Bob Dylan, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Performers Who Don’t Coast on Hits from 50 Years Ago

The poster for the Rough and Rowdy Ways leg of Bob Dylan’s “Never Ending Tour” reads “Things aren’t what they were.” The quote, a line from “I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself to You,” a standout track from Dylan’s 2020 album for which the present leg of the tour is named, doubles as perhaps the best summation of the man’s general ethos at this stage in his career. I do not mean this as an insult. I do not mean to say “the old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be,” in regard to the musician over whom I have dedicated the last half of my life obsessing. What I mean to say is that Bob Dylan, nearly 60 years after his first album, manages to reject nostalgia in an almost tangible manner. 

 

I caught a Dylan show this past Friday, November 12, in Louisville. It was my 4th time seeing him. At this point, I can look back to each of my Dylan concert experiences, starting in 2013, and plot a course of different phases of my life and personal development. That’s not a conversation for today though. My initial plan was a simple write-up of the concert, to talk about some highlights, and call it a day. But I think I would rather take this opportunity to use the concert as a jumping off point to discuss the man himself, and where he and his most recent output fit in the greater cultural landscape. 

 

At 80, Bob Dylan looks like a man his age, scrawny, with a deep-lined face beneath a thick mane of ever grayer hair. He moves like a man his age, slowly, visibly limping, more than once tripping and steadying himself on either his piano or his microphone stand. He almost never plays guitar onstage, owing to arthritis. He sounds like a man his age. His voice, never the most technically trained or versatile, feels lived in, in a way that I don’t think I have ever encountered before. David Bowie famously described Dylan’s voice as being “like sand and glue.” That was in 1971. In the 50 years since, it has only coarsened and roughened, the sand and glue being infused with smoke, whiskey, and broken glass.

 

In short, you could look at the man on stage that night, compare him to himself in 1966, and simply conclude that he “isn’t what he was.” And you would be correct. No one knows this better than Dylan himself. But, and this is key, he doesn’t treat it as a weakness or source of frustration, but as a means to evolution. 

 

Evolution has always been key to Bob Dylan as a pop culture figure. First emerging as part of a wave of socially conscious folk singers, he made the decision to “go electric” during a historic set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. In the aftermath, during the ensuing tour, he was branded a sellout, and a “Judas.” His response was to instruct his band to “Play it fucking loud.” Subsequently, electric Dylan was embraced. He grew tired, however, of an overly fawning fanbase labeling him as the “voice of his generation.” His response was to release Self Portrait, an album which he later claimed was intended to be bad enough to pour cold water on his fans’ enthusiasm. Later, he decided to reject his entire back-catalog (and all secular music) in favor of a conversion to Christianity. Each of these decisions was met with a backlash. And each backlash was met with the man himself not giving a fuck.

 

All of this, in a roundabout way, is for me to say that, if you’ve been paying attention, it should not come as any surprise to you that a Bob Dylan concert in 2021 is not just a trip down memory lane. There’s an understanding that comes with attending a classic rock show. The performer comes out and plays all the hits you remember from the good old days. Every now and then, you get a song from the new album, which is greeted with polite applause. Paul McCartney knows that you didn’t come to his show to hear songs from the last 30 years and he is perfectly alright to give you exactly what you want: the songs you remember, just how you remember them. You’ll hear “Hey Jude,” “Let It Be,” and as many other Beatles tunes as he can fit into his 3 hour shows. 

 

Dylan, on the other hand, played 17 songs in an hour and a half set. Of these, 10 were released in the last decade, with 8 of those being from his new album. Of the remaining 7, 2 were from the reviled Christian period (“Gotta Serve Somebody” and “Every Grain of Sand”), and only 1 (“Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine”) was from the height of his popularity in the mid-60s. There was no “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” or “Just Like a Woman.” On occasions when he does “play the hits” they are largely unrecognizable, with totally new rearrangements. I’m sure that disappoints a lot of people, and if you go to a Bob Dylan show expecting a nostalgia act along the lines of his classic rock contemporaries, this disappointment is understandable. But here’s the thing. I’ve heard those songs. I know what they sounded like 55 years ago. You do too. And there’s a certain admirable quality to an artist who refuses to get by on what he did in his 20s. Just as the man himself has evolved, so too have the songs. They are not what they were.

 

This fact is often cited as evidence that Dylan “isn’t trying anymore” or that he “wants to antagonize his audience.” But it has always been apparent that he doesn’t think of the studio versions as being “definitive.” For proof, just take a look at any of the number of “Bootleg Series” albums that release periodically, and which offer multiple alternative takes of the classic songs, which serve to indicate that the album versions were, in essence, just the cuts that happened to be chosen at that time. Again, I may be in the minority, but I find it admirable for a performer to refuse to be constrained by artistic decisions made during the Nixon administration. 

 

Nostalgia and familiarity are the most powerful forces in the universe. More powerful than gravity and Hulkamania combined. We have the audacity to demand that artists maintain their integrity and identity (or risk being deemed a “sellout”) while simultaneously not deviating too far from our interpretation of that identity and integrity (lest they… be deemed a sellout?). The consequences of straying from the formula are well documented (See Wars, Star). But when we have an artist who specifically rejects the very notion of the formula and that desire for familiarity, what we are confronted with is the fact that Dylan is on the single longest creative high of his long and storied career. Since winning the Grammy for Album of the Year for his Time Out of Mind album in 1998 (an award presented by Usher, who referred to him as “Bill Dylan,” so diminished was his cultural cache), Dylan has released an additional 9 albums, with all but the 2009 novelty Christmas in the Heart receiving significant critical praise. 

Given the fact that they made up nearly half the show, it should be no surprise that the songs from 2020’s Rough and Rowdy Ways were the show’s highlights. Key tracks “I Contain Multitudes,” “Key West (Philosopher Pirate),” and the aforementioned “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You” received genuinely enthusiastic applause from the captivated audience. While I know many people disagree with me on this point, I have absolutely no qualms with the set list being so heavily skewed toward recent music. To expect a 60 year career to be reduced entirely to its first 15 or so years is simply outlandish, and if there is one thing I hope to convince people to take away from this extended rant, it is that when performers with this level of longevity dare to reject the allure of coasting on nostalgia , and play concerts focusing on “the new stuff,” that is something to be celebrated, not simply tolerated.

 

 

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Long one, yeah? Bit drier than my usual work? Anyway, Dane told me yesterday that he would be hand writing letters of appreciation to the first 10 commenters on this post. I tried to talk him out of it but he was insistent. He said he loves his readers too much. Honestly, it’s commendable. Let him know exactly how commendable it is by leaving a comment below.

- Slone