Benefit Concert and New Trial
During the fall tour preceding Desire's release, Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue played a benefit concert for Carter in New York City's Madison Square Garden, raising $100,000. The following year, they played another benefit at the Houston Astrodome. Dylan met with managers Richard Flanzer and Roy Silver, who provided Stevie Wonder, Ringo Starr and Dr. John for the concert. After expenses were paid, however, the Houston event failed to raise any money.
Despite winning the right to a new trial, Carter and Artis were once again found guilty. On February 9, 1976, Carter was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Dylan, and the other high-profile supporters, did not attend the trial. In 1985 Federal Judge H. Lee Sarokin of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, ruled that Carter had not received a fair trial and set aside the conviction, commenting that the prosecution had been "based on racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure." In 1988, after the prosecution said they would not seek a third trial and filed a motion to dismiss, a Superior Court judge dropped all charges against Carter.
The song was published on the album Desire in January 1976, making the Carter case known to a broad public. "Hurricane" is credited with harvesting popular support for Carter's defense.
The song features Scarlet Rivera on violin and Vinnie Bell on Danelectro Bellzouki 12-string guitar.
Read more about this topic: Hurricane (song)
Famous quotes containing the words benefit, concert and/or trial:
“Democracy means the organization of society for the benefit and at the expense of everybody indiscriminately and not for the benefit of a privileged class.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Science is unflinchingly deterministic, and it has begun to force its determinism into morals. On some shining tomorrow a psychoanalyst may be put into the box to prove that perjury is simply a compulsion neurosis, like beating time with the foot at a concert or counting the lampposts along the highway.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)