On This Day in 2019: Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese Premiered on Netflix and in Select Theaters

On This Day in 2019: Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese Premiered on Netflix and in Select Theaters

On June 12, 2019, Martin Scorsese unveiled his second cinematic exploration of Bob Dylan with the release of Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese. Released both on Netflix and in select theaters, the film offered a spellbinding, impressionistic journey through one of the most mythologized tours in rock history: Dylan’s 1975–76 Rolling Thunder Revue.

Blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, Scorsese crafted not just a chronicle of the tour, but a meditation on performance, identity, and American disillusionment in the post-Watergate era. It was as much about the moment as it was about the music—a chaotic, colorful, poetic dreamscape only Dylan and Scorsese could conjure.

This marked Scorsese’s second film centered on Bob Dylan, following the critically acclaimed 2005 documentary No Direction Home, which focused on Dylan’s early rise and cultural impact in the 1960s. While No Direction Home was grounded in historical fact and archival depth, Rolling Thunder Revue played with reality—employing staged interviews and false personas to mimic the unpredictable energy of the tour itself.

The Rolling Thunder Revue tour was unlike anything else in Dylan’s career. A traveling caravan of musicians, poets, and misfits—including Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Allen Ginsberg, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott—performing in small venues across America in an attempt to reconnect with intimacy and authenticity. The film captures not just the performances, but the elusive spirit of the times: rebellious, experimental, and raw.

A Visual Keepsake

Pictured: A promotional release poster for the film, currently on display in the Columbia Records Gallery at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The poster, with its vintage aesthetic and collage-like design, stands as a visual tribute to the whirlwind energy of the Rolling Thunder era—half concert tour, half traveling circus, fully unforgettable.

Five years after its release, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese remains a landmark in music cinema. It defies genre, challenges truth, and celebrates the enduring mystery of Bob Dylan—a man who never stays in one place too long, but leaves behind echoes worth chasing.

And like the tour itself, the film doesn’t ask to be explained. It asks to be experienced.