Bob Dylan’s Aussie tour: first review
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Bobbing in the wind … Dylan pictured in 2012.
Source: News Corp Australia
SITTING in Perth’s Riverside Theatre with two Fremantle Docker fans, Bob Dylan’s first Australian concert for 2014 started out like the team’s 2001 season when they won two games: shaky and in for a mauling.
The hit-and-miss affairs of Mr Dylan’s concerts — where he either turns up and shows some interest, or turns up and doesn’t — is infamous. And the first song, Things Have Changed, taken from the soundtrack from the film Wonder Boys, carried an ominous line: “I used to care, but things have changed.”
Dressed like a frock-coated Hasidic gentleman under a Mississippi gambler’s hat, Mr Dylan’s second song, She Belongs To Me, from the 1965 album Bringing It All Back
Home, was delivered with such lack of interest that it felt certain we were about to have our pockets deftly picked.
At an average of $ 200 a seat, Mr Dylan is playing smaller venues on his 15 or so Australian dates. If the venues hold around three to four thousand people, these are half a million dollar nights for the 73-year-old artist, who tours so constantly he seems afraid of what might happen should he stop.
The mix was initially awful in the upper back of the theatre and all you could do was sit back and see if there was anything we could steal from him.
But then things did change. It was first noticeable in Workingman Blues #2, from the album Modern Times, which kind of helped explain what was going on here: despite appearances, it doesn’t come automatically for Mr Dylan, who needs to work hard each night to pull these concerts off.
From a previous concert tour … the guitar is no longer a fixture of Dylan’s concerts.
Source: News Limited
For half the evening he sat at a baby grand piano, and the other half stood without adornment at the microphone. He no longer plays guitar — arthritis of the hands is the common explanation — and so is without a prop to fiddle with or hide behind between songs.
After more than 40 years, he clearly has not gotten used to being stared at on stage.
When finishing a song while standing in front of the microphone, he stepped back, puts a hand on his hip and looked rather awkward and alone, despite the presence of his five-piece band.
Mr Dylan still hasn’t figured out how to deal with the attention, which is a rather charming frailty giving the alternative would be a slick self-certain showman doing it by rote.
The phrasing on songs such as Tangled Up In Blue and Simple Twist of Fate, both
from 1975’s Blood On The Tracks, is such that he’s chased the original melody away and found new ones.
This may be a disappointment to some but another way of looking at it is that if Mr Dylan turned up as the same repetitive hologram of himself, there would be no point in stepping out to see him.
Man and band … performing in Ho Chi Minh City in 2011. Picture: AFP PHOTO/HOANG DINH NAM
Source: AFP
Songs off more recent albums were much truer to the recordings but, if you have failed to keep up in the past 10 or 15 years, much of the 18-song set list will not be familiar to you.
For those who came late, there is still time to catch up and acquaint yourself with newer material prior to the eastern states dates. All set lists are published immediately after the shows on bobdylan.com, so you can do a crash course and — for instance — get to know the especially beautiful Scarlet Town, off 2012’s Tempest.
There is no folk, folk-rock, or rock ’n’ roll here. The music is more from the deeper south, being blues, citified country and the jaunty song-and-dance man style he has sometimes favoured of late.
The mindset to approach the gigs is to go not with an expectation of hearing a catalogue of greatest hits but to be in the presence of the most knowledgeable performance exponent of true Americana.
Early days … legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan on stage in Paris in 1966. Picture: AP
Source: Supplied
And, as you learn, once the mix settles down and the band quiets to let Mr Dylan sing his words very clearly, that he still does indeed care deeply for his craft, and his audience.
All Along The Watchtower and Blowin’ In The Wind ended the night, both quite gentle and lilting.
As one of my Docker buddies noted (with the season closing and the team sitting fourth on the ladder, they see everything via the football metaphor), Mr Dylan, after a shabby start, closed the night snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.
And some advice: the tickets say the concerts start at 8pm. Don’t dawdle. Mr Dylan
and his band were on stage at 8.05pm.
