BOB DYLAN in Akron, Ohio - July 2, 1986

July 2, 1986 – Bob Dylan & Tom Petty & Grateful Dead at the Rubber Bowl in Akron, OH I attended this show with my dear friend Chris Wanstrath, on the premise that I would pay for the tickets if he would drive. “I’ll buy, you fly”. I was a recently converted Bob Dylan fan and age 18 at the time so I seized upon my first opportunity to see him in Ohio even though it meant a three-hour drive to Akron from Cincinnati. In those pre-internet days hotel reservations had been made over the phone. But upon our arrival at the hotel we joined a crowded lobby full of hippies trying to check in to their rooms. The hotel management was obviously freaking out and already in damage control mode, looking for any reason to deny rooms to the gathered freaks. They would not let us check in because we were not 21, even though one only needed to be 18 years old to make the reservation. Total bullshit, obviously. The end result was that we would not be staying the night in Akron after the show and that is why we didn’t stick around to see the Grateful Dead after Dylan performed with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Dylan was fantastic. As I recall, he came out with the Heartbreakers for 20 minutes to open the show. Then he left the stage and let TP and the band do 20 minutes. Then Bob returned for a 20-minute solo acoustic set. Then the Heartbreakers did another 20 minutes before Dylan returned for the final stretch and encore. It was the first time I ever heard “To Ramona” and I looked for that song for months afterwards until I finally picked up Another Side of Bob Dylan on LP and there it was. All I remembered was the line “I’d forever talk to you but soon my words would turn into a meaningless ring”. So when I picked up that LP and finally found “Ramona” that was a big day for me!

As of this writing in 2023 I am a much bigger fan of the Grateful Dead than I ever imagined I would be back then. As a matter of fact I am in the middle of writing a book about them… At any rate, I now regret leaving after Dylan’s performance back in 1986! Although I was mostly into Heavy Metal and Punk Rock back in those days and Dylan was an exception to my usual hard rock fare, in all likelihood I would have been bored with the Dead and left early anyway even if we had stuck around to see them. As it happened, we drove back to Cincinnati after Dylan’s performance so that we might get back home at a decent hour. Come to find out via recent research that this night was the FIRST time Dylan and the Dead ever performed together. Now I feel like even more of an idiot before leaving before the Dead played. My saving grace is knowing that I have never read one good review of the Dead’s performance that night. Jerry fell into a diabetic coma within a few weeks. Not a high watermark in the band’s history, it’s not likely I would have been converted that night. Straight as an arrow in those days too. It would be another four YEARS before I even had my first drink.