Bob Dylan will perform in Santa Cruz
By WALLACE BAINE
Sentinel arts writer
SANTA CRUZ — Bob Dylan is coming to Santa Cruz.
Yes, that Bob Dylan.
A giant in American music, Dylan is slated for two shows at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, March 15 and 16, Bill Graham Presents announced Wednesday.
Tickets — $45 general admission plus service charge — go on sale at 10 a.m. Sunday at the Civic box office and other Ticketmaster outlets.
Dylan, 58, has not officially announced details of a tour but Bill Graham Presents officials confirmed that he has a Reno date slated after Santa Cruz. The king of all singer/songwriters last toured in the fall of 1999 with the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh.
It is almost impossible to overstate Dylan’s influence on pop music since his emergence on the New York folk scene in the early 1960s. A disciple of the legendary folksinger Woody Guthrie, Dylan single-handedly delivered folk music into the turbulent ’60s with a powerful
blend of protest songs and personal philosophy articulated best in such timeless anthems as "The Times They Are A-Changin’," "A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall" and "Blowin’ in the Wind."
From 1962 to 1966, when he was involved in a fabled motorcycle accident that almost killed him and took him out of the public spotlight for more than a year, Dylan was a forceful voice in the emerging counterculture, giving a socio-political edge to rock music it had never had before.
Perhaps, no single figure in the arts had a more profound influence on the shape of what we know as the "Sixties."
During the 1970s and ’80s, Dylan’s power in the music business waned and he went through a number of personal journeys — most notably a short-lived conversion to Christianity — that was reflected in his music.
After a period of inactivity, Dylan experienced an explosive musical rebirth with the 1997 release of "Time Out of Mind" that found the old folksinger again at the top of his game ruminating about death and fate that won him a Grammy. His "bootlegged" recording
of the famous 1966 "Albert Hall gig" was also released in 1998, exposing vintage Dylan to a new generation of record-buyers.
Tickets to the Bob Dylan dates at the Santa Cruz Civic can be purchased at select RiteAid, Savemart and Ritmo Latino outlets and by phone by calling (408) 998-TIXS or by logging on to www.ticketmaster.com.
