That wasn't the only sign that the times were a-changin'. This was the last leg of Dylan's marathon world tour, his first since 1969, and it is unlikely that this visit was inspired entirely by a need to change the Weltanschauung of the West Germans. Dylan's 1977 divorce from his wife of 11 years, Sara, and a custody battle over their five children had set him back a bundle. His indulgent four-hour, $1.25 million film Renaldo and Clara, based incoherently on his relationships with Sara and Joan Baez, didn't exactly restore it. In short, he needed money.
After a smash opener in London, Dylan boarded a three-car private train in Amsterdam for his mop-up of the Continent. He had never played Germany before, and the Nuremberg field was protectively cordoned with barbed concertina wire and police dogs. But it was an exultant if well-behaved audience of 75,000—the largest in Zeppelin Field (named for the builder of the dirigible) since the Fuhrer's rallies. Cracked Dylan: "It's about time we got our team in there."
Over half of the audience for the concert was military personnel from U.S. bases in Germany. "I wanna welcome the First Armored Division," Dylan pattered showbizzily to open his set (after warm-up acts that included Eric Clapton). One Gl added to the military atmosphere by popping a pink smoke grenade, while thousands of other fans who had bused in from as far away as Geneva lit the sky with candles held worshipfully aloft on broomsticks. Dylan also jokingly introduced his three women backup singers as "my fiancée, my childhood sweetheart and my current girlfriend."
Some leftists, apparently angry at the mellowing of the old polemical minstrel, pelted him with eggs at another gig, in Berlin. Dylan stayed enigmatic, oriented less to issues than entertainment and more into mysticism than certitudes. "Thank God we've gotten through the '70s," he said, "even though we don't understand them."
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