Dylan’s played over 2500 shows on the NET

Published June 7 2013: Today marks exactly 25 years since Bob Dylan first embarked on what’s commonly known as his Never Ending Tour. During this time, he’s played at least 2,503 shows in 808 cities and towns all over the world, and a conservative, as-the-crow-flies estimate of the complete itinerary puts his travels over the last quarter century at an astonishing 1,007,416 miles.

That’s the equivalent of going to and from the moon, twice, then completely around the Earth, twice more — with enough left over to fly from Duluth, Minnesota, to New York City and back again. So, the man’s kind of a popular performer.

There are six cities in which Dylan’s played at least 25 shows on the Never Ending Tour — New York (52) and London (50) lead the way — and he broken double digits in 50 cities altogether. He plays the United States most often, but the tour is truly global: Dylan maintains about a 3 to 2 ratio of domestic to international shows and has reached 54 other countries to date. He frequents major world cities like Toronto and Paris and Stockholm and Tokyo and Melbourne, of course, but he’s played in Estonia and Andorra and Macedonia and recently China, too.

He may well be America’s most-popular cultural emissary.

Read more?