Before the Flood

Occupation

Bob Dylan: guitar, harmonica, piano, vocals
Robbie Robertson: guitar, vocals
Garth Hudson: organ, piano, clavinet
Levon Helm: drums, vocals
Richard Manuel: piano, electric piano, drums, organ, singing
Rick Danko: bass, vocals

Before the Flood is a 1974 published live album by Bob Dylan and The Band. The recordings were made in the context of joint tour in 1974 and were first published by Asylum Records.

Construction and content

After the joint work on the just-released Dylan album Planet Waves Dylan and The band appeared in eight years a joint tour across the U.S. to. It included 40 concerts in the period from early January to mid-February 1974. Dylan For it was the first tour after his motorcycle accident in 1966. Concerts were quickly sold out, with demand the allocation of tickets probably exceeded by a multiple.

The band acted on this tour not only as pure Begeleitband for Dylan, but played several songs from their own repertoire, while Dylan paused. At the beginning of Dylan integrated some of his new songs in the performances, but these disappeared in the course of the tour almost entirely from the program. For criticism, or at least stir Dylan attended out screaming, some tuneless and altered beyond recognition interpretations of his own songs.

The recordings on Before the Flood come almost exclusively from the last two concerts of the tour, which took place in Los Angeles on February 14.