In a new essay on the VestoPR Blog, Timothy Hampton, author of Bob Dylan’s Poetics: How the Songs Work, writes about Martin Scorcese’s recent release of a film that chronicles Bob Dylan’s 1976 tour, The Rolling Thunder Review. Click here to learn more about Hampton’s book. Click here to read the full article. An excerpt appears below:

“The film features documentary footage of Dylan and his band in electrifying concert performances. That footage is framed by a set of interviews with both actual tour participants and fake talking heads, who comment on the events. By blurring history and fiction the commentary cleverly packages the tour as both chaotic and yet still relevant; it’s subtitled ‘A Bob Dylan Story.’ Yet the clash of illusion and reality was already an essential part of the tour and contributes to its political meaning–both then, in the year of the American bicentennial celebrations, and now, in the age of Trumpism and Fox News.”