It’s about 9:20. Bob Dylan finished about five minutes ago, and we’ve collected our phones from the pouches they’ve been locked in, lest any pictures emerge.
We walk out into the cool drizzle of the Wolverhampton evening, and there’s a busker up the street. He’s performing “The Times They Are A-Changin'”, armed with an acoustic guitar and wielding it like a weapon.
A woman walks past me and says to her companion, “That’s what he should have done.”
The contrast couldn’t have been clearer. And it’s supposed to be.
The times aren’t changing; they’ve changed. Bob Dylan, for an hour and 45 minutes, hasn’t done anything he was expected to do. Instead, he’s done what he wants to do.
This Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour is a masterclass in bravery.
Bravery, firstly, because he doesn’t play by the rules. You’re in his world, and my God, you know it.
Tonight—and this hadn’t been the case on Friday when I saw him—he joins the band after a few minutes of them jamming. He sits at his piano and launches straight into “All Along The Watchtower.” Or, to be precise, “a version of” “All Along The Watchtower.”
Which is kind of the crux of the matter. Bob Dylan plays “versions” of his songs. Even the material he’d done on the “Shadow Kingdom” record, which were “versions” anyway, are changed to suit the feeling and the vibe. “It Ain’t Me, Babe”—with a longer intro than Friday’s performance—is magnificent. They’re all magnificent.
And bravery, secondly, because there are nine songs from the “Rough and Rowdy Ways” album. Contrast that, say, with Alice Cooper, who played just one song from his recent record. Don’t like it? Want the hits? There’s the door. Bob doesn’t care. Why should he?
The first of the “…Ways” tunes is the astonishing “I Contain Multitudes.” Comparing himself to Anne Frank, Indiana Jones, and—fabulously—”those British bad boys the Rolling Stones,” it’s as good as it gets.
“False Prophet” is another glorious piece, and they are interspersed with some of the “classics”—but the classics as they are now, performed by this band, these men, at this time.
They are excellent, these boys. “Black Rider” is blues to the core, and the quickfire drumming makes “Desolation Row” even more special than it might have been, while “My Own Version Of You” is absolutely weird.
“Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” sees mostly just Bob at a piano, and it’s stripped-down and fragile gloriousness.
“Watching The River Flow” injects some real energy, and in an evening of multitudes, is best exemplified by the take on “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” which is almost unrecognisable from the one on the original album. And if that annoys you, then may I pose a question: why should it be? It isn’t 1965 anymore, and Bob Dylan is not 24. Why should he perform facsimiles of back then?
Especially when he can perform “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” and “Mother Of Muses” from the last album (it’s worth pointing out that even these songs from “Rough…” are different from the studio versions).He finishes it all with “Every Grain Of Sand,” and as ever, when he picks up the harmonica, there’s electricity in the room.
Bob Dylan, as he stands and takes the applause without saying anything, has earned the right to do anything he wants to do, and it’s a right he makes use of at all times.
There will never be another. He’s the greatest lyricist there’s ever been, and if his multitudes don’t extend to clichéd platitudes, then fine.
Maybe you wouldn’t want every artist to do this—but then you’re safe in the knowledge anyway that only one man could have.
As the busker proves, anyone can stand with an acoustic and a harmonica. But not Bob Dylan anymore, whether you like it or not.
BOB DYLAN @ THE CIVIC AT THE HALLS, WOLVERHAMPTON 10/11/2024
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