also accompanied by three backing singers. When Dylan brought the tour to the United States in September 1978, he was dismayed the press described the look and sound of the show as a 'Las Vegas Tour'. The 1978 tour grossed more than $20 million, and Dylan acknowledged to the Los Angeles Times that he had some debts to pay off because "I had a couple of bad years. I put a lot of money into the movie, built a big house ... and it costs a lot to get divorced in California." It was during the later stages of this tour that Dylan experienced a "born-again" conversion to Christianity, which would become the overriding thematic preoccupation in his music for the next couple of years, such as on the albums Slow Train Coming (1979) and Saved (1980).
Releases
Concerts in Tokyo in February and March were recorded and released as the live double album, Bob Dylan at Budokan.Reviews were mixed. Robert Christgau awarded the album a C+ rating, giving the album a derisory review, while Janet Maslin defended it in Rolling Stone, writing: "These latest live versions of his old songs have the effect of liberating Bob Dylan from the originals."