interviews page 4:
backaaapages: 1 2 3 4 5 aaanext
bob dylan live in stockholm download this file here
Blood on the Tracks download this file here
Blonde On Blonde download this file here
Desire download this file here
In The Thick Of It download this file here
A night at the theatre of Divine Comedy: Bob Dylan in Florence, May 30th 2000 download this file here
OBERHAUSEN AND K?LN REVISITED download this file here
He Opened Up His Book of Poems: Dylan in Milan, 28 May 2000 download this file here
Still on the Road: Review of ‘The Best of Bob Dylan Volume 2’ download this file here
Very nice to see you in Stockholm, Bob Dylan, and I wonder now that you're in Stockholm if you could explain a bit more about yourself and your kind of songs. What do you think of the protest song type?
Um...er...God... No, I'm not going to sit here and do that. I've been up all night, I've taken some pills and I've eaten bad food and I've read the wrong things and I've been out for 100mph car rides and let's not sit here and talk about myself as a protest singer or anything like that.
The first things you did which got really famous, for example in England "The Times They Are A-Changin'," that was supposed to be a protest song, no?
Oh my God, how long ago was that?
A year ago.
Yeah, well, I mean, c'mon, a year ago...I'm not trying to be a bad fellow or anything but I'd just be a liar or a fool to go along with all this business. I mean,I just can't help it if you're a year behind you know.
No, but that's the style you had then, and you changed to "Subterranean Homesick Blues" with the electric guitars and things. Is there any special reason?
No.
No?
No.
What would you call yourself? A poet? Or a singer? Or do you write poems and then you put music to them?
No, I don't know. It's so silly. I mean, you wouldn't ask these questions of a carpenter would you? Or a plumber?
It wouldn't be interesting the same way, would it?
I guess it would be, I mean, it's interesting to me; it should be just as interesting to you.
Well, not as a disc jockey, anyhow.
What do you think Mozart would say to you if you ever came up to him and asked him the questions that you've asked? What kind of questions would you ask him? Tell me, Mr. Mozart, er...
Well, first of all I wouldn't interview him.
Well, how come you do it to me?
Well, because I'm interested in your records and I think the Swedish audience is also.
Well, I'm interested in the Swedish audiences too and Swedish people and all that kind of stuff, but I'm sure they don't want to know all these dumb things, you know.
No, well they've read a lot of dumb things about you in the papers and I suppose you could straighten them out yourself.
I can't straighten them out, I don't think they have to be straightened out. I believe that they know. Don't you know the Swedish people? They don't have to be told, they don't have to be explained to. You should know that. You can't tell Swedish people something which is self-explanatory. Swedish people are smarter than that.
You think so?
Oh, of course.
You know many Swedes?
I know plenty, I happen to be a Swede myself.
Oh yeah, certainly.
In fact I come from not too far away from here, my friend.
Shall we try to listen to a song, then?
You can try.
Yeah. Which one would you suggest then?
Oh, you pick it out, any one you say. You realise I'm not trying to be a bad fellow. I'm just tryin' to make it along, to get everything to be straight, you realise that?
Yeah, and that's why I asked you and you had a chance to do it yourself. No, I don't want the chance to do it myself.
OK.
I don't want to do anything by myself.
(Tape lapse)
For what or against what?
Well, you know what it's against and what it's for, I'm not going to tell you that... My songs are all mathematical songs, now you know what that means, so I'm not going to have to go into that. So this specific one here happens to be a protest songs and it borders on the mathematical, you know, ideas of sayings, and this specific one, "Rainy Day Women," happens to deal with, er, a minority of, you know, cripples and Orientals and the world in which they live, you realise and you understand. It's sort of a Mexican kind fo thing, very protest, very, very protest and of the pro testiest of all things I've ever protested against in the protest years.
You really believe it? Do I believe it?
Yeah.
I don't have to believe it, I know it. I mean I'm telling you I wrote it, I should know.
So why that title? It's never mentioned in the song.
Well, we never mention things that we love. Where I come from that's blasphemy, blas-puffer-me, you know that word? It has to do with God.
Shall we have a listen to the song? OK.
...Which is selling quite well in the States and how do you feel about that?
It's horrible, because it is a protest song. People shouldn't really listen to protest songs.
A lot of people buy the record and listen to it on radio stations. So a lot of people could get the message.
Yeah, they do get the message. I'm glad they're getting the message. That was a good record, too, huh?
How do you feel about earning a lot of money if you're not really concerned about it all?
I like earning a lot of money.
In the start you didn't have much but now you've got a lot. What do you do with it?
Nothing.
Not concerned?
No, somebody else handles it for me, you know. I just do the same old things.
When you write a song, do you write the melody or the words first?
I write it all, the melody and the words.
At the same time?
The melody is sort of unimportant, really. It comes naturally, you know.
At the very start, other artists used your songs and recorded them and got hits. How did you feel about that?
Well, I didn't feel anything really. I felt happy, you know.
Did you like to suddenly get famous, first as the songwriter, and then afterwards as the singer?
Er, yeah, it's sort of all over, though. I don't have any interest anymore. I did have interest when I was 13, 14, 15, to be a famous star and all that kind of stuff, but I've been playing on the stage and following tent shows around ever since I've been 10 years old. That's 15 years I've been doing what I've been doing. I know what I'm doing better than anybody else does.
Nowadays what is it you want to do?
Nothing.
Nothing?
No.
Do you enjoy travelling? Performing?
Yeah, I like performing. I don't care to travel though.
What about recording?
I like to record.
You've got a group now which you didn't have at the very start.
Yes, I had a group at the very start, but you must realize I come from the United States. I don't know if you know what the United States is like. It's not like England at all, you know. People at my age now, 25 to 26, everybody has grown up playing rock'n'roll music, you know.
Did you do that?
Yes, because it's the only kind of music you heard. Everybody has done it because all you heard was rock'n'roll and country and western and rhythm and blues music. At a certain time the whole field got taken over into milk, you know, to Frankie Avalon, Fabian, this kind of thing. Now that's not bad or anything, but there was nobody that you could look at, and really want anything that they had, or want to be like them, so everybody got out of it. But nobody really lost that whole thing, and folk music came in and was some kind of substitute for a while, but it was only a substitute, that's all it was.
Now it's different again because of the English thing, and what the English thing did was that they proved that you could make money at playing the same old kind of music that you used to play. And that's the truth, that's not a lie, it's not a come-on or anything, but the English people can't play rock'n'roll.
Well, what do you feel about The Beatles then?
Oh, The Beatles are great but they don't rock'n'roll.
You met them quite a few times as well? In the States and in England.
Yeah, I know The Beatles.
You don't think they play rock'n'roll?
No, they're not rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll is just four beats, and extension of 12-bar blues. And rock'n'roll is white, 17-year-old kid music, that's all it is. Rock'n'roll is a fake attempt at sex, you know.
But what do you call your style, then?
Well, I never heard anybody that plays and sings like me, so I don't know.
There's no name you would try to put on it yourself?
Mathematical music`.
download this file here or back to list
Blood on the Tracks
Columbia, Recorded 1974
After building walls around himself for the better part of a decade, Dylan composes an honest and deeply personal statement that is a powerful eulogy for a failed relationship. With mellow acoustic guitars strumming behind him, Dylan displays some bitterness, some sorrow, and some sympathy, but mostly he shows a deep appreciation for the beauty of what he once had.
"Tangled Up in Blue" sets up the story as well as the mood while "Simple Twist of Fate" and "You're a Big Girl Now" are poignant realizations of a partnership that's passed him by. He lets the anger come through on "Idiot Wind" and the blues on "Meet Me in the Morning." "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" and "If You See Her, Say Hello" are disarmingly innocent love songs, and "Shelter from the Storm," one of his greatest compositions, conveys the lasting memory from the relationship: the selflessness and generosity of the partner who took him in. Dylan's voice shows a full range of emotion as he searches for beauty and hope among the pain and disappointment. One of his most stirring and rewarding albums.
download this file here or back to list
Blonde On Blonde
Columbia, Released 1966
For the uninitiated, Blonde On Blonde is both the perfect start-up record and the ultimate challenge in the Dylan catalog. He distills the expansive surrealism he pioneered on the two groundbreaking albums that preceded (Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited) down to a thematic thread that runs throughout the record. As befits Dylan, however, the identity and meaning of this thread are a matter of both speculation and disagreement. You know it's there, you just can't explain it.
The songs defy not only description but interpretation, despite inviting both at every turn. They burrow deep into the grey matter of the listener without detour; they are visceral rather than literal or even symbolic. The positively epic "Visions Of Johanna" has the effect of wrapping the listener in a warm, spangled word-veil of mystical psychedelia, the classic "Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again" is a startling initiation into a shadow world of Dylan's creation, while "Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine" chugs along like a magical train.
Blonde On Blonde was recorded at the peak of one of many controversial periods in Dylan's career. He had recently shocked and alienated the folk audience that claimed him as their messiah by playing with an electric band at the Newport Folk Festival. Although the booing of the crowd was probably greatly exaggerated, the rumors of the reaction proved more than enough inspiration for similar, yet more intense audience response all throughout the 1966 tour. The resulting conflict between performer and audience was physically and mentally taxing for Dylan, but had the effect of galvanizing both his live performances and his recordings.
Ironically, Dylan produced his most cohesive album to date in the midst of a musical power struggle between his artistic alter egos; the folk messiah is here reconciled with the prophet who brought forth the bastard son of his own creation, the folk rocker. The overall sound achieved on Blonde On Blonde is so original and enjoyable that it utterly defies the classification his "fans" attempted to foist upon him (see sidebar) Dylan himself, in a 1978 interview, described the sound of the record in typically mystical fashion as "that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up..." The "wild mercury sound" must be heard to be understood. You won't be sorry.
download this file here or back to list
Desire is a very special album, although Bob Dylan's adamantly antimusical approach keeps it from greatness. Somehow, though, Dylan's antimusic winds up being very seductive. The real problems with this record lie in other areas.
What's most striking about the record is that it is such a collaborative effort. Dylan works as closely with these musicians and singers—among them, violinist Scarlet Rivera, bassist Rob Stoner and drummer Howard Wyeth of the Rolling Thunder crew, and vocalists Emmylou Harris and Ronee Blakley—as he has with anyone since the Band. But it's still Dylan's album. Had the group been given a chance to record with more care, the record could have been the blockbuster the songs deserve.
In addition to working with a band again, Dylan is collaborating on lyrics with Jacques Levy (who cowrote "Chestnut Mare," among others, with Roger McGuinn), and Dylan's longtime Columbia Records associate, Don DeVito, has stepped into a full-fledged production role (although he is given only a halfhearted credit).
DeVito's role is crucial. Although he wasn't able to get Dylan to work with the musical discipline that's been missing from all of his records since he left the Nashville studio pros, DeVito did get a sound that's a considerable improvement on the fuzzy Blood on the Tracks or the seemingly unmixed Planet Waves. Fuller instrumentation might even have overwhelmed the technical flaws. As it is, the drum sound adds a power akin to rock & roll on almost every song, and the droning effect of the voices set against Rivera's violin is so seductive that it can make you forget that what's being played is often fairly boring.
It's not altogether clear just what Jacques Levy contributed to the songs. In many ways, they are of a piece with Dylan's other work. But the humor that has been missing since John Wesley Harding is in great abundance here ("Isis" might be an outtake from JWH) and the imagery is the most strikingly well-developed since New Morning. On the other hand, the rhyme schemes are just as tortured as ever: Mozambique may very well rhyme with cheek-to-cheek, speak and peek, but then there's "put his ass in stir" and "triple mur-der" in "Hurricane."
But it's hardest to determine who is responsible for the most meaningful change in Dylan's writing, which is expressed in the songs concerning women. Previously, Dylan has recognized only two kinds of women: "angels," whose function was to save man (from the women themselves as often as not), and "bitches," whose function was to let him down, if not by overt attempts to ruin and confuse, at least by their failure to save. The bitches enjoyed their heyday during the "Just like a Woman" period, of course, and their prominent return on Blood on the Tracks was one of the principle reasons why that album was believed to be a return to the golden age. The angels dominated from Nashville Skyline to Planet Waves, and there is reason to believe that Dylan still holds onto something of that vision: "Sara," one of two songs on Desire which he wrote alone, again speaks of his wife as a "sweet virgin angel."
Part of this lyrical attitude may simply be the altogether healthy influence of Levy, but some of it must have had to do with the presence of women while the record was being made. It is a little difficult to imagine Dylan coming in with one of his "Just like a Woman" poses while women looked on. Scarlet Rivera, in particular, asserts her identity strongly on this album—she sometimes seems to be forcing her way in but she's never far from the heart of the matter. Emmylou Harris is equally ubiquitous but her presence is less strongly felt, partly, I guess, because backup singing is a well-defined woman's role. The change, however, really stands out in the lyrics—"Isis" is on one of its several levels a sendup of the whole bitch/angel routine, and "Oh, Sister" might be a sort of apology, again among other things. If "Sara" tells us that Dylan is in some sense unregenerate in his attitudes, its most telling lines concern the couple's children, who are collaborations of quite another sort.
But love songs aren't the focus of Desire, which is one of the things that differentiates it from Dylan's other post-rock work. On the best songs, Dylan returns to the fantastic images, weird characters and absurdist landscapes of the Sixties. The metaphors work on so many levels they're impossible to sift, and just when you think you have one firmly defined, it slips off into something else again. The crucial ideas are cinematic; in fact, one song, "Romance in Durango," seems to be an explicit parable about making Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in 1973. There are the usual romances, the stories of hard-luck kids from rough slums, a couple of other westerns, even a bit of travelogue ("Mozambique"). Some of the songs, like "One More Cup of Coffee" (which is apparently based on a story Ramblin' Jack Elliott used to tell), seem ancient, as though Dylan were once more using the resources of traditional folk music for his melodies and themes.
But the bulk of the songs are nightmares, visions of a man on the run from something he can't define, or else stories about the fear of having nowhere to turn (as in "Oh, Sister" and "One More Cup of Coffee"). As Dylan races past the tomb of the Pharaoh in "Isis," hunting the world's biggest necklace and singing so deadpan it's hard to believe it, or through the "Aztec ruins" and ancestral towns of central Mexico in "Romance in Durango," history and time collide, shift, interweave. In "Black Diamond Bay" this is carried to its extreme. In a madhouse hotel where suicidal Greeks are mistaken for Soviet diplomats, the terrified protagonist, running again from something unnamed, loses her identity—she can't even remember the face on her passport. Open a door, and like a Rube Goldberg contraption, the Greek is hung, a volcano explodes, the island falls into the sea. And the desk clerk, meanwhile, simply sits and smiles: he's seen it all before.
It's hardly even surprising that we wind up with Dylan sitting in front of his TV set, sipping a beer while the whole wild story repeats itself on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
The record only falters, in fact, when it attempts to write or rewrite real history. I believe Dylan's confession about "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" in "Sara" but I don't trust it. "Hurricane" is a setup. The whole thing is too improbable for real life, though (like the Hearst kidnapping) it did happen. Dylan even sings with a measure of disbelief and, in the end, his rage is rather impotent. Is the point really that
Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell
This is hardly a radical idea of what it means for an outspoken black boxer to be jailed by devious means. It is, in fact, a little sophomoric to consider coats, ties and martinis the real enemy of a man like Hurricane Carter.
This problem presents itself most explicitly and awkwardly in "Joey," a hymn to Joey Gallo, the self-educated Mafioso who quelled an Attica riot and then, upon his release, precipitated, with his brothers, the most vicious modern mob war. Dylan would obviously like to write an outlaw ballad, making a sort of Billy the Kid or Pretty Boy Floyd from a modern-day thug.
But there are outlaws who have been branded as criminals and then there are thugs who share jail cells and not much else. Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie & Clyde and Billy the Kid were supposed to be outlaws, robbing from the rich to give to the poor. If history denies this—we are now told that Billy was a vicious psychopath and Pretty Boy not much better—the impulse for their canonization at least makes a kind of sense.
But Dylan's rationale for lionizing Joey Gallo is different. Joey was heroic because he spent his time in prison "readin' Nietzsche and Wilhelm Reich," because he came out of prison dressed like Jimmy Cagney. For this sense of style, Dylan is willing to forgive him his numbers and gambling rackets—even slyly attempting to deny that he ever was involved with such things. But his neatest ellipsis is to avoid all mention of the public execution of Joseph Colombo, which the evidence suggests the Gallo mob ordered. In which case it is hardly relevant that Joey Gallo did not carry a personal weapon and much more understandable that he himself was gunned down in front of his family. Gallo was an outlaw, in fact, only in the sense that he refused to live by the rules of the mob—it's as hard to be sympathetic to him as it is to be comfortable with Robert De Niro's crazy Johnny in Mean Streets. Is an intellectual Mafioso really that much more heroic than an unlettered hood? This is elitist sophistry of the worst sort, contemptible even when it comes from an outlaw radlib like Bob Dylan.
Specious as it is, "Joey" is musically seductive. Its chorus is perhaps the most memorable on the album, and there's a passion in the singing and playing that is uplifting. This doesn't excuse the sophomoric idea that animates that passion but it does provide some kind of measure of Dylan's continued power as a songwriter and mythmonger. Liking Desire is hardly the point—there are those of us who will always believe that Dylan is copping out until he returns to the fiery rock & roll that drove his middle Sixties work, just as there are those who will never truly love his music again until he writes an album full of "Hurricanes." The test of Bob Dylan's talent is really that all of us continue to listen and hope. (RS 208)
DAVE MARSH
download this file here or back to list
Bob Dylan, Fairfax, VA, 2/22/98
From my review posted to rec.music.dylan 2/23/98.
Some editing has been done to repair typos and missing words.
Silvio Cocaine Blues (acoustic) Masters Of War (acoustic)Tangled Up In Blue (acoustic)
Million MilesBlind Willie McTellHighway 61 Revisited
Encores:
Till I Fell In Love With You
It Ain't Me, Babe (acoustic)
Lovesick
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
Short version:
Great show, not the best, but very, very strong. Bob in black suit, with silver stripes down the sides of the pants, and the white cowboy hat. Lovesick was the high point, Million Miles the low point. Kenny Wayne Shepherd sucked. Security (especially the little fuckhead 30-something in the white shirt with the glasses) was a pain. Dancing fool with the ponytail beard deserved to be shot.
Not-so-short-version:
We arrived from Williamsburg in plenty of time, so we got dinner at Ellie's Deli across the street from GMU. The health department has obviously not been there recently. the food preparers were un-gloved and un-washed. The brownie one of my friends got had lovely circles of green mold on top, and the womens' toilet was broken. at least I got dinner for $0.98, which I doubt I could have done anywhere else. So we got to the Patriot Center at 7:30, came in the doors, noticed there was no security checking for taping equiptment or cameras, and cursed loudly that I'd brought neither. Oh well. Nice seats, right at the front of section 5 (sec 5, row B, seats 1-3, to be precise), so in the middle, about 20 rows back. good view of the stage (until people stand and the faults of a flat-floored hall become evident).
Where to begin. Let's get the bad stuff out of the way, which mostly follows the chronology of the evening. Kenny Wayne Shepherd was a 50 minute waste of my time. If I wanted to hear distorted, sloppily played guitars I would have stayed home and done it myself. Cancel, and pass on.
The house lights go down, the crowd roars, we get the "Ladies and gentleman, please welcome Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan!," and the familiar strains of Absolutely Sweet Marie engulf me again. And oh, how sweet. Very nice, clear vocals They hit the ground running on this one. not much to say, except that I do miss the "yellow railroad".
Mystery slot #1. I'm hoping for something interesting, and in a way, I get it. Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You, which seems to have become a bit of a standard by now, was riveting and deeply satisfying. Much nicer than the Unplugged version, Bob has fun singing it now, and it shows. Verses were all mixed up--as I recall, he started off with "I can hear that whistle blowin'," which was repeated at least once closer to the end. But who cares. So he didn't do all the lyrics. It's not like the song is a masterpiece from a lyrical stanpoint. It's a sentimental country song, and that's what he played it as. Nice use of the lower range of his voice.
Okay, I'm pumped to hear my first TOOM song live. Can't Wait is strong. Head and shoulders above the album version which I have unfortunately grown slightly weary of. Much more passionate vocals, and he sounded, at the time, haunted, not in the slightly spooky way that TOOM sounds haunted, but much more sinister. Of course, after hearing Masters of War, this one's reduced to child's play.
Mystery slot #2. I say to myself "Come on, Bob, Born In Time." The band cranks up and I think I got my wish. It's a suspiciously similar riff, and I'm waiting to hear "In the lonely night". Wrong. "They sat together in the paaaark/ As the evenin' sky got daaaaark..." Simple Twist Of Fate is always welcome surprise. He got all my favorite verses, but I don't remember if that's all or not. My notes read "Nice phrasing, use of pauses." And the pauses really helped make the vocal stand up. Maintaining tension within the lines is important, something he must have forgotten by later in the evening.
Now, I'm not sure where I noticed it first, possibly during Simple Twist, but it was certainly by the acoustic set. The Voice. It's different. The "mucous gurgle" from the post-histoplasmosis tour this summer is fading, and most of the time it's the somewhat raspy voice we've become used to. But then there are moments, and the Voice, the wholesome Nashville Skyline croon, sneaks out, and as he holds a word for what seems like an eternity, there is no rasp, no crackle, no pain. It's smooth, sweet, and natural. And it's great ornament the way he's using it now. May he keep off the filthy weed long enough to do some more of this kind of singing.
Silvio. It's Silvio. It's fun. Much more enjoyable than Philly 8/20/97, which was a bit too ragged for my taste. I still prefer the spring/summer 1996 versions.
Now we come to the part of the evening where we get all the surprises. :-) Same songs he's been playing for the last month.
Cocaine Blues. Very nice. Not the ethereal experience it was this summer, but still a joy to hear. Backing vocals from Larry only, I think. Didn't look like Bucky of Tony were joining in. One change, and I'd be interested in knowing when it showed up, is the addition of something in the line "This old cocaine's makin' me sick," which is now sung as "This old cocaine doctor's makin' me sick." it's probably not "doctor" but I can's think of any alternatives right now.
Masters Of War. I was dreading this one. I'm not a big fan of this song, and I'm still not, but it is certanily becoming appropriate. And it's obvious Bob thinks so too, becasue he sang it like he was posessed. Hellhound on his trail x10. The most powerful performance I've heard him give. very tight and sympathetic work from the T,B,L,&D.
Tangled Up In Blue. Screams of delight from the four corners of the hall. Very nice, and very fast--a sign of things to come. Towards the end the stage rush, such as it was, happened. I didn't make it,so I didn't get to stand at the fornt and yell for In The Garden. oh well. At about this time I noticed a guy in the back row of the section ahead of me with his little videocamera going. and security was too busy harassing people like me for moving 6 inches into the aisle from my seat (right next to the aisle) to notice him. And he was doing nothing to hide it at all. One wonders. I should have tried to get in with my big reel-to-reel machine, given these clowns. :-) Good use of the footlights on this one--huge shadow of Bob against the rear curtain as he bends down and does his funny little solo. Priceless image.
Million Miles. My least favorite song on TOOM, because it's so boring. Something of a snoozefest live, too.
Mystery slot #3. Okay, I'm figuring it just can't go wrong. What's he played in this slot: Blind Willie Mc Tell, Queen Jane, Pos 4th St, Stuck Inside Of Mobile, and I forget what else. Nothing dull, that's for sure. And I'm pulling for Blind Willie, just so I can experience it once live. I got my wish this time, or did I? The familiar chords. "Seen the arrow..." but what's this? It's fast. Oh dear. BWMT isn't supposed to be sung like you're on a runaway train. Very little of the majesty of this song came through. There are no spaces left, no time to think, no time to appreciate the song. A big disappointment, but at least I can say I heard it live.
Highway 61 Revisited. Mighty fine. Lyrics somewhat buried beneath the guitars, but what I could hear was great. quite energetic, with Bob doing some dancin' and prancin' for those up front.
Till I Fell in Love With You. Excellent. Much better than the album, with superb vocals. My pen ceased to write by this point, so I have no notes to refer to for specifics, unfortunately. But I was singing it in my head all the way home.
It Ain't Me, Babe. Oh goody. nothing new here, but it was nice. terribly rough ending, though.
Love Sick. Now that's what I'm talkin' about, Bob. Highlight of the night. Superb, passionate vocals, crisp sound, great flow. sounds fresh and new, even after months on the road with it.
Rainy Day Women. Usual clouds rising from the crowd. Interesting intro, though, that had me wondering whether it would indeed be RDW. That glimmer of hope...
All in all, a very nice show, with some unexpected highlights.
"HEY JUDE" IS A MESSAGE FROM JOHN LENNON AND PAUL MCCARTNEY TO BOB DYLAN WHICH ATTEMPTED TO CONVINCE DYLAN TO RETURN TO BEING A ROCK AND ROLLER AND FORGET THE JOHN WESLEY HARDING AND NASHVILLE SKYLINE CRAP HE WAS DOING AT THE TIME.
SE ONEHEY JUDE
SAINT JUDE IS THE PATRON OF LOST CAUSES. JUDEN IS THE GERMAN WORD FOR JEW AND DYLAN IS JEWISH.
DON'T MAKE IT BAD
DON'T CONTRIBUTE TO THE SAD STATE OF REALITY
TAKE
TAKE, IN THE SENSE OF RECORD.
A SAD SONG
A SONG WHICH REFLECTS HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT THE TIME WE LIVE IN LIKE "SAD EYED LADY OF THE LOWLANDS"
AND MAKE IT BETTER
AND IMPROVE REALITY
REMEMBER TO LET HER INTO YOUR HEART
LENNON-MCCARTNEY ARE USING "HER" OR "SHE" IN THIS CONTEXT TO SYMBOLIZE "TEENAGERS FANS" JUST AS DYLAN DID IN "FOURTH TIME AROUND": "SO I FORCED MY HANDS IN MY POCKETS AND FELT WITH MY THUMBS, AND GALLANTLY HANDED HER MY VERY LAST PIECE OF GUM." THE LINE BECOMES: REMEMBER TO TURN THE YOUNG PEOPLE ON TO THE WAY YOU FEEL.
THEN YOU CAN START TO MAKE IT BETTER
START TO HAVE A SAY ABOUT THE WAY THINGS ARE AND MAKE IT BETTER.
HEY JUDE, DON'T BE AFRAID
OF PERFORMING IN PUBLIC
YOU WERE MADE TO GO OUT AND GET HER
THE LAST TIME YOU WENT ON TOUR YOU DID SO AGAINST YOUR WILL SINCE YOU HAD TO FULLFILL A LOT OF CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS
THE MINUTE YOU LET HER UNDER YOUR SKIN
WHEN YOU LET THE KIDS BACK INTO YOUR LIFE
THEN YOU BEGIN TO MAKE IT BETTER
THAT IS WHEN YOU SERVE A REAL SOCIAL FUNCTION.
AND ANY TIME YOU FEEL THE PAIN,
AGAIN LENNON REPHRASED DYLAN'S REACTIONS TO TEENAGERS FROM BLONDE ON BLONDE -IN JUST LIKE A WOMAN DYLAN REPROACHES AMERICAN YOUTH:"YOUR LONG TIME CURSE HURTS BUT WHAT'S WORSE IS THIS PAIN IN HERE" SO 'ANYTIME BEING A POP STAR BECOMES TOO DIFFICULT BECAUSE OF FAME'
HEY JUDE, REFRAIN"
GO BACK TO THE SECLUSION OF WOODSTOCK
DON'T CARRY THE WORLD UPON YOUR SHOULDER
DON'T TRY TO DO THE IMPOSSIBLE
FOR WELL YOU KNOW
NOW THAT DYLAN HAS RECOVERED FROM HIS ACCIDENT WHICH TOOK PLACE WHILE HE WAS RELUCTANTLY GIVING CONCERTS, HE KNOWS FROM EXPERIENCE
THAT ITS A FOOL
LITERALLY
WHO PLAYS IT COOL
WHO TAKES THE EASY WAY OUT
BY MAKING HIS WEALTH A LITTLE GOLDER
BY GIVING CONCERTS RATHER THAN BEING USED FOR BREACH OF CONTRACT.
HEY JUDE, DON'T LET ME DOWN
MORE BLONDE ON BLONDE SYMBOLISM. IN OBVIOUSLY FIVE BELIEVERS DYLAN WRITES- 'DONT LET ME DOWN/ DON'T LET ME DOWN/ I WON'T LET YOU DOWN, ETC. SO LENNON IS IMPLORING DYLAN IN HIS OWN TERMS TO RECORD SOME MORE ROCK
YOU HAVE FOUND HER
YOU HAVE MADE INITIAL CONTACT WITH LIKE A ROLLING STONE, ETC.
NOW GO AND GET HER
GET YOUTH- "YOUR LONG TIME CURSE HURTS/ BUT WHAT'S WORSE/ IS THIS PAIN IN HERE" SO 'ANYTIME BEING A POP STAR BECOMES TOO DIFFICULT'
SO LET IT OUT AND LET IT IN
CONTINUE TO MAKE CHANGE THE ONLY CONSTANT FACTOR IN YOUR ART
HEY JUDE BEGIN
DOING YOUR THING IN PUBLIC AGAIN
YOU'RE WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO PERFORM WITH
YOU'RE WAITING FOR THE BAND TO MAKE IT BIG AND APPEAR ON A DOUBLE BILL WITH YOU
AND DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S JUST YOU
THAT YOU WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BAND'S SUCCESS
YOU'LL DO
AND YOUR PRESENCE IS ENOUGH TO INSURE SRO CROWDS WHEREVER YOU GO
THE MOVEMENT YOU NEED
MOVEMENT IN THE MUSICAL SENSE - TEMPO OR RHYTHM - YOU NEED TO WIN THE ALLIGANCE OF THE YOUNG
IS ON YOUR SHOULDER
IS ROCK-THAT-IS MUSIC WHICH COMES FROM AN ELECTRIC GUITAR WHICH HANGS FROM ONE'S SHOULDER VIS A VIS AN ACOUSTICAL GUITAR WHICH ONE CARRIES IN EVERY HAND.
LIKE THIS WAS NOT THE ONLY SONG THANON-MCCARTNEY WROTE ABOUT BOBBY DYLAN. MAGGIE MAE, TAKEN FROM MAGGIE'S FARM, CONCERNED DYLAN'S DEPARTURE FROM THE POLITICAL SCENE DUE TO HARD DRUGS HAVE TAKEN DYLAN AWAY NEVER BE POLITICAL ANYMORE.
IN DRIFTER'S ESCAPE DYLAN DESCRIBED HOW HE WAS SENTENCED BY THE FOLKNICKS FOR BEING SELLOUT.
FOR CHEATING THE FOLKNICKS.
DYLAN WOULD EARN MORE FROM ROCK.
download this file here or back to list
A night at the theatre of Divine Comedy: Bob Dylan in Florence, May 30th 2000
Having played on previous tours in Pisa, Livorno and Pistoia, Bob Dylan finally made it to Florence, the most important town in Tuscany and one of the most interesting places to visit in Europe.
A stone's throw from Vignamaggio, where Leonardo painted his most famous work, the woman with the highway blues clearly revealed by the way she smiles, where angels fear to tread in a mediaeval town full of towers some of which (some say) inspired the financial centre in lower Manhattan; the place where Michelangelo carved out, besides David, the Jokerman's features; the place where Botticelli's niece lived, when not taking a weekend off in Rome, and where the Italian poet from the 13th century invented a new language.
So many references lead Dylan to this city, including the 'theatre of Divine Comedy' which marked the return to his roots. No wonder, then, his premiere here is seen with extreme interest. Italy is, indeed, one of the countries most often cited in Dylan's work.
At least a couple of times he chose this country to start the European leg of his tours (1984 and 1991); this time he changed the cards, and Italy was the last country visited in this series of concerts. A strange itinerary: at first only the Cagliari date was confirmed, then rumours followed one another until the final dates were revealed by the end of April.
He started in Modena, in an open-air location, Piazza Grande, a place sung by one of the most famous Italian singer-songwriter; then moved north, to Milano, took a day off (though some unfounded reports said he would be playing near Salzburg) before going to Florence, then Ancona and Cagliari.
Me and Chris have a clear mind: follow at least a couple of shows and try to meet Bob in Florence. I ask all of my hotel contacts and finally get to know where he is staying: the most gorgeous hotel in town, very close to the place he's playing, an excellent haven for those who want privacy at any cost. And fortunately I have worked there, I know who to ask, where to get and in which room he may be staying. The hotel is getting empty because all the guests who stayed for Susan Ross's wedding (a lot of famous people, including the Spielbergs, Mr. Nicole Kidman and Ms. Tom Cruise, to name but a few) have just left, and the atmosphere is again relaxing and not exclusive.
I call in the early afternoon, and I am told he'll be arriving by the early evening, just in time to settle down and get to play. I have a working meeting, and keep straight contacts with the hotel, but … no Bob. According to what they say, the reservation, under some of the aliases Dylan could use, is made. But neither Dylan nor the crew are there yet, and it's getting dark.
We finally decide it's not worth trying, and after dinner we get to the arena.
I still think about it: the first time Dylan plays in the city I was born and always lived, in the sports arena two blocks away from my house, up to the point I could hope to run into his car on the street as I am going there. The line for the reserved seats is long, everybody decided to get here at the very last minute. After some searching (there are no hostesses, unlike in Milano) we finally find our seats. Dylan starts only a few minutes after we've sat down. The first song is unrecognisable; for sure it's a traditional – he's consistently been opening with traditionals on this tour. We keep listening, trying to catch the words, but unfortunately the acoustics are terrible, as they've always been in this building built about fifteen years ago mainly for sport events, full of pipes on the ceiling which cause holes in the sound and strange echoes which send the sounds back in an endless noise. The girl sitting next to me keeps the rhythm tapping on her neck, Chris is carefully listening trying to get some clue, I look around getting to the conclusion I don't know the song and I may check in the Lomax collection later at home. But then Chris is looking at me: "Duncan and Brady", he says.
The playing is not as dense and intense as it was in Milano, but there's nothing to be worried about. This is my tenth Dylan concert, and I already witnessed something like this, in Pisa seven years ago, and then the concert turned out to be great.
The only bad thing is the sound, as I suspected. The sheets on the ceiling didn't prevent these holes, and the result is something confused. For sure the sound engineers will be able to work it out soon, but it'll take time, maybe a couple of songs. That's fine, because I am pretty sure the second one will be "The Times They Are a-Changin'" again. And so it is.
This old song, considered an anthem by many people of Dylan's generation (juxtaposed to Tom Petty's "Free Falling", which many defined an anti-anthem in the late eighties) has crossed his career in a smoother way then "Blowin' in the Wind", always finding a place in his concerts, causing enthusiasm in the audience and scarcely any disappointment for the version he decided to play, unlike what's happened with the Freewheelin' classic. David Kemper's drums clearly mark this 6/8 feeling (the sheet music always said ¾, and Dylan always played it as a 6/8) and the guitars outline the melody in a long instrumental introduction. The performing in Milano was perfect, with clear words and good timing; tonight it's a little weaker. Dylan sings carefully and comprehensibly, but it seems there is a blank spot in his concentration. Besides, his first leg hasn't started to swivel around his toe yet, which is never a good sign. The scheme is always the same: the first four stanzas, an instrumental break, the last one and another solo. The audience is captured, cheers sound all over the place, and the general feeling is that the building is going to fall in a second.
The lights grow dimmer for the third song, which starts in a slow and dilated mood. His guitar is clearly recognisable through the wall of sound the three create. The girl's father asked me which the song is, I shake my head as if to say 'I don't know'. After a few more second, the unmistakable progression from fourth to first reveals a revisited "Visions of Johanna". Milder than the original version, totally different from the working tracks recorded thirty-five years before in New York, maybe akin to a freeze-out to me. Again it's Dylan in Tuscany and again what remains of Joanna is only the visions. Even this time, thanks to a stupid delayed flight, Joanna is not here. Last time, two years ago, it was a conference; this time it's the weather. It's like somebody knows I should have been here with Joanna. A thing made even more evident as he whisper the phrase "she makes it all too concise and too clear that Joanna's not here". Louise says that, and my sister always said Joanna reminds her of her friend Luisa. Again, coincidence on coincidence, Dylan is building once more his entrance into my personal feelings. And he does it the way he usually does; silently letting his thin blade sink into your own thoughts, in a place you thought no one would have ever been able to reach. As Ivano Fossati wrote, everyone holds his favourite poets in his heart, but he doesn't know what part of the heart to give them, because he doesn't know which part they will take by themselves. The performance is very accurate, with measured guitar and soft drums quietly punctuating his singing, as Garnier provides a smooth line able to point out all the harmonies in the song.
"To Ramona" follows, with a nice intuition: another song for a woman. If Johanna's name recalls Baez's, Ramona was the nickname Dylan gave her in the letter he wrote to Baez's mother, later included in the Queen of Folk Music's autobiography "And a Voice To Sing With". The arrangement winks at the Southern Italian folk music, with the mandolin filling up the pauses between the lines. The result is not as great as it was in Milano, but at the same time very pleasant. It may also be that, having heard the song twice in three days, the listener's attention tends to decrease.
"Tangled Up in Blue" follows, with such an intensity that, in fact, prepares us for the electric set. In an ideal structure, this sequence of three songs seems to cover three important phases of a relationship: desire, knowledge, rise and fall. If in "Visions of Johanna" the writer realises how he misses the one he has visions about, in "Ramona" he actually talks to her and finds out how hard it is to get a deep relationship; and in "Tangled Up in Blue", he takes a backward look at something gone but not forgotten, up to the point, in the end, of finding himself on the road again, feeling really needy and desperate ('I got to get to her somehow').
By the time Dylan wrote this song, he may have read Shakespeare's "The Two Gentlemen of Verona". The triangle in the song – he, she, I – suggests the competition between Proteus and Valentine to get to Silvia. Besides, Shakespeare's lines at the beginning of the third act, "You must lay time to tangle her desires/ by wailful sonnets, whose composed rhymes/ should be full fraught with serviceable vows", really seem to be echoed in Dylan's fourth stanza, as she opens up a book of poems written by an Italian poet from the thirteenth century. This suggests a fusion of the situation Shakespeare is describing and the sonnet form, which was actually invented by Petrarch, as a careful balance of sounds and words, as a form of seduction. But, as Chris correctly pointed out to me, if in Shakespeare's play poetry is a weapon belonging to Proteus, in Dylan it is the woman who uses it to seduce her guest.
It's great music, at certain points so intense it could be called "almost electric"; it ties this journey into human emotions. Again, the sequence of songs reveals a deep connection, something that developed over eleven years, for now we go back to 1965, for what seems to be the end of this troubled never-ending search: "It's All Over Now Baby Blue". Even this time, Dylan chose the arrangement he's been using ever since the mid-nineties: different from the Woodstock version, very much like the one performed in the European fall 1997 tour, with a steady pedal steel guitar one more time outlining the different mood in which Dylan tackles this song: if in 1965 there was a strong determination, sometimes we may even call it arrogance, thirty-five years later the man is tired, and is really begging the woman to leave him alone, because, after so much trying, all is over. Dylan's solo playing casts further light on this song, lengthening the suspense between the lines until the final sentence: 'strike another match, GO, start anew'.
"Country Pie", a song never performed live before this tour, opens the electric set on a joyful note. I still remember the first time I listened to "Nashville Skyline" and the effect it had on me. I don't know if it was because the album was actually released the same month I was born, or because at that time I was fascinated by pedal steel guitar, I only remember I thought it was the best Dylan album, a very far-fetched conclusion since it was only my fourth Dylan purchase. Charlie Sexton's solo is extremely appropriate, giving the entire thing a very country atmosphere.
By total contrast to Milano, where another NS song was played with great delicacy, the next number is an intense electric blues: "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry". A wonderful instrumental part, supported by a not so concentrated singing. Once again, Dylan seems to lose his concentration every now and then. His left leg doesn't spin, sometimes he turns towards Sexton inviting him to sustain his solos or even asking him to play them. Whatever the reason may be, the final result is good, and the audience seems enthusiastic. Even on the worst prediction, Dylan has proved himself able to play at least four different kind of styles in eight songs.
"Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again" follows. It's no longer the hard-rock number which shook everyone's ears in 1988, the punk version in 1991 or the more dilated rock'n'roll version I heard him play in Pisa seven years back. It is, contrariwise, a skilful epitome of all of this, something allowing the listener to understand the lyrics, all the situations and the famous ambiguity this song offers, from Shakespeare talking to a prostitute to a teen preacher with twenty pounds of headlines stapled to his chest as the bricks lay on Grand Street, maybe allowing Gary Kemp to write, twenty years later "Through The Barricades", or, more seriously, permitting Kate Wolf to make the river change direction across the great divide.
A semi-acoustic feeling, with a soft pedal steel, announces the following song, which I find very hard to identify until the words "They sat together in the park" come out. "Simple Twist of Fate" as never heard before, maybe not as magic as that night in Pisa when, as he was singing "she felt the heat of the night hit him like a freight train" a train (even if not a freight train) passed behind his back, but nevertheless very intriguing….. up till his guitar solo, which is indeed void of form and showing lack of ideas. Dylan is again distracted, it seems his mind cannot concentrate on what he is doing for more than thirty minutes in a row.
After this semi-debacle, the band launches into a very loud and strong rock, as a total reply to the previous atmosphere. It's "Drifter's Escape": one of the two people who met because of a twist of fate (maybe the man, who is still looking for the woman) cries out to be helped 'in his weakness', while the jury cries for more and, taking advantage of the riot, he finally escapes, hitting the road (yes, it's "Highway 61" he finds himself on). For the first time in two concerts, Dylan drops his guitar and picks up his harmonica, causing a ripple in the audience, playing a very inspired solo, turning around continuously and breathing regularly, giving his playing a deep sense.
The drifter finds shelter from the storm on Highway 61 and the electric blues feeling, with a great Sexton and Campbell able to compensate the Master's fumble, is up again.
Dylan and his band get back on-stage for the encore, and Campbell's guitar clearly scanning the rhythmic beginning of "Love Sick", very well received after an entire show almost totally dedicated to the sixties - the strange and suffering desperation of a man sick of love, who'd give everything either not to have met that woman or to be with her. And now a reaction, a jump back in time, as Dylan strums a few chords on his guitar, looking around and as David Kemper calls the time it is obvious the song is "Like a Rolling Stone". The girl next to me stands up, then her father invites her to stand in the aisle. 'She's been waiting for this song all night', he tells me, looking at her dancing 'Five years ago she didn't even know who he was!'. At that point, me and Chris think how strange it would be if we went to see Dylan with our respective fathers! Again, Dylan is distracted, forgets a few words, but this song would fill the crowd with enthusiasm even if he played it backwards. The slow ending fades out, and then it's again acoustic, with a wonderful version of "It Ain't Me Babe", in which the harmonica jumps up again. A wonderful revisit of this classic, written here in this country almost forty years ago. 'Come ? bravo quest'uomo!', says the girl's father.
"Maggie's Farm" again! It's the song I've heard the most in all the concerts I've seen, seven times out of ten. And it's new again, not like the way he played it with Tom Petty or with the 1991-1996 band, it's now a more relaxed song in which he explains why he doesn't want to work there anymore. Wrath has given way to a deep awareness. This is Dylan as he approaches his seventh decade.
All of a sudden, a finger-picking guitar, sort of a country feeling, and our memories (even those of the ones who weren't born back then) bring us all back to 1963. Why? We don't know, and whatever the reason is - "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"! And it sounds like the Village. I know that, I was there twenty days before. It sounds like Jane Street, the fish market between 12th Street and Ninth Avenue, Washington Square in spring, the most hidden parts of that quarter. After the visions of Joanna. I also have the ones from the place she lives. There is no need for a harmonica break to bring the song out, it is perfect the way it is.
"Rainy Day Women" and "Blowin' in the Wind" bring the show to the end. Dylan thanks everyone, bows several times, dons a hat and descends the stairs, followed by the band. It's over for real.
The tenth time I've attended a Dylan concert, the first time in my own city, two blocks from where I live. Too many times I have thought about this, and now that it has happened, I can't help but complain about the terrible acoustics, and think that maybe they could have had him play in the baseball stadium, in front of the arena but in the open, on a lovely green lawn. But in the end it doesn't matter. Even my own tour is over, I won't be following him in Ancona and Cagliari: there is too much to do at work, and Chris too has to get back to France to see to his own commitments.
And the same two questions: How long will he keep on playing? Will we all be able to see him again? And one day, beyond the visions, will Joanna be next to me, in an arena, a stadium, a square or a Theatre?
download this file hereor back to list
OBERHAUSEN AND K?LN REVISITED:
Review of the concerts of 9 May and 11 May 2000
By Val?rie Charlez, 13 May 2000
Two days have gone since the last note of 'Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35' was played in K?ln, and I just can't get those concerts out of my mind. What a week! Oberhausen and K?ln were respectively my fourth and fifth shows, and were not only very different from what I had seen before but also very different from each other. It took us about 4 hours to reach those places and for sure the journey was worth it. As I don't see 10 shows a year I'm wasn't picky about the songs that were to be played, didn't expect rare stuff. I was just glad (and how excited!) at the thought Dylan would be in front of me very soon again. I was hoping for 'My Back Pages' with Larry on the fiddle, and 'Desolation Row' though...
I hope that what follows will manage, for those who were not there, to let you share my feelings about those shows and bring you there somehow and, for those who were lucky enough to be where it was at, to arouse some good memories. I've read several reviews and feelings appear to be mixed, so here are mine.
Alright, here's how it all happened…
Oberhausen was a very strange concert. The more I think about it now, the more I think it was good, but there were many ups and downs. The lights went out around 8.15 p.m. and as expected people rushed to the stage. I managed to get a nice place in the first row, between Tony Garnier and Charlie Sexton (Charlie, oh ! Charlie ;o)). Dylan showed up in a nice light grey suit, looked very thin but fit. He didn't even wait for the end of the announcement before starting 'Roving Gambler'. The performance was good, and Bob's voice extremely clear, but you could see he wasn't in a good mood.
Then came 'The Times They Are A-Changin'', and I felt
disappointed that it wasn't 'My Back Pages', because I first
thought that was the song they were playing. I didn't recognize
it at once, for the introduction was quite hesitant. Anyway,
there was still another night left for MBP ... 'Times' was well
performed, but not exceptional. 'Masters of War', by way of
contrast, was really good. Dylan sang it very powerfully, you
could see from his face that he meant every syllable of every
word of the song. I guess he was in the right mood to perform it
– i.e. an ol' angry man. A pity the guy next to me had to sing
it out loud from the first to the last word… A very beautiful 'It's
All Over Now Baby Blue' followed. Then came the great energetic
first acoustic chords of 'Tangled Up In Blue', and I danced
during the entire song. Again, Bob's singing was very good and
clear, but it wasn't the case of his guitar playing, to say the
least. All of his attempts to start solos between verses turned
out to be failures. He turned around to take his harp at the end
of the song and rendered a nice solo. For lack of guitar at least
we had the harmonica! Bob took a deep breath of relief right
after the song ended, as if he was glad it was over. Things
really got serious with 'One Too Many Mornings'. I was very
pleased that he played that song! The whole performance was just
wonderful. The first highlight of the show, and a pleasure to the
ear! Larry did a good job on the pedal steel, and Bob kept on
with his clear and solid singing, re-strengthening the feelings
evoked in every line of the song: 'You're right from your side
and I'm right from mine'. Thanks Bob, that was splendid!
The electric slot started off with 'Country Pie'. I enjoyed that song very much and I think the whole band did so. Tony had a large smile on his face and Charlie's guitar playing was very impressive, it was so damned good! Oh me, oh my, just loved that Couuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun-try Pie!
The next song was 'Can't Wait', and I was very surprised to hear how different it was from what we had been used to hearing. The version was very slow and intense. I'm not too fond of that song, but I must admit the new arrangement somehow brings something to it.
It took no more than 3 seconds for me to start jumping up and down when I heard the terrific opening chords of 'All Along The Watchtower'. It was awesome! I was just electrified throughout the song, and danced like a fool from the first to the last note!!! Bob was holding his guitar very strangely – almost at the vertical! during that song. Hey, you ain't seen nothing like me yet! This was fun.
'Simple Twist of Fate' calmed things down. It was very softly played.
Then followed the lines: 'What's the matter with me, I don't have much to say?', opening 'Watching The River Flow'. It sounded as usual, everybody on stage seemed to enjoy the song. Dylan was moving around, from and to Larry and Tony. The second highlight of the night was in my opinion the song that followed, i.e. 'Not Dark Yet'. I had heard that song last year in Munich and it had been already wonderfully performed then, but on Tuesday it sounded even better. It was strongly felt and sung, Bob's singing was magnificent. Maybe a sign announcing what Thursday's concert in K?ln would be like...
The band got the audience grooving again with 'Leopard-Skin Pill Box Hat'. Then they left the stage for a break. Tony winked and smiled at me a couple of times before leaving…
The encore set started with 'Love Sick'. The performance was strong as usual, with Bob raising his eyebrows all the time. 'Like a Rolling Stone' was alright too, I liked very much the way Dylan delivered his didn't you/ kidding you, that is to say it was exaggerated :o). I don't know how many times he must have sung this song, but for sure it can't be easy to make it sound a little different every time, especially when you sing it every night. Back to acoustic instruments with 'Don't Think Twice', we had a very very nice harp solo again. Then came 'Not Fade Away' (we've got used to that song), which got me dancing again. 'Blowin' In The Wind' had the usual riff following the chorus ( you know the cling-cling-cling-cling-cling-cling...cling stuff), and the show ended with 'Rainy Day Women'. This was my fourth show, and it was the fourth time he closed the concert with that song, but it was weaker than what I had heard previously. Maybe too slow and not entertaining enough for my taste....
o0o
K?lnarena is a huge place. We arrived there around 5.30 p.m. and after queuing we finally got in and found our seats. I was in the fourteenth row, and my legs were shaking, for I was both very tired from the car and very nervous. Around 8.15 p.m. the lights went out... "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen" … people stood up to get closer to the stage and so did I. I had a little altercation with one of the security guards who stopped me but after faking I was gently returned to my seat: I rushed to the stage and managed to squeeze through people and get a central fourth-row position. Dylan was there, almost in front of me, the sight was even better than in Oberhausen! I could see every detail of his moves throughout this concert that proved to be one of the best I've seen – if not THE best. After what we had had in Oberhausen, never would I have expected such a show!
The man in green made me miss the beginning of 'Roving Gambler', but on the whole it sounded like the night before. Dylan was wearing a grey suit, with black stripes on his pants and a black bow-tie. Do I have to mention that he had cowboy shoes??? He seemed to be less grumpy than in Oberhausen. The song ended and the band received a great cheer from the audience, you could feel that the crowd was more receptive and warmer than the night before. Song number 2 was 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' again :'o(. Dylan didn't feel comfortable during that song. I guess there was a problem with his guitar monitor since I saw a roadie trying to arrange something in the back of the stage. I don't think Dylan wasn't feeling well.
The song that followed was 'It's Alright Ma', and was wonderfully sung, with a pause before the end of each verse. It was really thrilling to see him play that one live! For sure the effect is stronger than when you just hear it from your CD player. His guitar didn't seem to be working any better, so he almost didn't play at all on that song. Larry's riffs were great.
When the first line of 'Mr Tambourine Man' was uttered, the whole arena cheered. The performance was really good. Towards the end Dylan moved back to pick up his harmonica and stepped to the mike. The audience was clapping loud. Then as if he wanted to tease us he moved around, the harp was still in his hand and it was like he was still wondering if he would play or not... I just laughed, this man's so weird! Then finally he got closer to Larry and pointed to him, and then did so with David. His Bobness just wanted to listen - and get us to listen - to what his mates were playing. That was nice. The crowd was enjoying itself, and 'Tangled Up In Blue' followed. It was very similar to the performance we had in Oberhausen. Not better, not worse. This time Bob didn't try to get into guitar solos and again he ended with playing the harp. I really enjoyed it. I know that some people are tired of that song but for me they can keep on playing it every night. I just love it. An ode to life!
Dylan then disappeared for a while. Everybody, including the members of the band, was a little puzzled. Then he came back with an acoustic guitar and they started playing the first song of a series of incredible performances. The musical introduction was rather long, and my heart started pounding strongly when I recognised the tune. It was 'Gates of Eden'! I know he has played that one regularly lately, but I wasn't expecting it at all. That was absolutely beautiful. After a couple of verses he took his guitar away, held it in his right hand and continued to sing that way. Then he put it aside and picked up his harmonica once again. He played it twice in the middle of the song. It filled the arena, "crying like a fire in the sun". Back to the lyrics, the flow of words was almost perfect. It was the first time I was seeing Dylan singing without a guitar. It was striking to see how concentrated everyone on stage was. This was so powerful a rendition. I wanted to ask my neighbour to pinch me but I don't think he would have appreciated that I disturbed him during such a performance.
'Country Pie' opened the electric set and awoke me out of my daydreaming. The version was weaker than the night before but after what we had just had it just didn't matter.
Then came some good rocking chords on a really great tempo and I first thought it was 'Seven Days', but … "A worried man with a worried mind, no one in front of me and nothing behind..." This obviously wasn't 'Seven Days'! Woohooo, I just couldn't believe it!!! I thought he had left 'Things Have Changed' behind in America, but no, he has taken it along in his suitcase! I think that most people in the audience enjoyed it as much as me. Eyebrows raised, Bob let us see the deep blue of his eyes on "I'm in love with a woman that don't even appeal to me". Great song, great performance. I'm 21 and I can say this is the kind of stuff that would appeal to people of my age. This is proof that Bob Dylan is still kicking! If only they knew it...
After this came 'Down Along the Cove': needless to say I wasn't expecting that song either! The band had much fun in playing it, it was very fast and the guitars were playing damned well. This time Bob did a really good job, moving around and bending his knees all the time. It was endless, everybody was smiling on stage and in the audience. Great !
Then they started to play a soft tune and I immediately recognised 'Every Grain of Sand'. That was just unbelievable! What a set he was offering us! After a long long introduction, the dying voice within him reached out in the arena and the whole rendition was a wonder. Once again, I was wondering if all of this was real... Then came a very strange version of 'Cold Irons Bound'. I heard someone in my back say "Dylan's going psychedelic" and indeed that's a bit how the introduction sounded like. It was kind of scary. The drums were playing and stopping dead, leaving Bob's singing up front. Tony played the tambourine. Totally different to what we had known before!
Dylan introduced the band and they embarked on 'Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat'. Everybody was having much fun. No doubt it was better than in Oberhausen. Bob's solos were finer.
Then Dylan bowed and pointed to someone in the crowd. His back was all wet. They left for a while, then returned with 'Love Sick'. It was good and solid, as it often is. There was a nice light-effect during the chorus. A blonde girl of my age arrived on stage between Tony and Charlie (lucky her!) as they started playing 'Like A Rolling Stone'. I don't know how she got there but for sure she was having fun. She was strumming an acoustic guitar that wasn't plugged in (which was a good thing for us, seeing the way she was carrying the instrument…). I guess she was just a fan who had managed to meet Bob before the show. Curiously enough he didn't pay attention to her. As for the performance of that song, it was very good again. I was very pleased to hear that the next song was 'Forever Young'. Bob was almost whispering the title words and his solos were as fine as in the previous songs. Larry and Charlie's back-up vocals were nice. Then came 'Not Fade Away' and 'Don't Think Twice, again we had a nice harmonica solo at the end of the latter, and they closed the concert with 'Rainy Day Women' again. This time it was great! Bob waved his hands in the air as if he was conducting an orchestra, inviting us to clap our hands. You could feel that everybody who was there that night had had a great time. The guitars were rocking well and I thought to myself, "Val, look at him attentively now for in a couple of minutes he will have disappeared". And so he had after a few bows and thumbs-up to the audience. That was it.
I was sad it was over, but I had such a feeling of satisfaction. So glad I was there! No 'My Back Pages', no 'Desolation Row' though. As a matter of fact, 'Desolation Row' was on the list at Hannover, and I wish I had been there too, not only for that song but also for 'Tomorrow is a Long Time' and 'Ring Them Bells' and 'I'll Be Your Baby Tonight' and 'Tombstone Blues' and… just to see Dylan another time. This man is so impressive. Thanks, Bob, for those splendid nights. Thanks, Larry, David, Tony and Charlie. And thanks, Frederik, for offering me a seat in your car. This was the wildest week I've had for a long time. And I'm sure that we'll have great moments again in his Bobness' company sooner or later. If only those September dates could be confirmed…
download this file hereor back to list
He Opened Up His Book of Poems: Dylan in Milan, 28 May 2000
So Bob Dylan packed up all of our hearts in a suitcase, wrapped up in lace and tied in a sailor’s knot, and unpacked them in Italy. The latest Never-Ending-Tour cycle wound up with five dates (Modena, Milan, Florence, Ancona, Cagliari) in the illustrious homeland of Michelangelo, Botticelli, Galileo, Romeo and Casanova - to cite but a few of the numerous Italian allusions, from the Spanish Stairs to the palace of the Pope, the City of Seven Hills to the Mona Lisa, that lie scattered gloriously across the Dylan songbook.
All the time-honoured beauty of Italy cannot, alas, redeem the stark ugliness of the urban wasteland on the outskirts of Milan that surrounds the Palavobis - a venue premiered years ago by Frank Sinatra, and since then honoured by the presence of Paul Simon, and now, on 28 May 2000, by Bob Dylan on his first tour of the twenty-first century. Ring-roads, parking lots, sinister barrack-like institutions fronted by frowning shutters: all this forms the backdrop to an impersonal amphitheatre that would not be out of place on Desolation Row. Milan has never been the most aesthetic or the most artistic of Italy’s metropolises: in the wake of political scandals not so long back, it even earned the alternative name of ‘Tangentopoli’ or ‘Kickbacksville’ (did I hear someone murmur something about city councilmen taking bribes on the side?), but it is also the city of Leonardo’s Last Supper and La Scala, and on this particular evening the Palavobis was illuminated by the special, inimitable energy of a performance from Bob Dylan that - at least at its high points, and they were many - deserved to be called exceptional.
o0o
As the band leaps energetically into the opening chords of ‘Roving Gambler’, with Dylan’s vocal coming in loud and clear (the acoustics are excellent), everything slots into place from the first minutes. The gambler’s tale of love and woe builds up neatly-paced to its dramatic climax, and Bob unassumingly pays his dues to the folk tradition, kicking off proceedings with a song that bears neither his own signature nor anyone else’s (in Florence two nights later, similarly, he started off with ‘Duncan and Brady’). Actually, our friend the Roving Gambler will make a second appearance tonight, out on a road called Highway 61, but let’s not anticipate too much, for Bob most certainly hasn’t gambled his last game yet ...
Next up is ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’, taken at a brisk rhythm, with Bob clearly audible and in full control of his material, as he will remain throughout the evening. This song, more than most from the early days, can easily risk sounding like a museum-piece, an embalmed relic from a long-lost era that some dimly remember as the 1960s, but tonight the sudden shift in tone of Dylan’s vocal, from nostalgic regret to embittered snarl, right on the word ‘changin’’ at the end of every stanza, adds a dose of irony and keeps the experience a live one. And then, almost without a break, it’s into the next number: my friends, we regret to announce that the times haven’t changed after all, they’re selling postcards of the hanging, and here we are on Desolation Row in 1965 (or is it George W. Bush’s Death Row, Texas, 35 years later?). Bob parades his dream-gallery of anguished characters before our ears and our imagination, with a felt clarity that marks one of the highlights of the performance. I never much enjoy him deleting stanzas from what I believe is one of the half-dozen greatest of all his songs, but this time round we get 70%: no Dr Filth, no agents and superhuman crew, no Titanic, but, by way of compensation and appropriately enough for the Italian setting, the rarely-sung Casanova stanza, as well as the often-skipped Einstein verse. The world has become very, very dark by the time the broken door-knob fades into oblivion and ‘Desolation Row’ gives way to the opening chords of ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’. Dylan and the band deliver this much-loved song in a straightforward country-rock rendering, fairly close to the original but with an added yearning edge.
So we strike another match and start anew, to find that ... it’s early one morning, the sun is shining, and, yes, here comes another ‘Tangled Up In Blue’! The band takes the song at a brisk but not over-fast pace, with the fine ringing mandolin keeping up the country-rock atmosphere, and Bob unfolds his ever-renewed epic of the unending search. Stanza three is missing this time, but it’s a wonderful moment when Bob enunciates stanza four, right here in Italy. In tonight’s variant, this stanza’s key lines run: ‘Then she opened up a book of poems, and read it to me, Written by some Italian poet from the thirteenth century’. Whether the ‘Italian poet’ is Dante (as I believe), or Petrarch, or Cavalcanti, it’s been worth coming halfway across Europe just to hear those two lines, sung live here in Italy, by a Jewish-American poet from the twentieth - and, now, the twenty-first - century. And then it’s on to the last number in the acoustic set. It proves to be ‘To Ramona’ - no anticlimax, enriched with the full ‘cracked country’ treatment, rippling, sensual mandolin and an affectionate, caressing delivery straight from the lips of the song’s author. Magnetic movements capture the minutes we’re in ...
The C & W feel created with ‘To Ramona’ was no accident, for the next number is none other than ‘Country Pie’, one of the two tracks dusted down by Dylan from the ‘Nashville Skyline’ album for this round of the Never Ending Tour. One of the most joyful songs in Bob’s catalogue, it gets the full hoe-down treatment, performed with a foot-tapping bonhomie that curiously recalls Fairport Convention’s excellent, if little-known, live version from 1982. Hard on its heels comes its companion piece, ‘Tell Me That Isn’t True’, taken at a slightly faster pace than on ‘Nashville Skyline’ and performed with a throaty eloquence that serves to remind us that if Dylan has been covered (and finely) by the likes of Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash and Garth Brooks it’s no accident. And, lest we forget, neither of these two 1969 numbers had ever been performed live by Dylan until the current tour: it’s been worth the three-decade wait.
Now it’s time to step back one more year, to the ‘John Wesley Harding’ album and its brooding sense of crisis: the atmosphere turns electric, literally and figuratively, with the jagged chords of ‘All Along the Watchtower’. And a superb version it turns out to be: tonight, Dylan and companions create an electric rendering of ‘Watchtower’ that, Lord have mercy, does not sound like that over-familiar, oft-imitated Jimi Hendrix version. Instead of an instrumental break between stanzas two and three, we’re regaled with swift, searing guitar licks between one and two and two and three, a strategy that builds up a mounting tension that fits perfectly with the song’s feel of foreboding (‘Drifter’s Escape’, from the same album, benefited from a similar treatment in Florence). By the time Bob delivers that foreboding line ‘the wind began to howl’, we’re deep inside a dark universe of bleak, unremitting fatality, caught in a circular trap that no-one can get any release from ...
The mood of crisis is superbly sustained with the next song, ‘Not Dark Yet’: after the howling wind, falling shadows. The frenetic anxiety of ‘Watchtower’ gives way to a slow and stately melancholy, but the darkness and the menace remain. The 1997 song is delivered much as on ‘Time Out of Mind’, but the electric edge is a shade harder: Dylan lingers on the syllables, quiet, contemplative, like a man rubbing his eyes, caught between bravado and disbelief at the spectacle of his life in ruins. The synchrony between Dylan and the musicians is perfect, the performance poised and self-confident, with a survivor’s defiance seeping through the elongated drawl at the end of each verse. It’s not dark yet, but it sure is getting there.
And now - the high point of the concert: we’re still in 1997, and a crackling, searing, hyper-electric rendition of ‘Cold Irons Bound’ leaps out of the darkness like a hissing cat. This song was already impressive on ‘Time Out Of Mind’ and in the official live version on the ‘Love Sick’ single; tonight it’s several notches higher on the intensity meter, quite simply electrifying. As on the live single version, the five verses are compressed into four (the first half of stanza four and the second half of stanza five are portmanteaued into one), and, in this case, the song actually gains from the greater brevity, as if the emotional pain could only be stretched out so far. The guitars flicker and flare, exploding in the pauses between the lines, crashing like thunder after each ‘twenty miles out of town’ and each ‘cold irons bound’. ‘The winds in Chicago/Have torn me to shreds’: the world seems about to collapse from the double weight of chaos without and despair within.
Next, as if the intensity wasn’t enough, the band bursts into the familiar, fast chords of ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, and now we’re twenty miles out of town and Highway 61 bound. The 1965 epic is done in the manner that suits it best, as a full-tilt electric blues, with a fearsome guitar break before the last stanza and the satanic triumph of the Roving Gambler (yes, here he is again!). On the way, Georgia Sam’s complaint against the authorities - ‘Welfare department wouldn’t give him no clothes’ - reminds us that this is still very much a live song. The times haven’t changed, the ship didn’t come in, they’re selling postcards of the hanging once again, and across Uncle Sam’s fair land the anti-welfare free-market fundamentalists are turning thousands of our avuncular friend’s Georgia namesakes on to the street. The song burns itself out in the ashes of the next world war, and as the spiked guitars fade we realise all over again just how great an electric blues Bob Dylan can play when he wants to.
Now time slows down, and begins to crawl. New and threatening chords ring out, and it feels like some unnameable animal as smooth as glass is slithering its way through the auditorium. It’s ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’, and Dylan spits out the vocals much as on the 1965 version, going for the jugular with unerring accuracy. After the sustained power of the last four numbers, the tension lowers a little, and we can laugh at Bob’s humour, at the absurd spectacle of Mr Jones staring at the sword-swallower. As the professors’ ex-crony is finally consigned to outer darkness, we notice that the last pre-refrain lines of the final verse have been cunningly changed to something like ‘And next time, at least/Do please telephone’, a comic improvement on the original ‘earphones’ conceit.
Another stately intro rings out, and, yes, we’re still in 1965 and it’s time for ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. This is a sign that the evening is moving towards its close - we’re on song number 14 already. The audience goes wild on the chorus, and Bob handles the lyrics with all the required venom. Stanza three is missed out, but the Mystery Tramp and Napoleon In Rags duly appear in the theatre of our minds, and then are gone. Next, a swift change of atmosphere: we switch back into country-rock mode, the mandolin shimmers and, suddenly, it’s ‘One Too Many Mornings’ and we’re all a thousand miles behind. Dylan delivers his beautiful 1964 lament in tones of nostalgic regret, and this quiet, careful arrangement suits the song far better than the harsh electric treatment imposed on it on ‘Live ‘66’. And then it’s time for the second cover version of the night, no less a song than ‘Not Fade Away’. Sections of the audience seem surprised by this one, but they recognise the Buddy Holly classic: Dylan and the band hand it down with supreme self-confidence and a rapid grace that matches the original (and far outshines the tepid Rolling Stones version). The eternal flame motif burns on into ‘Forever Young’, offered in a relaxed country-rock interpretation; then it’s the inevitable ‘Rainy Day Women Nos. 12 and 35’; and finally Bob delivers the last encore with - let no-one be surprised - ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’.
It’s a fitting end to a remarkable evening. The most famous of all Bob Dylan’s songs is now 38 years old, but tonight it comes across as no mere old chestnut. The revulsion from war and violence, the unanswered repeated questions, convince all over again. The audience intones the refrain as if they’d heard it in the cradle (and no doubt some did); the performance ends with a great question mark hanging in the air. How many times has Bob sung this song? And yet, and yet, how many deaths will it take till they know that too many people have died? Tonight we’ve visited Desolation Row, we’ve felt the revolution in the air on Montague Street, we’ve met Mr Jones and survived the encounter; and, at the concert’s extraordinary electric peak, we’ve stared chaos in the face, through that remarkable quartet of ‘Watchtower’, ‘Not Dark Yet’, ‘Cold Irons Bound’ and ‘Highway 61’. As the last notes of the anthem from ‘62 disappear into the wind, Dylan leaves the stage. But he’s still there in our hearts and minds, still throwing out those unending questions - still standing up to meet us on our crossroads and challenge us, if we dare, to discover the answer, if it exists, somewhere down the road some day ...
Chris Rollason
download this file here or back to list
Still on the Road: Review of ‘The Best of Bob Dylan Volume 2’
‘The Best of Bob Dylan Volume 2’, 2000, Columbia 498361 9; standard edition = 1 CD - 17 tracks, 77:24; special limited edition (Europe only) = 2 CDs (2nd CD - 2 tracks, 18:28)
At the very least, this compilation has the merit of being the very first Bob Dylan album of the twenty-first century - though not quite his first release of the new century, as it was preceded by the ‘Things Have Changed’ single. It is that song that opens the new album, in its full 5:08 version, rather than the shortened ‘radio edit’ cut of the single. After that, the remaining 16 tracks on the main CD are arranged in strictly chronological order, from 1963 (‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’) all the way to 1997 (‘Not Dark Yet’). Apart from ‘Things Have Changed’, the only other track previously unavailable on album is a ‘new’ incarnation of ‘Dignity’, namely the 1989 outtake version from the ‘Oh Mercy’ sessions. However, European purchasers only have, at least for a limited period, had the chance to acquire a special 2-CD version, conceived no doubt to tie in with Dylan’s 2000 European tour.
The second CD includes two live tracks - ‘Highlands’ and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ - with (thank you, Columbia!) no information as to when or where they were performed. Of these two, if ‘Blowin in the Wind’ is perfectly decent (taken in folkish mode, mandolin and all), ‘Highlands’ is outstanding. This live rendition clocks in at only 11:18 compared with 16:32 on ‘Time Out of Mind’, but the song is effectively all there - a couple of lines from stanza 2 have disappeared, one or two verses have been rearranged and there are a fair number of minor lyric changes, but to all intents and purposes Dylan gives us the whole thing, in a faster delivery than on the original but with its revivalist talking-blues atmosphere intact (‘I’m talking to myself in a monologue’). The audience responds excitedly throughout, and goes wild on the line ‘I’m listening to Neil Young’. All in all, the second CD, which will no doubt become a rare collector’s item, is of much more than completist interest.
o0o
The comments that now follow apply only to the full-length CD 1.
o0o
This is, of course, the second in the ‘Best Of’ series, following on from the first volume released in 1997. It is also, on my count, the sixth general-release Dylan compilation made up wholly-or-mostly of previously-released material (I include on that list, as well as the two ‘Best Ofs’, the three volumes of ‘Greatest Hits’, as well as ‘Biograph’ - which was about two-thirds previously-issued tracks - but exclude ‘The Bootleg Series’, which was 100% ‘rare and unreleased’, as well as ‘Masterpieces’, which was released only in Japan and Australasia, and the recent, Sweden-only ‘The Very Best of Bob Dylan’). Logically enough, it includes nothing that was on the first ‘Best Of’, but, equally logically, it does repeat many of the selections from earlier compilations. Four ‘old’ songs, however, appear on a general-release compilation for the first-ever time - though one of them, ‘Not Dark Yet’, could, as a track from late 1997, by definition not have appeared before in any anthology. The other three are ‘Simple Twist of Fate’, ‘License to Kill’ and - strange but true! - ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ (though we may note that all three have been performed on official live albums). ‘Highway 61’ also sounds as if it has been remastered, while the 7:05 version of ‘Changing of the Guards’ is definitely the one from the 1999 remaster of ‘Street-Legal’, with the lengthened organ break at the end.
The new anthology is generally a fair and representative overview of Dylan’s career, and with a running time of 77:24 it certainly offers value for money, but the packaging leaves much to be desired. The five photographs included are all acceptable enough, but the track listing contains some material errors. ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ is misspelt as ‘Subterannean [sic] Homesick Blues’ on both back cover and inner sleeve (a mistake not present on the ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ packaging); and ‘Quinn the Eskimo’ (included in the Isle of Wight live version) is claimed to have first appeared on ‘Greatest Hits’ in 1971, whereas of course this version was originally released on ‘Self Portrait’ in 1970. There is no mention of the joint Dylan/Levy writing credit for ‘Hurricane’, nor of the Dylan/Hunter credit for ‘Silvio’ - so less-informed buyers will be given the false impression that Dylan, not Robert Hunter, wrote the words to the latter song. Many more informed listeners will feel that work as good as Bob’s Dylan deserves rather higher standards of attention to detail.
If we examine the song selection, excluding the two ‘new’ items, we will find that the 15 ‘old’ tracks have been drawn from 13 substantive albums (i.e. non-live, non-compilation albums), assuming that we correctly reattribute ‘Quinn the Eskimo’ to ‘Self Portrait’, while ‘Positively 4th Street’, which first saw the light of day as a single, had its album debut on the US version of the first ‘Greatest Hits’. The sole album represented by more than one track is ‘Blonde on Blonde’, which supplies ‘Rainy Day Women #12 and #35’ and ‘I Want You’. No live albums are represented, though of course ‘Quinn’ is a live recording. The substantive albums represented on the first ‘Best Of’ but not on this volume are: ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’, ‘Nashville Skyline’, ‘New Morning’, ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid’ ‘Planet Waves’, ‘Slow Train Coming’ and ‘Oh Mercy’ (though that album’s existence is signalled by the sourcing of ‘Dignity’ as an outtake from its sessions). Conversely, ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan’, ‘Self Portrait’, ‘Street-Legal’, ‘Down in the Groove’ (yes, really!) and (by definition) ‘Time Out Of Mind’ are represented on this collection but not on its predecessor. The albums that contribute tracks to both ‘Best Ofs’ form a more or less predictable list: ‘The Free-Wheelin’ Bob Dylan’, ‘Bringing It All Back Home’, ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, ‘Blonde on Blonde’, ‘John Wesley Harding’, ‘Blood on the Tracks’, ‘Desire’ and ‘Infidels’ (the last-named being the only slight surprise). The two anthologies together feature songs first included on a total of 20 substantive albums plus the three Greatest Hits collections (apart from ‘Positively 4th Street’, ‘I Shall Be Released’ on the first ‘Best Of’ is in the ‘Greatest Hits II’ version, and ‘Dignity’, on the new compilation, first came to light, albeit in a different take, on ‘Greatest Hits III’). The studio albums present on neither compilation are: ‘Bob Dylan’, ‘Dylan (A Fool Such As I’), ‘Saved’, ‘Shot of Love’, ‘Empire Burlesque’, ‘Knocked Out Loaded’, ‘The Bootleg Series vols. 1-3’, ‘Under the Red Sky’, ‘Good As I Been To You’ and ‘World Gone Wrong’; also absent are ‘The Basement Tapes’, though between them the ‘Best Ofs’ feature two basement-era songs.
As for the actual track selection on this new ‘Best Of Volume 2’, it is largely unexceptionable, if not terribly adventurous. Most of the many facets of Bob’s career are documented, although there is nothing from the religious period and no trace of his return to acoustic roots in the mid-90s. The more obvious omissions from Volume 1 - ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’, ‘Positively 4th Street’, ‘Hurricane’ - are remedied. To represent ‘Time Out Of Mind’ by ‘Not Dark Yet’, its best song, is right on target (a much better choice than, say, ‘Love Sick’ or ‘Make You Feel My Love’); and it is interesting to see the relatively obscure, but extremely fine, ‘Changing of the Guards’ featured on a compilation for the second time (after ‘Greatest Hits III’). It is gratifying to find ‘Simple Twist of Fate’ pushed upfront, while the promotion of ‘License to Kill’ to greatest-hit status, while surprising, has certainly induced this listener, at least, to think about revaluing that song. The tracks which I most miss are ‘Every Grain of Sand’, ‘Man in the Long Black Coat’ and ‘Blind Willie McTell’: any of those would have been an infinitely better choice than the featherweight ‘Silvio’ (which was already on ‘Greatest Hits III’ anyway).
This compilation is, however, obviously aimed, like its predecessor, at the general market, rather than at Dylan’s hardcore following - though the two ‘new’ tracks are, of course, there as the inevitable bait for the completists. Does the new anthology, in fact, have anything of interest to offer the already-converted, committed Dylan listener?
I would venture to suggest that the answer is yes. Firstly, the two ‘new’ tracks are both well worth having. ‘Things Have Changed’ is a fine brooding number with a mysterious old-time feel, which we may hope will reveal its fuller depths when Bob’s next album comes out. The out-take version of ‘Dignity’ is stripped of the insistent thud from the song’s ‘Greatest Hits III’ incarnation, which many listeners have found intrusive, and the lyrics can be heard more clearly.
Secondly, this is, by definition, a slightly less ‘obvious’ collection than the first ‘Best Of’, and I think long-standing Dylan fans do actually have something new to learn from the sequencing of the tracks and the way the songs on this CD speak to one another across the grooves. As in a Dylan live performance, the song selection allows individual lyrics to illuminate and cross-fertilise each other in surprising ways.
One way into this might be to consider ‘License To Kill’, as probably the least expected of all the inclusions. This song from 1983 should immediately strike the listener as highly contemporary, in the wake of the recent anti-gun campaigns in the US. The woman sitting on the block asking ‘Who’s going to take away his license to kill?’ will remind us of the ‘million moms against violence’ and similar treatments, while the lines ‘man is opposed to fair play/He wants it all and he wants it his way’, blowing the cover of Anglo-Saxon ‘moral superiority’, date from the Reagan era but are scarcely irrelevant to the post-Kosovo military climate. On this CD, this song points back to ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ (‘I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children’) and to ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ (‘Howard just pointed with his gun’) - and forward to ‘Dignity’ (‘Somebody got murdered on New Year’s Eve/Somebody said Dignity was the first to leave’) and to ‘Not Dark Yet’, which has a similar, disturbing rhyme on ‘eyes’ and ‘lies’. And ‘Not Dark Yet’ itself, coming straight after ‘Dignity’, suddenly takes on a new identity as a sequel to that song. ‘Dignity’ ends with the seeker standing by a lake, wondering which road to follow and how long it will take to find Dignity; ‘Not Dark Yet’ starts off: ‘Shadows are falling, and I’ve been here all day’, as if it were the same seeker there by the same lake, but now immobilised (‘feels like my soul has turned into steel’) and unable to carry on with the search, incapable of anything but accepting the darkness that, even so, hasn’t quite descended yet ...
So many roads, so much at stake: there are so many other enriching connections that can be made among the 17 songs on this compilation, but I believe it is now best to leave the listener to discover some more of them, and marvel all over again at the inexhaustibility of the creative vein of the composer-poet who might, just might (fingers crossed!) actually be awarded the first Literature Nobel of the new century ...
Christopher Rollason
download this file here or back to list
backaaapages: 1 2 3 4 5 aaanext
