Dylan Concert to Be Pay-Per-View Cable Special

When a then-unknown Bob Dylan released his first album 30 years ago, satellite communication was still in its infancy and cable TV was only for people in towns too isolated to get good reception.

But on Friday, a concert marking the anniversary of that debut album will be beamed by satellite around the globe and offered in the United States as a live, pay-per-view cable special.

Dylan will be joined in the concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden by an all-star cast performing his songs. The lineup includes Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Sinead O’Connor, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Mike McReedy.

The three-hour-plus telecast, which costs $19.95, will start at 5:30 p.m., PDT, and be repeated four hours later. The audio of the show will also be carried nationwide on radio, including KLOS-FM (105.5) in Los Angeles.

The event grew out of discussions between Dylan’s management and Columbia Records about Dylan’s new album, which will be released on Nov. 3. Appropriately, that album, “Good As I Been to You,” is a solo acoustic session of mostly old folk songs, just like Dylan’s first album.

Kevin Wall, president of Radiovision, which is producing the television and radio presentation, believes the show has a chance to surpass the company’s most successful such venture--last summer’s Judds farewell concert, which drew an estimated 400,000 households, an excellent number for a pop music pay-per-view.