The Never Ending Tour begins

After big stadium tours with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and with the Grateful Dead, he cut his live show down to a small, hard-hitting band led by guitarist G.E. Smith and started playing far more often. The idea was to treat performing as steady work rather than as a special event, and to keep the songs alive by changing them night after night. The name came from an interview the following year, and Dylan himself never much liked it, but it stuck. For years he played around a hundred shows annually or more, reshaping arrangements, swapping musicians, and moving through theaters, arenas, festivals and minor-league ballparks. The road became the center of his working life, and for many listeners the concerts, more than any album, became the place to hear where he was going next.