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Live Review
by Shethwa Rutman
16-11-2003
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| Bob D.: Great songs, dubious shirt taste |
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Live: Bob Dylan
Wembley Arena, London
Saturday, November 15, 2003
Bob Dylan: live magic revisited
If art is simply a reflection of artist’s mood, then there’s never been a greater artisan than Bob Dylan. Never the greatest of singers, Bob Dylan’s shows depend on how he feels on a particular day [generally of cantankerous disposition, as the rocklore has it] that would determine whether his voice is going to work on the night. There have been good and very bad days, and we were [un]fortunate to have witnessed both. Tonight, Lady Luck favours us as is the turn of a good ‘un and he sounds as a man who really made art out of a non-singing technique.
That‘s Bob, on a long road stretch known as ‘The Never-ending Tour’, well - since about 1976! Maybe it was an attempt to create atmosphere inside the soulless concrete bowl that is Wembley Arena, but Dylan decided against his usual low-key entrance. No, he didn’t try to emulate Beyonce or Britney by being suspended by feet but his arrival was accompanied by a Western theme tune, and a PA hailing “the voice of 1960s counter-culture.”
A rollicking, hard-edged ‘Maggie’s Farm’ was a fine start but it seems, at 62, ‘Big Bob’ now needs time to warm up. An attempt to recast the 1965 classic ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ as a country honky-tonk didn’t work, and a lumpen heavy rock ’Cry A While’ was worse. But the rest found him in a much more expressive and agreeable mood.
Thankfully 1960s signature tune ‘Desolution Row’ was full of subtlety, while folk standard ‘It’s Alright Ma’ became a swaggering delta-blues stomp. The line “Even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked”, was met by loud cheers. Time may a-change and, for its original target, Lyndon B. Johnston and the Vietnam war, read - George W. Bush and Iraqi war and peace.
The Wembley Arena audience, a fairly mature bunch, lapped it up. Bob’s fans always do, and they have been served worse by the old groaner down the years. That’s the appeal of a true gig, no backing tapes, no bullshit - bar alles naturlich. The fact that Dylan is still performing at all, let alone in relatively good voice and so much gusto, is enough. Still, where is a successor, where are the pretenders? The subsequent generations appear to have given up on the reality plot…
An affecting ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, ‘Things Have Changed’ and ’Highway 61 Revisited’ were a bonus. A moving version of the searing protest song ‘The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll’ was another highlight. So were the encores - the mighty ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and an electric and electrifying ‘All Along The Watchtower’.
He may be approaching the legal age of retirement but Dylan still sounds more vital than most rock stars a third of his age. That is the greatness not many of contemporary stars will ever be afforded in the industry because no-one will ever be able to define - criticise - shape its time as much as Mr Zimmerman.
Shethwa Rutman
16-11-2003
Bob Dylan’s soundtrack to ‘Masked & Anonymous’ is available now on Columbia
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