bob dylan european tour 2022 review

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Bob Dylan review – troubadour turns piano man for a sublime bluesy night

Palladium, London The Nobel prize winner’s keyboard mastery is to the fore as he and a superb band showcase his 2020 album Rough and Rowdy Ways

T hings aren’t what they were, as Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways tour posters note. But inside this plush maroon theatre, Dylan’s first night of four in London manages to conjure up a classy yesteryear that’s near as dammit to timeless: no photographers, phones in Faraday pouches, decorative house lights eking out a few warm watts, everyone rapt – a hush that’s interrupted by a lusty cheer when, on I Contain Multitudes , Dylan name checks “them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones”. (Another mentionee, William Blake, gets a lone “Yeah!”)

For most of the gig, Dylan himself remains obscured by an upright piano, the kind that normally backs on to a wall. Amusingly, the business end of this piano is the best-lit element on this low-lit stage. But perhaps that’s fitting, given that the singer’s piano playing turns out to be one of the crowning glories of this very special night.

Dylan’s solos flow luxuriantly, from the rippling coda of an old-timey Watching the River Flow to some emphatic honky-tonk attacks on the much newer False Prophet. Crossing the Rubicon , a sedate prowl, considerably ups its stakes when he cuts loose on the keys.

Surrounding Dylan, leaning in like heliotropes, are three guitarists playing electric, acoustic, lap steel, mandolin and fiddle (the latter three are by Donnie Herron, and not all at the same time). Longtime electric upright bassist Tony Garnier plucks away next to newbie Charley Drayton, a loose and bouncy drummer who seems to make contact with his kit via anything but wooden sticks. The transitions between the songs are jazzy and fantasia-like, as though each cut played is conjured afresh out of a shimmering ether.

The set list remains largely unvaried from that which has crossed Europe and the States. It focuses on Dylan’s 2020 album, Rough and Rowdy Ways , a late career banger about western civilisation that crystallises why a man who indulged in not just one, but three Frank Sinatra covers albums in the last decade, might not only still be relevant, but deserving of a Nobel prize for literature. He’s got a book out imminently – The Philosophy of Modern Song – in which Dylan deconstructs a number of other people’s tracks.

And while tonight’s cuts aren’t rowdy exactly – “rough and rowdy ways” refers more to humankind’s manners – you often wish this venue was not seated, so feline are the strutting blues cuts. This is a tremendous band that deserves movement. To the many walking blues, add the upbeat train-rhythm shimmies of That Old Black Magic , a standard favoured by Sinatra. Dylan himself occasionally shuffles to centre stage to acknowledge the applause for a moment. It’s only then you remember his 81 years.

Were Dylan not Dylan – a foundational master of modern song with a long history of sphinx-like performances, a vocalist whose authority does not rest on the prettiness of his pipes – the singer’s eloquent keys might appear like a stand-in for his infamously chewy vocal delivery. His lyrics, many of them cryptic crossword clues, come out in mannered rushes tonight. But crucially, there’s an air of playfulness here – testament to Dylan actually being in a very good mood.

Dylan mangling Dylan is, after all, peak Dylan. So the freewheeling way in which he offers up Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine) , with big pregnant pauses, just serves to highlight different aspects of this gimlet-eyed romantic cross-examination from 1966.

I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight is instantly recognisable, even though it’s first deconstructed into daubs of sound from the players, then turned into rock’n’roll, then resolved into a vampy blues.

You often can’t make out Dylan’s asides between tunes, but there are quite a few. At one point he wonders whether the Palladium is where John Lennon invited the better-off to “rattle their jewellery” at a Beatles royal variety performance in 1963 . (It wasn’t.)

Out of this peerless music, some audible words do crystallise. Rough and Rowdy Ways is a tremendous collage of erudite references to culture high and low, a survey of human greatness and frailty often delivered as a series of knowing winks. It’s about the human condition; it’s probably quite autobiographical too.

Dylan chooses to enunciate bits of it here and there. “Open your mouth, I’ll stuff it with gold,” he spits on False Prophet , with the contempt of the folk singer of old. We get to hear a lot of Key West , with one mischievous bit standing out, thought to be about this famous Christian’s Jewish heritage: “She’s still cute and we’re still friends.”

A rollicking rendition of Gotta Serve Somebody , meanwhile, finds Dylan laying down a stark choice: if you’re not serving God, you’re serving the devil. On the strength of these tunes, you’d be tempted to conclude the latter. It all ends on a triumphant blast of mouth organ on Every Grain of Sand . It’s another fanfare blast from Dylan’s past that nails on his importance here and now.

Bob Dylan tours the UK and Ireland until 7 November

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Bob Dylan Lets New Material Dominate Dark But Playful SoCal Shows: Concert Review

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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A funny thing happened at Bob Dylan ‘s concert at the Terrace Theatre in Long Beach: It got dark… really dark. But only on stage; out in the auditorium, the house lights stayed up, dimmed just a little, for the whole show. That was a first, for most of us, even with thousands of concerts under our belts. Was it an accommodation for latecomers, as seemed likely at first? (Nowadays, Dylan goes on right at 8:05, and if you’re running over from the merch line, you won’t be seated till the next set break.) No, they never did go down, and when some audience members who considered this a vibe-kill asked ushers what was up, they were told it was at the request of the artist.

Reports indicated the same thing had happened at the prior tour stop in San Diego. Did this have something to do with making sure no one was covertly filming the show, right after some footage had leaked out from a previous date, despite attendees being required to lock phones up in Yondr pouches at every date? Or did Dylan just decide that some of the recent material that dominates the show is so thematically dark that timid crowds could benefit from, you know, a night light? Not for the first time in a 60-year career, some decisions may remain impenetrable.

The irony — and you’d have to think it was an intentional one — was that the stage itself was dimmer than any other spot in the 3,000-seat Terrace. The way this “Rough and Rowdy Ways” tour (which started on the east coast last fall) has been set up, Dylan starts the show completely in the shadows, playing electric guitar alongside his band for the only time all night, before he steps over and stands upright at a barely illuminated piano, where he’ll spend the remainder of the night. At center stage, guitarists Bob Britt and Doug Lancio get the most lighting, while Dylan gets about the same voltage as drummer Charley Drayton, bassist Tony Garnier and pedal steel player Donnie Herron, also off to the side. Every few song breaks, Dylan will step into what passes for a spotlight in the middle of the stage, striking a pose as he takes in the applause, daring you to decide whether he looks more like a lover or a fighter. And then it’s back to his position at the practically candlelit keys.

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Eventually, maybe, with the house lights up, there may be some kind of metaphor to embrace here: Bob Dylan can see us better than we can see him.

Heavy, right? Go ahead, take a moment to soak the profundity in.

Even if the wattage varies when Dylan comes to your town, the music itself could be described as impressionistic, with band arrangements that rarely draw attention to any one player at a time, and all of them improvising to the extent that 12-bar blues allow it, except for maybe standup bassist Garnier (the longest-standing member of Dylan’s touring unit, having put in 30-plus years), who more than anyone is the anchor of the whole thing. Of course the improviser-in-chief is Dylan, whose piano parts can can straddle the fine line between being a little oddball and deeply lovely, and who is not likely to sing the same line the same way twice in back to back shows, but who seems to reinvent his own language on a nightly basis out of craving exploration, not curing boredom, treating his voice like the fine jazz instrument it is.

Dylan is emphasizing a new album on tour for maybe the first time since his gospel era of 1979-80 (when, of course, for a period he played only new material, having fleetingly forsaken the secular). “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” released two years ago, makes up slightly more than 50% of the set, accounting for nine out of 17 selections. And by and large those picks haven’t changed from night to night, which is another difference from almost all previous Dylan touring, when the idea of a setlist set in stone would have seemed like anathema to the Deadhead-like fans following him from show to show. Anecdotal evidence picked up by talking to folks at the Terrace indicates that he still has a bunch of those nightly followers — and that, surprisingly, they don’t even seem let down that the rundown of songs is unvarying each night. They were overjoyed in the last couple of weeks when, for a few shows starting in San Francisco, Dylan replaced this tour’s usual show-closer, “Every Grain of Sand,” with a less heavenly cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil.” But by Long Beach, “Grain” had been restored, and the show was locked in again. No matter. If these repeat customers are guaranteed not to get a wild-card song selection most nights, they have the sense that every moment feels like a wild card.

“Rough and Rowdy Ways” itself is a deeply impressionistic — read: mysterious — album despite being jam-packed with more specific lyrical details than have ever been crammed into a single Dylan record in his career, it’s still a puzzle to figure out how (or if) they all fit together. So if you want to go beyond just enjoying the mere melodic playfulness of Dylan’s line readings, you can entertain yourself during the show by wondering if the different spin he puts on thing imparts any additional clues about where he’s coming from, given that the songs can even seem self-contradictory. When he’s performing something like “Crossing the Rubicon” live, does he mean to present himself as the seeker who sings something as gentle as “I feel the Holy Spirit inside / See the light that freedom gives”? Or the violent miscreant who moments earlier was threatening to “cut you up with a crooked knife”? (In Dylan’s multiverse, maybe even the Holy Spirit has a penchant for murder most foul.)

Of the eight oldies that fill out the current setlist, only “Gotta Serve Somebody” is a man-on-the-street-famous “hit,” although picks like “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece” are enough to send the patron with even a passing knowledge of catalog favorites home happy. It has been supposed by some writers covering earlier gigs on the tour that he has avoided galvanizing barn-burners like “Highway 61” because he doesn’t want them to overshadow the new material. If that’s true — and it probably is — it’s not necessarily paramount to dialing the energy on the oldies down so as to falsely elevate the mostly mellow newbies. It’s more that there’s a brilliant quality to the way this set has been designed for the songs to loosely be of a piece, a throughline that would be spoiled if “Subterranean Homesick Blues” suddenly popped in.

There, I said it: “Like a Rolling Stone” would have been an absolute buzz-kill in this show. Thank you, Bob, for denying it to us.

It’s almost comical to compare what Dylan is doing at 81 with what Paul McCartney has been doing in stadium shows just on the cusp of 80. One’s a people-pleaser, and the other is a walking Rorschach test, or hall of mirrors. But they’re putting on what may be the two most reliably great shows of 2022, despite flying or bussing in from opposite ends of the solar system. You don’t want McCartney to act his age, but to defy it. On the other hand, it’s fantastic that Dylan is putting on what absolutely amounts to a rock ‘n’ roll show where nonetheless you can believe how old he is, because the depth of his performance is heightened by our awareness of the years he’s logged, which add to the palpable mythos that’s already there in the music. The barely death-defying danger of “Crossing the Rubicon,” or the fountain-of-youth giddiness of “Coming Up” — listen, it’s OK to want both from our favorite octogenarians.

You’re wondering how well he’s singing these days? Well, about as wonderfully as he has in the 21st century, as long as you’re not expecting to hear his “Lay Lady Lay” or even “Slow Train” voice. It’s the voice of ravaged experience — but he sounds pretty , at times, too. (Credit, if you will, the three albums he devoted to covering Frank Sinatra-era standards, one of which, “Melancholy Mood,” shows up late in this setlist.) His voice spins on a time from gentle coddling to the suggestion of fury — and good humor, too. This is a tour where he may actually catch him laughing, as he did in Long Beach at the end of “Masterpiece,” as if he or the band had just told a good joke. There’s enough clarity in his singing these days that the Long Beach audience was there with audible responses to certain lines, like applause during “I Contain Multitudes” for the mention of “them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones.” (Even “The size of your cock will get you nowhere,” from the otherwise doom-laden “Black Rider,” got a murmuring chuckle.)

The most recent material was mostly rendered somewhat faithfully to the “Rough and Rowdy” album versions — with the exception of “Key West,” which from all accounts has gotten a few different arrangements on the tour, and which was getting yet another completely different one Monday, faithful fans reported. Of the old stuff… yeah, it’s not going to sound like the record, but you knew that. In true “Never Ending Tour” fashion, “Gotta Serve Somebody” didn’t get a big round of applause till the chorus kicked in, so unfamiliar did it sound, with the first verse rendered practically a cappella as the two guitarists added a few stingers for good set-up measure. (Lyric changes were to be had there, not all of them easy to make out.) “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” had what amounted to a new — and satisfying! — melody and rhythm, even before its fast pace slowed to a crawl for a half-time finale. “Every Grain of Sand” didn’t depart greatly from its waltz tempo in closing the show, but Dylan added a new piano riff as counterpoint midway through.

The big takeaway from this show, and likely every one on the tour: At 81, Dylan is acting his somber age, and yet, in his fashion, deep at play in the fields of the Lord. As far as these gigs are concerned, even with the near-blackout on stage allowing Dylan to let the mystery be, it’s not dark yet. It’s not even getting there.

Bob Dylan’s “Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour” setlist:

1. Watching The River Flow 2. Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine) 3. I Contain Multitudes 4. False Prophet 5. When I Paint My Masterpiece 6. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight 7. Black Rider 8. My Own Version of You 9. Crossing The Rubicon 10. To Be Alone With You 11. Key West (Philosopher Pirate) 12. Gotta Serve Somebody 13. I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You 14. Melancholy Mood 15. Mother of Muses 16. Goodbye Jimmy Reed 17. Every Grain of Sand

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Live music, reviews and opinion / est. 2018, bob dylan – london palladium: live review.

Bob Dylan – London Palladium – 19th October, 2022

Things aren’t as they were.

As myself and others loiter around near the very public stage door of The London Palladium, hoping to get a quick glimpse of the enigmatic troubadour entering the iconic venue, there is a great sense of expectation building for what should be a memorable show; which is part of Bob Dylan’s first European tour since 2018 and his first night in the UK. As other band members, including ‘Musical Director’ Tony Garnier come and go freely, there is a distinct absence of Bob Dylan, who we are later told is already in the venue; whether this is true or not remains a mystery to me.

At the front of the venue there are multiple large queues taking up the entirety of Argyll Street, culminating at the entry of the London Palladium in which the words ‘Things aren’t as they were’ are adorned on large neon signs, and ticket-holders are met with venue staff locking phones away in Yondr cases which will ensure a ‘phone free experience’.

I arrive – like many others subjected to the long queues – with only moments to spare before the show starts. Before summarising the show, it’s perhaps worth providing some context that this is my third time seeing Dylan: firstly I saw him at Manchester Arena in 2005, which was a show that contained a broad variety of songs from his immense back catalogue. My second time of seeing Dylan was in Blackpool in 2013 and was a learning experience for me, in that the set-list was a lot more focused on his as-was latest album, Tempest, which at the time – much to my ignorance – I wasn’t overly familiar with, and I left the concert a little disappointed that there weren’t a few more fan favourites played. It was only years later when I came to fully appreciate Tempest, and realise how good of a show I had witnessed in Blackpool, and that Bob Dylan plays what he wants to play, and we should trust his judgement.

Although still a number of empty seats, the lights went down and the audience was able to see the silhouetted band members take to the stage before the lights came on – revealing a minimalist orange curtain as a backdrop and a white-lit floor – and the band went straight into 1971’s Watching The River Flow, followed by Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine), from legendary 1966 album Blonde On Blonde.

At this point, as the remaining crowd members took to their seats in in-between songs, you may – like me in 2013 – be forgiven for expecting, or indeed hoping for, a varied setlist befitting of one of the greatest, and long-standing, songwriters of all time, but instead Bob knows his strengths and refuses to go down the nostalgia act route (in contrast to the few peers he has), focusing most of his set on his outstanding 2020 album, Rough And Rowdy Ways, in which every song – with the exception of seventeen-minute epic Murder Most Foul – gets an outing, strictly following the setlist he has played throughout Europe.

Unlike in his heyday – depending on when you may consider that to be – it seems like Dylan no longer has the urge to tear up his setlist as he walks out to perform. As he says, things aren’t what they were.

Highlights from RoughAand Rowdy Ways are many: early album releases I Contain Multitudes and False Prophet get an early outing at the show, the macabre My Own Version Of You and Black Rider are nestled nicely between classics When I Paint my Masterpiece and a reworked I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight, and Goodbye Jimmy Reed is the penultimate song of the night. In picking from his back catalogue, Dylan is careful to choose well but avoids his all-time classics like Blowin’ In The Wind, All Along The Watchtower, Like A Rolling Stone, etc: I could drag this out, much like Dylan himself does with some of his songs, but you probably get the picture.

The show ends with a beautiful Every Grain Of Sand, from 1981’s Shot Of Love and gets the loudest cheer of the night when Dylan finally plays his harmonica, which has been otherwise absent. After the song concludes, Dylan shuffles out from behind his piano, for only the third time, to briefly accept his applause before leaving the stage and immediately jumping into a waiting taxi outside of the venue before the fans get chance to greet him.

If you were expecting all of the classics or Dylan of old – like those who protested his switch to electric back in the mid-60s or perhaps myself in Blackpool – then you may have left disappointed. If, like me, you now appreciate Bob Dylan for the artist that he currently is then you were treated to a celebration of one of the world’s greatest and most successful artists, a night of brilliant music and soulful singing, and emotion; who couldn’t be moved to see such an icon still performing so well – and being so relevant – at this stage of his life and career, despite some increasing frailty. The last of the best, you can bury the rest.

As Dylan continues to tour, and maybe not please all audience members, perhaps some things are still as they were.

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Review: A genius, of course, but a happy one? In concert, a generous Bob Dylan makes the case

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Meet Bob Dylan, crowd-pleaser.

“We played this song the other night, and we got a request to do it again,” the 81-year-old rock ’n’ roll icon said as he hit the home stretch of his deeply satisfying concert Tuesday night at Hollywood’s Pantages Theatre. “So we’re gonna do it again.”

The song was the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil,” which caused a commotion (first in the room, later on the internet) when Dylan sang it onstage last week in Oakland for the first time in 15 years. Had he read the breathless fan-site headlines? Perused the response on social media? Little about his legendarily idiosyncratic career suggests that he had.

Yet here he was, practically going all Paul McCartney in giving the people what they wanted. To finish the tune, Dylan even stood up from behind his piano, shuffled over to grab an electric guitar, then eased back down onto his bench to pick out a wild, unruly solo.

The capacity crowd erupted just as he seemed to know — seemed to hope? — it would.

Tuesday’s sold-out show was the first of three through Thursday at the Pantages on a West Coast tour behind 2020’s excellent “Rough and Rowdy Ways.” (Dylan also will stop next week at the Terrace Theater in Long Beach and at the Santa Barbara Bowl.) And, to be clear, the evening still bore traces of Dylan’s cantankerous streak: Cellphones had to be locked inside pouches; drinks weren’t allowed in the theater, nor were photographers; latecomers, including famous ones like Brad Pitt, had to wait in the lobby until a break between songs.

Imagine Rod Stewart making the same demands at his Tuesday gig just up the 101 Freeway at the Hollywood Bowl and you’ll get a sense of the uniquely privileged esteem Dylan enjoys compared to his classic-rock peers.

As a musical experience, though, this performance felt like nothing so much as a gift: a thoroughly engrossing 90-minute outpouring of pulpy juke-joint roots music and spectral folk-soul balladry, with Dylan in richly expressive voice and his bandmates accompanying him with an almost superhuman sensitivity.

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The stage was set like a dimly lit ballroom in “Twin Peaks”; in a further Lynchian touch, guitarists Bob Britt and Doug Lancio and pedal-steel player Donnie Herron — all slender white dudes with neatly cropped salt-and-pepper haircuts — looked nearly identical in the low light, which established a dreamy, semi-surreal vibe. On bass was Tony Garnier and on drums the subtle and funky Charley Drayton, a recent — and very shrewd — addition to Dylan’s live band.

True to its billing as part of the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, as opposed to the Never Ending Tour rubric Dylan used for decades before the pandemic temporarily forced him off the road, Tuesday’s show featured all but one of the 10 tracks from his latest LP. Beyond “Friend of the Devil,” the other oldies he played included “Watching the River Flow,” “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” “Gotta Serve Somebody” and a rollicking, extremely lascivious “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight.”

Which isn’t exactly crowd-pleasing protocol for an act touring his 39th studio album. But Dylan sounded so emotionally engaged in singing the new stuff that nobody even thought about tuning out while awaiting the hits.

He struck a moving, inquisitive tone in “Mother of Muses,” about the ways music and culture intertwine, as his guitarists’ long melodic lines unfolded around him. His voice was a ghoulish croak in the “Frankenstein”-like “My Own Version of You,” which Drayton gave such a lusty swing that a lady wearing one of those plastic bachelorette tiaras popped up from her seat near the front to do a few twirls.

“Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” got a completely different arrangement than on the album: a kind of dainty string-band riff on Pachelbel’s Canon that led Dylan into a gorgeous reverie in the guise of an old-timer searching for immortality. And then there was “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You,” the night’s most profound vocal performance. As he worried an obsessive piano lick, he kept stretching out the end of the song’s verses, pushing up seemingly as high as he could go before dropping down an octave or more to evoke a man who’s seen people destroy each other but who still believes in love.

Why so generous with his feelings? Dylan’s at a point in his life and career when the only awards and honors left are on the level of the Bob Dylan Center, a newly opened museum in Tulsa dedicated to him a la Graceland, and the reported $300 million payout he received last year for his songwriting catalog, which set a new standard for rock acts. He’s also got a book coming this fall described as “a master class on the art and craft of songwriting” — an indication, perhaps, that he’s been thinking through how best to preserve the raw materials of his titanic legacy.

But after a couple of years without audiences to confound, he gave the distinct impression at the Pantages that in his ninth decade it’s simply doing his soul some good to bring people joy.

Get it while it lasts.

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At 81, Bob Dylan is Still Full of Surprises: Live Review

Sort of like a Bob Dylan concert.

Even in this new era of Dylan concerts, where the setlist rarely varies from night to night, after many years when consecutive shows would yield several different songs (perhaps his loved ones intervened to insist on a standardized setlist, to make it easier on his octogenarian ass—the aging rocker’s equivalent of taking away dad’s car keys), there remains a sense of chaos, of anarchy, bubbling under the surface of Dylan’s performance. At times, despite being in full control of his accompaniment and arrangements, he still presents like an ornery mule trying to buck the band off his back.

Yet, rarely, in certain songs, he would seemingly choose to be well-behaved, reining in his knack for hitting off-notes on the keys, and making an extra effort to intone lyrics cogently. Still, that incipient chaos (or was it the threat of an imminent train wreck?) loomed, as his overwhelming aura of don’t-give-a-fuckness permeated the air above the stage.

Listen to “Every Grain of Sand” from another date on the tour

Yes: the keys. If you weren’t aware, one of the world’s most iconic figures-with-a-guitar has, for over a decade now, chosen to almost never brandish one onstage. Other than a few forays center-stage, where he wields a mic stand like a fighting stick, he’s mostly stayed behind the piano. Which is why the first surprise out of the gate in the opening “Watching the River Flow” was the silhouette of Dylan, all the way upstage—and, indeed, facing upstage, his back to the crowd—with axe strapped on, briefly mixing his own lines with those of the two other guitarists in the band, before sitting down at the piano to sing. It was the first time he’d done so since 2019.

Listen: Here’s a recording of Dylan playing guitar at the Portland show. (Ed. note: The sound quality is a bit dicey. We’re including it for historical reference.)

As for the piano, he approaches it with a seeming nod to the oblique style of (if nowhere near the actual ability of) Thelonious Monk. It’s far from the honky-tonk/boogie-woogie-derived style that once characterized his work on the instrument. When that type of outside-the-box playing is the defining element in a rock ’n’ roll band, it makes for a very odd overall sound. And this band really does sound like no other. They seem almost to hover around Dylan’s central presence, more a hive than a band.

Listen: Dylan performed the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil” at another stop on his current tour

Dylan seldom names his tours, but is so obviously enamored of his latest album that he’s insisted on labeling this jaunt the “Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour,” and dominating the setlist with all but one of its songs. Dylan, who these days is singing more clearly than at any time since perhaps his early folkie days, elicits laughs and cheers from audiences for specific witty turns of phrase in the new album’s songs. The idea of an audience being able to hear unfamiliar lyrics clearly enough as to elicit laughter, or any sort of reaction, is nothing short of miraculous, given the indifferent mumbling that too often defined Dylan’s vocal delivery in concert less than a decade ago.

Related: Dylan has a new book due this fall

It’s not just the clearer diction, though, but his recent lyrics themselves that seem to come across so well to listeners. He’s packed his verses with common turns of phrase, and stray lines from older songs, a practice that some might experience as clichés or marks of lazy writing. But watching him sing them, it becomes clear that he’s doing so as a conscious effort to “speak the people’s language,” rather than the language of a poet. He must love that feeling of connection with an audience, as they pick up what he’s putting down, which is why he’s so devoted to delivering these new songs onstage.

Highlights? “Gotta Serve Somebody,” which—despite beginning with guitarist Bob Britt switching to a Flying V and bassist Tony Garnier (also the musical director, who’s been backing Dylan now for an astonishing 33 years!) swapping the stand-up for an electric, indicating that some serious rocking might commence—started with several slow-burn verses delivered by Dylan almost unaccompanied, before the band ultimately kicked in and made good on that choice of instrumentation. “To Be Alone with You,” one of the numbers where Dylan was on his best behavior, given a nicely syncopated arrangement more delicate than the original. “Every Grain of Sand,” played in an appropriately reverent manner, and delivered by the composer as if reflecting on the lyrics from a distant height. “Melancholy Mood,” a perfectly pitched, if too-brief, Sinatra cover.

Watch Dylan perform “To Be Alone With You” at a 2021 concert

Among the new songs, “Black Rider” stood out, sung diffidently by Dylan from upstage center. (Even when he did emerge from behind the piano, he always remained all the way upstage, never approaching the audience, and doubtless frustrating those who’d paid good money to sit close, only to have their view of him blocked by the piano all night.) And “Mother of Muses,” which capably followed the Sinatra tune in an alliterative pairing.

The show didn’t necessarily inspire an emotional experience in this reviewer, but a delightful and fascinating one nonetheless. One can no longer really expect to commune with Dylan as a fellow human being, but rather to observe him as an increasingly distant, orbiting alien. We’re lucky to have had him in our solar system all these years. If this tour happens to be the last time we ever see him in the flesh, may he have a good trip home.

Listen to the entire concert from the Albuquerque stop on the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour

Tickets to see Dylan’s “Rough and Rowdy Ways” tour are available here  and here .

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4 Comments so far

Although I read the entire article, appreciated some viewpoints, my hair stood up on my arms at other times. I did like the arthritis joke, since my hands hurt at 70 years.

I couldn’t help but wonder if writer was a Dylan fan? An “earworm” bubbled up from the past in a Jerry Jeff Walker song. “…like some writer talkin’ to the wall…”

Saw Dylan again to see/hear his Masterpiece, “Rough and Rowdy Ways” tour in Eugene. We LOVE Bob Dylan his lyrics, style, element of surprise and HUS way.

Saw Dylan in Orlando last night, our 1st Dylan concert…. Disappointing to say the least! It was our first Dylan concert…. went with my wife and some friends. We wanted to see him in honor of my wife’s brother who pasted a few years ago (he loved Dylan) and couldn’t wait to hear the songs he loved in his memory. 20 minutes in….40 minutes in…..an hour….90 minutes, Dylan hadn’t performed “any” of his hits from the past? NOT EVEN ONE!!!???? How does a supposed Rock icon/ Hall of Famer leave out what got him there? I’ve never been to a Concert where the performer doesn’t play “any” of their hit songs, never, and I’ve been to several hundred concerts. Unfortunately and sadly, this was the most disappointing music performance we’ve ever witnessed. We spent hundreds $$ to get upfront seats, hoping to relive the memories of my brother in-law…. oh well. We’re not upset just truly disappointed. At the very end he played his harmonica, which I was surprised we hadn’t heard….. and 40 seconds later it was over….. even other people around me were like….wow… Sorry for the rant but want other people to know what to expect… Have a great day everyone!

It’s pretty well known that Dylan rarely performs his hits. If you’d Googled his recent setlists you would have seen that he mostly concentrates on recent material and only throws in about a half dozen old songs. His shows have been like this for many years now. Sorry you were disappointed in any case.

Yowie. I’m going on Thursday. Didn’t know about him not playing his hits. I’m already disappointed.

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• October 5, 2022 Setlist

Bob Dylan Setlist at Verti Music Hall, Berlin, Germany

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Tour: Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour statistics Add setlist

• Watching the River Flow Play Video
• Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine Play Video
• I Contain Multitudes Play Video
• False Prophet Play Video
• When I Paint My Masterpiece Play Video
• Black Rider Play Video
• My Own Version of You Play Video
• I'll Be Your Baby Tonight Play Video
• Crossing the Rubicon Play Video
• To Be Alone With You Play Video
• Key West (Philosopher Pirate) Play Video
• Gotta Serve Somebody Play Video
• I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You Play Video
• That Old Black Magic ( Johnny Mercer  cover) Play Video
• Mother of Muses Play Video
• Goodbye Jimmy Reed Play Video
• Every Grain of Sand Play Video

Edits and Comments

2 activities (last edit by DoubleU , 6 Oct 2022, 09:05 Etc/UTC )

Songs on Albums

• Black Rider
• Crossing the Rubicon
• False Prophet
• Goodbye Jimmy Reed
• I Contain Multitudes
• I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You
• Key West (Philosopher Pirate)
• Mother of Muses
• My Own Version of You
• Watching the River Flow
• When I Paint My Masterpiece
• Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine
• I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
• To Be Alone With You
• Every Grain of Sand
• Gotta Serve Somebody
• That Old Black Magic by Johnny Mercer

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Bob Dylan Announces 2022 UK and European Tour Dates

By Madison Bloom

Bob Dylan has announced another leg of his ongoing tour behind Rough and Rowdy Ways . His next run of dates will kick off September 25 in Oslo, and then wind through Stockholm, Copenhagen, Paris, Amsterdam, London, and more, before wrapping up in Glasgow on October 31. Find Dylan’s full schedule below.

Dylan released Rough and Rowdy Ways in 2020, and has been touring extensively in support of the record since last fall. He has added dates to the tour three times since announcing his initial run. Dylan wrapped up his West Coast leg of the tour just last month.

Earlier this month, Dylan’s one-of-a-kind re-recorded version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” sold at Christie’s for £1,482,000 (roughly $1,769,508 or €1,733,940). The updated track is the debut Ionic Original —a new analog format developed by longtime Dylan collaborator T Bone Burnett .

Read “ Bob Dylan Recasts His Old Selves in Ghostly Concert Film Shadow Kingdom ” on the Pitch.

All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

09-25 Oslo, Norway - Spektrum 09-27 Stockholm, Sweden - Avicii Arena 09-29 Gothenburg, Sweden - Scandinavium 09-30 Copenhagen, Denmark - Royal Arena 10-11 Paris, France - Grand Rex 10-12 Paris, France - Grand Rex 10-13 Paris, France - Grand Rex 10-15 Brussels, Belgium - Forest National 10-16 Amsterdam, Netherlands - AFAS Live 10-17 Amsterdam, Netherlands - AFAS Live 10-19 London, England - The London Palladium 10-20 London, England - The London Palladium 10-23 London, England - The London Palladium 10-24 London, England - The London Palladium 10-26 Cardiff, Wales - Motorpoint Arena 10-27 Hull, England - Bonus Arena 10-28 Nottingham, England - Motorpoint Arena 10-30 Glasgow, Scotland - SEC Armadillo 10-31 Glasgow, Scotland - SEC Armadillo

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Bob Dylan Returns to New York City: Review

Bob Dylan  returned to New York City on Tuesday evening, performing on his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour .

It's been two years since Dylan last played in the city he first came to in January 1961, then a fresh-faced 20-year-old. Now, at 82, there's a lot of history in between.

Dylan performed at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, an extravagant space dripping in red velvet and gold trim, but it's the kind of venue he's seemingly most comfortable in these days. Impressive without being too large, grandiose without it appearing unnecessary. Fans, phone-less for a fleeting evening thanks to Dylan's Yondr pouch policy, mingled in the lobby. They came from all over the world for a man who isn't much taller than the piano he stands behind on stage. "Rough and Rowdy" signature cocktails were available at the bars. (Whiskey, ginger ale, lemon juice, $18.)

Dylan enters, as naturally as a head of state, to fanfare — a literal orchestral cacophony played over the speakers. (Gone are the days of his previous entrance spiel: "The poet laureate of rock 'n' roll," etc.) He's joined on this tour by Tony Garnier (electric and standup bass), Jerry Pentecost (drums, previously of Old Crow Medicine Show), Bob Britt (guitar), Doug Lancio (guitar) and Donnie Herron (violin, electric mandolin, pedal steel, lap steel). Sporting white loafers and a white-trimmed suit, Dylan also brought a white hat with him on stage to set on the piano, though it never reached the top of his head.

Dylan's Song Selections

The set list on this tour hasn't varied much — save the occasional surprise, city-specific cover he's thrown in more than a few times — and primarily focuses on the songs of Rough and Rowdy Ways , released in 2020. But even those songs have undergone a metamorphosis over the two years Dylan has been touring with the album. Some, like "False Prophet," have taken on a much harder rocking attitude, while "Goodbye Jimmy Reed" sounds a bit like if J.J. Cale had gotten a hold of it and added a country blues spin. (Not a bad thing.)

Others have adopted arrangements similar to the ones Dylan utilized in his 2021 Shadow Kingdom film. It's a reminder of the premise Dylan has emphasized over the course of his career: that was then, this is now. If you came looking for a blast from the past, you won't find it on the set list. (A complete listing is available to view below.)

Dylan, who switched between sitting at the piano and standing spread-legged, still doesn't say much outside of his lyrics, though he was caught laughing a few times as he delivered lines. At what was anybody's guess. "Why, thank you," he said after "I Contain Multitudes," a touch of extra humility for the enthused reception.

"These songs are not easy to play," he added before introducing the others on stage, "but this band does a fine job, don't you think?"

Dylan plays 17 songs only, no encore, so the evening concludes much sooner than other rock 'n' roll shows. It's in line with the puckish, enigmatic persona he's developed over decades of life on the road and as the subject of intense cultural study.

To be touring the globe at 82 is, of course, a testament to his mastery. But for all of the jokes made about his singing voice or shadowy identity, it's worth acknowledging the candor Dylan represents, the kind that inherently comes along with writing songs and presenting them to the public, and particularly at the age he is now. Often referred to by last name only, he can still draw a sold-out, all-ages crowd in the biggest city in America.

As he puts it in "False Prophet:" " I opened my heart to the world and the world came in ."

READ MORE:  Bob Dylan Keeps Adding Surprising Songs to His Live Shows

Dylan will perform two more nights in New York, once more in Brooklyn and again Thursday at his beloved Beacon Theatre in Manhattan. This leg of the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour is scheduled to conclude on Dec. 3.

Bob Dylan, 11/14/23, Kings Theatre, Brooklyn, N.Y., 

1. "Watching The River Flow" 2. "Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I'll Go Mine)" 3. "I Contain Multitudes" 4. "False Prophet" 5. "When I Paint My Masterpiece" 6. "Black Rider" 7. "My Own Version of You" 8. "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" 9. "Crossing the Rubicon" 10. "To Be Alone With You" 11. "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)" 12. "Gotta Serve Somebody" 13. "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You" 14. "That Old Black Magic" 15. "Mother of Muses" 16 "Goodbye Jimmy Reed" 17. "Every Grain of Sand"

Bob Dylan Albums Ranked

Gallery Credit: Michael Gallucci

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Bob Dylan, SEC Armadillo, Glasgow, October 30 & 31, 2022

"Is this the parting glass? The Ending Tour?"

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It’s Hallowe’en night in the city. A well-dressed skeleton offers you a syringe. The floor starts to glow. It’s shadow hour dream time, with your host, Bob Dylan .

On the second night of the Rough And Rowdy Ways tour’s spooked and spiritual mini-residency in Glasgow, as the rainy streets fill with costumed figures and flicker with the light of scattered pumpkin lanterns, it’s hard not to think about the most famous Hallowe’en concert Dylan has played, back on October 31, 1964, at New York City’s Philharmonic Hall , a landmark performance that became a treasured bootleg, eventually canonised with official release as part of the Bootleg Series .

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Stepping out with an acoustic guitar and harmonica, Dylan, twenty-three years old, and moving fast, proceeded to stun his audience with a concert that included a fistful of fresh-minted songs that travelled in directions no one expected. Long compositions that dealt disturbing visions in complicated patterns of words, hails of imagery both pointed and opaque, stabbing and tender. Songs that existed in their own space, yet seemed uniquely suited to the rising turbulence of the world outside, delivered with a concentration that took the breath away.

After one, “ Gates Of Eden ”, he reassured the crowd: “Don’t let that scare ya. It’s just Hallowe’en. I have my Bob Dylan mask on. I’m masquerading…”

Flash forward exactly fifty-eight years later, and, well, to quote the lyric from “ I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You ” that serves as strapline on the tour poster, Things Aren’t What They Were . Except, well, maybe some things are.

Dylan, accompanied by his immaculate five-piece band all dressed in black – all the better to become pure shadow when the stage lights drop and the towering Black Lodge curtained backdrop blazes up like a wall of fire behind them – is no longer the solo troubadour, and no longer 23 years-old.

Yet here he comes. Still producing at a prodigious rate (this show comes on the eve of the publication of his new book, The Philosophy Of Modern Song , while the last year has seen the recording of at least an album’s worth of music in the shape of the sessions for the Shadow Kingdom film that saw him reworking chapters of his songbook.) Still energised most by the most recent songs in his repertoire, long, complex compositions that, tonight, build their own world. Still delivering them with a focus that is spellbinding.

Meantime, outside, the sense that the civilisation is still trembling on the edge of an abyss takes care of itself. “Y’know it’s Hallowe’en,” Dylan teases between songs in 2022. “All Saints’ Day. And–I–am–scared.” Then he leads us into a mesmerising version of “Key West (Philosopher Pirate) ” that soothes any fear away for as long as it lasts. And it seems to last forever.

As he has been doing almost without variation, Dylan played the same set both nights in Glasgow. The first show, on Sunday, was entirely magical, but – maybe it’s the spirits loose in the air – the second feels like a step up, everything shifting into new focus.

Where peers like The Stones can reproduce sets like a machine, Dylan always pushes songs in performance, handles them hands-on, so that rough edges and rowdy moments of uncertainty, or discovery, are still allowed. On Sunday, leading from behind his battered upright piano, that wilfulness saw the odd moment of discord as his extemporised piano lines sometimes bumped and crashed against the groove the band laid down. At one point, his determination to continually recast songs in different characters, different costumes, saw a freshly rearranged “ Gotta Serve Somebody ” almost fall apart. As the band took a stumble, Dylan stopped singing on the beginning of a line, stating and re-stating the beat on piano while the group leaned in around him, watching, listening, until everybody jumped back on it. Simultaneously, the stage lights went out off-cue, plunging the performers into disorienting blackness for an apocalyptic second.

On Hallowe’en night, though, they don’t simply nail this new “ Gotta Serve Somebody ”; they practically nail the audience to the wall with it, as guitarists Bob Britt and Doug Lancio lock into a ferocious twin guitar assault that hits like a thick, fuzzy tornado. Meanwhile, across the night, Dylan’s piano, whether he’s playing big, warm, gospel-soaked chords, baroque little filigrees, or spindly lines that slink like a jazz cartoon, doesn’t collide with the groove, but rubs against it, winds around it, like a cat. The first night he stepped out from behind the piano a few times to acknowledge applause. Tonight, he stays standing behind it throughout, a man at work.

His singing is different the second night, too. On Sunday, Dylan was in incredibly powerful voice – he sounds rejuvenated right now – but on Hallowe’en he switches tack, singing with the same sustained strength, but reining back, wielding it in softer, more tender, often more playful ways. He barks and bites when he needs to, but on “ Key West ” and “ I Contain Multitudes ”, he positively purrs. On “ I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You ”, his singing is soft as breath, his piano touches glint like moonlight hitting water, and there’s no need to be ashamed if that’s a tear in your eye.

The changes Dylan made to his old songs for Shadow Kingdom influence these shows as much as the Rough And Rowdy Ways album itself, and tonight the curious combination of playfulness and sheer intensity of focus makes the new arrangements shine and glow. A lot of it has to do with the way his new drummer Charley Drayton plays – less pushing songs along than responding, commenting, or, when he rattles his shaker, sending an ominous shiver through them, a sound that creeps and ghosts around the auditorium like the spectre of a snake.

“ When I Paint My Masterpiece ” rolls out as a kind of Celtic riverboat piece. “ I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight ” shifts through eras, beginning somewhere near 1967, before suddenly switching pitch into the stomping showtime go-go riff of Roy Head ’s 1966 hit “Treat Her Right” – a song Dylan last played during a rehearsal for his sharp-sloppy punk appearance on Late Night With David Letterman in 1984. “ To Be Alone With You ” becomes a spry Appalachian hoe-down in an extended instrumental coda as Dylan’s piano gets into a long trade-off with Donnie Heron’s lilting fiddle.

Most telling, though, is how the newest songs continue to evolve. Some Rough And Rowdy tracks remain much as they were on the album, as with tonight’s perfect Hallowe’en one-two combination punch of the weird tales “ Black Rider ” (dark, stark, echoing) and “ My Own Version Of You ” (simply incredible).

But others have already moved on to different places. “ False Prophet ” has shed its original skin, based on Billy Emerson’s “ If Lovin’ Is Believing ”, and now comes sashaying out swinging its shoulders to a riff moulded after Little Walter ’s “Just A Feeling”, continuing Dylan’s career-long entrancement with Walter. “Let’s go for a walk in the garden…darlin’” he winks, somehow finding room to fit yet another word in there. “ Key West ”, one of the great tracks on Rough & Rowdy, is perhaps most radically reshaped of all, almost a completely different tune now, and yet still beaming out from the same trancelike paradise zone on the horizon, and drawing you toward it.

As the stage lights burn pumpkin-orange around them, every song seems a highlight in a different way. Most poignantly, perhaps, when Dylan reaches the point where he stands Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King in line in his song of vocation, “ Mother of Muses ”. History sparks in strange ways as you recall Elvis singing Dylan songs, recall Dylan singing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, just before King said, “I have a dream.”

All around these performances hangs the question of whether, after so many years, this is Dylan’s farewell to performing live. Is this the parting glass? The Ending Tour? When he gets to the night’s final song, “ Every Grain Of Sand ”, it’s hard to push that thought away, especially when, for the only time, he picks up his harmonica and blows out one final, wordless chorus, still sounding like Bob Dylan on harmonica, still a sound like nothing else.

The place just erupts afterward, and erupts again when, after they’ve made their exit, Dylan and the band return from the shadows to take one last bow, Dylan standing nodding as the roars and applause come long and hard, the crowd not wanting to let them go.

But after that, they’re gone. Dylan’s piano chair sits empty. As the lights come up, I overhear a women recall seeing him the first time he played Glasgow, back in the electric mist of 1966, when he was changing things, doing something new, moving fast. I had to wonder whether she had made it here in time for his final show in town, too. And yet, watching him still pushing, still working at it, still keeping his songs restlessly alive, still finding something new, he seems like a man who still reckons he has a lot of work left to do. Meanwhile, it’s just Hallowe’en, and, at the door on the way outside, one of the usherettes is standing smiling with a fake knife pushed through her head.

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Bob Dylan Announces First UK/European Tour in Five Years

The legendary bard will play shows in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Scotland

Bob Dylan is heading across the Atlantic for his first UK/European tour in more than five years.

Beginning in September, the legendary bard will bring his “Never Ending Tour” to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Scotland.

Tickets go on sale Friday, July 15th via Ticketmaster. You can find individual ticket links for each show below.

The upcoming dates come in support of Dylan’s latest album, Rough and Rowdy Ways . He also recently re-recorded “Blowin’ in the Wind” with T Bone Burnett — and the lone copy of the collaboration recently sold for $1.7 million .

In November, he will publish  his first book of new writing in nearly two decades,  The Philosophy of Modern Song .

Bob Dylan 2022 Tour Dates: 09/25 – Oslo, NO @ Spektrum ( Tix ) 09/27 – Stockholm, SE @ Avicii Arena ( Tix ) 09/29 – Gotenburg, SE @ Scandinavium ( Tix ) 09/30 – Copenhagen, DK @ Royal Arena ( Tix ) 10/11 – Paris, FR @ Grand Rex ( Tix ) 10/12 – Paris, FR @ Grand Rex ( Tix ) 10/13 – Paris, FR @ Grand Rex ( Tix ) 10/15 – Brussels, BE @ Forest National 10/16 – Amsterdam, NL @ AFAS Live ( Tix ) 10/17 – Amsterdam, NL @ AFAS Live ( Tix ) 10/19 – London, UK @ London Palladium ( Tix ) 10/20 – London, UK @ London Palladium ( Tix ) 10/23 – London, UK @ London Palladium ( Tix ) 10/24 – London, UK @ London Palladium ( Tix ) 10/26 – Cardiff, UK @ Motorpoint Arena ( Tix ) 10/27 – Hull, UK @ Bonus Arena ( Tix ) 10/28 – Nottingham, UK @ Motorpoint Arena ( Tix ) 10/30 – Glasgow, UK @ SEC Armadillo ( Tix ) 10/31 – Glasgow, UK @ SEC Armadillo ( Tix )

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Bob Dylan Announces UK and European 2022 Tour Dates

Today, Bob Dylan announced yet another leg of his ongoing Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, this time with stops across The U.K. and Europe. The string of shows are in support of his 2020 LP Rough and Rowdy Ways, and since its release, the bard has been touring extensively since the fall of 2021, announcing new dates three times since the announcement of the initial run.

The newly added shows will kick off in Oslo, on Sept. 25 and make stops at many scenic and historic cities, including Stockholm, Copenhagen, Paris, Amsterdam, London and more. It’s also notable that during the tour, Dylan’s shows in the U.K. mark his first in five years.

The string of dates will wrap with a two-night Halloween run in Glasgow on Oct. 30 and 31. In Paris, Dylan will perform for three evenings at the Grand Rex; similarly, The London Palladium will welcome Dylan for four evenings, and Amsterdam’s AFAS Live will enjoy a two-night stint from the Nobel Prize laureate.

Tickets for Bob Dylan’s newly announced Rough and Rowdy Ways tour dates will be available on Friday, July 15. Find tickets here .

Bob Dylan European and U.K. Tour Dates

Sept. 25 Oslo, Norway – Spektrum

Sept. 27 Stockholm, Sweden – Avicii Arena

Sept. 29 Gothenburg, Sweden – Scandinavium

Sept. 30 Copenhagen, Denmark – Royal Arena

Oct. 11 Paris, France – Grand Rex

Oct. 12 Paris, France – Grand Rex

Oct. 13 Paris, France – Grand Rex

Oct. 15 Brussels, Belgium – Forest National

Oct. 16 Amsterdam, Netherlands – AFAS Live

Oct. 17 Amsterdam, Netherlands – AFAS Live

Oct. 19 London, England – The London Palladium

Oct. 20 London, England – The London Palladium

Oct. 23 London, England – The London Palladium

Oct. 24 London, England – The London Palladium

Oct. 26 Cardiff, Wales – Motorpoint Arena

Oct. 27 Hull, England – Bonus Arena

Oct. 28 Nottingham, England – Motorpoint Arena

Oct. 30 Glasgow, Scotland – SEC Armadillo

Oct. 31 Glasgow, Scotland – SEC Armadillo

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Bob Dylan announces first UK tour in over five years

The forthcoming shows come as part of the 'Rough And Rowdy Ways' world tour

Bob Dylan has announced his first UK headline shows in over five years – tickets will be available from here .

The legendary musician’s upcoming stint on these shores forms part of his ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’ world tour, which started in the US in late 2021 .

• READ MORE:  Bob Dylan – ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’ review: arguably his grandest poetic statement yet

Dylan is due to hit the road once again this October, kicking things off with an intimate four-night billing at the London Palladium (October 19, 20, 23, 34).

He’ll then visit the Motorpoint Arena Cardiff (26), the Bonus Arena in Hull (27) and Motorpoint Arena Nottingham (28) before ending the run with two consecutive performances at the SEC Armadillo in Glasgow (30, 31).

Tickets go on general sale at 10am BST this Friday (July 15) – purchase yours from here and see the full live itinerary below.

A string of European dates is scheduled between September 25 and October 17, with stop-offs including Oslo, Paris (three nights), Brussels and Amsterdam (two nights).

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The forthcoming shows are billed as “non-phone events”, per a press release. Audience members will be required to put their mobile devices into a Yondr bag, which they can keep with them until after the performance.

Dylan’s ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’ world tour resumed in the US back in March . His latest concert took place in Denver, Colorado last Wednesday (July 6).

The singer-songwriter hasn’t performed in the United Kingdom since he co-headlined London’s BST Hyde Park in 2019 alongside Neil Young . Prior to that, he brought his ‘Never Ending Tour’ to the UK in 2017.

Earlier this month, a one-of-a-kind re-recording of Bob Dylan singing his 1963 classic ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ sold at auction for £1.48million ($1.78million).

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Live Review: Bob Dylan, Bend, OR, June 27, 2022

• Post author By MAGNET Staff
• Post date June 29, 2022

“These days, people are lucky to have a job. Any job. So critics might be uncomfortable with my working so much. Anybody with a trade can work as long as they want. A carpenter, an electrician. They don’t necessarily need to retire.” —Bob Dylan, Rolling Stone , 2009

In 2022, it’s a little challenging to write anything fundamentally “new” about Bob Dylan, age 81 and counting, a mythic figure who has been endlessly and exhaustively documented and analyzed by generations of Dylanologists. To wit: Is his current tour (a “phone-free experience,” hence the lack of any recent live photos) an extension of the so-called “Never Ending Tour,” which began in June 1988? (If so, I can say with certainty that—save one show, with the Dead—I’ve only ever caught Dylan shows from this infinite tour.) Regardless of the answer, are we all just lucky to be catching a living legend like lightning in an increasingly breakable bottle? (Anyone with a University of Tulsa museum dedicated to their artistic legacy and whose catalog rights—originally brokered for “a hundred dollars against future royalties,” said a young Bob, straight outta Hibbing, Minn.—are now worth more than a reported $300 million can pretty safely be labeled a too-big-to-fail institution.)

So after a two-year touring break due to COVID (Dylan’s longest absence from the road in more than 40 years), you could hardly blame the Bobster if he merely wanted to phone it in: Just hire a backing band of young desperadoes, cull your most-played 20-40 songs from a body of work that stretches back six decades, ask some famous names to cameo, then roll from town to town like the Great American Jukebox, churning out the hits and fan favorites for an aging but nevertheless appreciative audience of Hawaiian-shirted Bobheads who would gladly shell out hundreds for the privilege.

But that’s not how Dylan rolls. Not now. Not ever, really.

Touring behind his first album of new material in eight years, 2020’s Rough And Rowdy Ways , the self-described “song and dance man” and his five-piece backing band (the specific players may come and go, but their sound has remained largely consistent over the years; guitarist Bob Britt cut a particularly notable sonic figure this evening) expertly weaved their way through a 17-song set that included all but two of the tracks from his current LP. This recency bias probably rankles with folks hoping to catch a fleeting glimpse of the fiery iconoclast who conjured “Like A Rolling Stone” only to toss it into the studio’s garbage can (once rescued, Rolling Stone went on to name it the fourth-best rock song of all time), but you have to admire an artist who remains as dedicated to the ethos of “let’s play the new stuff” as he was back in his 1960s prime, when his every utterance and snippet of pop-poetry turned the cultural wheel like an organ-grinder’s crank.

These days, Dylan can largely be found onstage camped out behind his upright piano, and even as this evening’s set kicked off with a pair of relatively early classics—1971 single “Watching The River Flow” and Blonde On Blonde’s “Mostly Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)”—tonight’s edition of The Zimmy Show roamed in a footloose-and-fancy-free sort of way through the lesser-known back pages of his oeuvre with little concern for convention, expectations or actual hits. Which, in its own bloody-minded way, is the most Dylan–like of concert experiences.

“Every Grain Of Sand” was chosen from 1981’s underloved Shot Of Love (it closes that album and closed tonight’s show as well), a rewritten and re-energized “Gotta Serve Somebody” was plucked from 1979’s born-again curiosity Slow Train Coming , while “Melancholy Mood” (a Sinatra chestnut dating back to his days fronting the Harry James Orchestra) showed how versatile Dylan has become in his dotage. Much has been made of Dylan’s vocal stylings through the years (“Does he even sing, bro?” might be one way of describing the growling, gravelly cadence of his latter-day efforts), but for my money, Dylan hasn’t sounded this comfortable and confident in a long time, inhabiting the corners of these songs fully and stuffing all 81 years of life into each and every syllable in a way that even the Chairman Of The Board struggled to do in the last mile of his own career.

In an outdoor amphitheater on a 98-degree summer night as nearby Deschutes River floaters stopped midstream to hear his set, you get the sense that Dylan is having more fun (I’m not sure he’d call it that, but most other humans would) than at any other point in his lengthy and storied career, dispensing with stage chatter and any real form of audience interaction and instead just entertaining himself and his band like you would by playing songs for friends and family in the legendary basement of Big Pink, way back when.

Dylan’s latter-day material is, to quote Dylan expert Greil Marcus, a tour through the Old, Weird America that the late Harry Smith once exhaustively documented: a pinch of blues here, a sprinkling of country there, some R&B tossed in for good measure, with a dollop of Bob’s gritty verse ladled over these vittles like so much gravy. When he sings, “I carry four pistols and two large knives,” on Rough And Rowdy Ways opening hymn “I Contain Multitudes,” you get the notion that—just like President Lincoln’s bodyguard circa his fraught 1861 inaugural—this Dylan isn’t recklessly running around on a motorcycle at Woodstock, isn’t flipping off the old guard by “going electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, isn’t fighting the powers that be over the course of different decades (Vietnam War, Watergate, Reaganomics, etc.). He’s just doing his utmost to keep himself alive, metaphorically and literally. And he could use some help doing it, too.

So tonight there was nothing from Nashville Skyline, nothing from Highway 61 Revisited (hell, nothing prior to 1966), nothing from Blood On The Tracks , nothing even from more recent classics such as Time Out Of Mind , Love And Theft, Together Through Life or Modern Times. What Dylan did bring to the table was the shadow-realm, meditations-on-a-theme, rural-blues-inflected, honky-tonk whatsit of his last 10 years of touring and recording—the 1950s, late-night Americana A.M. radio station that he hears in his head and has stubbornly clung to like a rodeo clown to a bucking barrel nightly, across stages big and small.

You can call him the Jokerman, you can call him Blind Boy Grunt, you can even call him Boo Wilbury—but one thing you can’t call Dylan is out of touch. I found as much to be surprised and delighted by with this twilight edition of our Nobel Prize-winning Greatest American Poet as I have at any point during his six-decade career. He’s as uncompromising and challenging a figure today as he was when—backed by the young Band—he plugged in and pissed off the folkie establishment in the mid-1960s. So while I’m not sure I’d ever call Bob Dylan “punk rock,” I’m not sure that I wouldn’t call him that, either.

— Corey duBrowa