It’s Hallowe’en evening within the metropolis. A well-dressed skeleton provides you a syringe. The ground begins to glow. It’s shadow hour dream time, together with your host, Bob Dylan.
On the second evening of the Tough And Rowdy Methods tour’s spooked and religious mini-residency in Glasgow, because the wet streets fill with costumed figures and flicker with the sunshine of scattered pumpkin lanterns, it’s laborious not to consider essentially the most well-known Hallowe’en live performance Dylan has performed, again on October 31, 1964, at New York Metropolis’s Philharmonic Corridor, a landmark efficiency that grew to become a treasured bootleg, finally canonised with official launch as a part of the Bootleg Collection.
Stepping out with an acoustic guitar and harmonica, Dylan, twenty-three years previous, and shifting quick, proceeded to stun his viewers with a live performance that included a fistful of fresh-minted songs that travelled in instructions nobody anticipated. Lengthy compositions that dealt disturbing visions in sophisticated patterns of phrases, hails of images each pointed and opaque, stabbing and tender. Songs that existed in their very own area, but appeared uniquely suited to the rising turbulence of the world exterior, delivered with a focus that took the breath away.
After one, “Gates Of Eden”, he reassured the group: “Don’t let that scare ya. It’s simply Hallowe’en. I’ve my Bob Dylan masks on. I’m masquerading…”
Flash ahead precisely fifty-eight years later, and, nicely, to cite the lyric from “I’ve Made Up My Thoughts To Give Myself To You” that serves as strapline on the tour poster, Issues Aren’t What They Have been. Besides, nicely, perhaps some issues are.
Dylan, accompanied by his immaculate five-piece band all wearing black – all the higher to turn into pure shadow when the stage lights drop and the towering Black Lodge curtained backdrop blazes up like a wall of fireplace behind them – is now not the solo troubadour, and now not 23 years-old.
But right here he comes. Nonetheless producing at a prodigious charge (this present comes on the eve of the publication of his new e-book, The Philosophy Of Trendy Track, whereas the final yr has seen the recording of a minimum of an album’s value of music within the form of the classes for the Shadow Kingdom movie that noticed him remodeling chapters of his songbook.) Nonetheless energised most by the latest songs in his repertoire, lengthy, complicated compositions that, tonight, construct their very own world. Nonetheless delivering them with a spotlight that’s spellbinding.
Meantime, exterior, the sense that the civilisation remains to be trembling on the sting of an abyss takes care of itself. “Y’understand it’s Hallowe’en,” Dylan teases between songs in 2022. “All Saints’ Day. And–I–am–scared.” Then he leads us right into a mesmerising model of “Key West (Thinker Pirate)” that soothes any worry away for so long as it lasts. And it appears to final eternally.
As he has been doing virtually with out variation, Dylan performed the identical set each nights in Glasgow. The primary present, on Sunday, was completely magical, however – perhaps it’s the spirits free within the air – the second looks like a step up, the whole lot shifting into new focus.
The place friends like The Stones can reproduce units like a machine, Dylan at all times pushes songs in efficiency, handles them hands-on, in order that tough edges and rowdy moments of uncertainty, or discovery, are nonetheless allowed. On Sunday, main from behind his battered upright piano, that wilfulness noticed the odd second of discord as his extemporised piano traces generally bumped and crashed in opposition to the groove the band laid down. At one level, his dedication to repeatedly recast songs in several characters, totally different costumes, noticed a freshly rearranged “Gotta Serve Any individual” virtually crumble. Because the band took a stumble, Dylan stopped singing on the start of a line, stating and re-stating the beat on piano whereas the group leaned in round him, watching, listening, till everyone jumped again on it. Concurrently, the stage lights went out off-cue, plunging the performers into disorienting blackness for an apocalyptic second.
On Hallowe’en evening, although, they don’t merely nail this new “Gotta Serve Any individual”; they virtually nail the viewers to the wall with it, as guitarists Bob Britt and Doug Lancio lock right into a ferocious twin guitar assault that hits like a thick, fuzzy twister. In the meantime, throughout the evening, Dylan’s piano, whether or not he’s enjoying massive, heat, gospel-soaked chords, baroque little filigrees, or spindly traces that slink like a jazz cartoon, doesn’t collide with the groove, however rubs in opposition to it, winds round it, like a cat. The primary evening he stepped out from behind the piano a couple of occasions to acknowledge applause. Tonight, he stays standing behind it all through, a person at work.
His singing is totally different the second evening, too. On Sunday, Dylan was in extremely highly effective voice – he sounds rejuvenated proper now – however on Hallowe’en he switches tack, singing with the identical sustained energy, however reining again, wielding it in softer, extra tender, usually extra playful methods. He barks and bites when he must, however on “Key West” and “I Include Multitudes”, he positively purrs. On “I’ve Made Up My Thoughts To Give Myself To You”, his singing is delicate as breath, his piano touches glint like moonlight hitting water, and there’s no have to be ashamed if that’s a tear in your eye.
The adjustments Dylan made to his previous songs for Shadow Kingdom affect these exhibits as a lot because the Tough And Rowdy Methods album itself, and tonight the curious mixture of playfulness and sheer depth of focus makes the brand new preparations shine and glow. Loads of it has to do with the best way his new drummer Charley Drayton performs – much less pushing songs alongside than responding, commenting, or, when he rattles his shaker, sending an ominous shiver by way of them, a sound that creeps and ghosts across the auditorium just like the spectre of a snake.
“After I Paint My Masterpiece” rolls out as a sort of Celtic riverboat piece. “I’ll Be Your Child Tonight” shifts by way of eras, starting someplace close to 1967, earlier than all of the sudden switching pitch into the stomping showtime go-go riff of Roy Head’s 1966 hit “Deal with Her Proper” – a music Dylan final performed throughout a rehearsal for his sharp-sloppy punk look on Late Night time With David Letterman in 1984. “To Be Alone With You” turns into a spry Appalachian hoe-down in an prolonged instrumental coda as Dylan’s piano will get into an extended trade-off with Donnie Heron’s lilting fiddle.
Most telling, although, is how the latest songs proceed to evolve. Some Tough And Rowdy tracks stay a lot as they had been on the album, as with tonight’s good Hallowe’en one-two mixture punch of the bizarre tales “Black Rider” (darkish, stark, echoing) and “My Personal Model Of You” (merely unbelievable).
However others have already moved on to totally different locations. “False Prophet” has shed its unique pores and skin, primarily 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 “Simply A Feeling”, persevering with Dylan’s career-long entrancement with Walter. “Let’s go for a stroll within the backyard…darlin’” he winks, in some way discovering room to suit one more phrase in there. “Key West”, one of many nice tracks on Tough & Rowdy, is maybe most radically reshaped of all, virtually a totally totally different tune now, and but nonetheless beaming out from the identical trancelike paradise zone on the horizon, and drawing you towards it.
Because the stage lights burn pumpkin-orange round them, each music appears a spotlight differently. Most poignantly, maybe, when Dylan reaches the purpose the place he stands Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King in line in his music of vocation, “Mom of Muses”. Historical past sparks in unusual methods as you recall Elvis singing Dylan songs, recall Dylan singing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, simply earlier than King mentioned, “I’ve a dream.”
Throughout these performances hangs the query of whether or not, after so a few years, that is Dylan’s farewell to performing reside. Is that this the parting glass? The Ending Tour? When he will get to the evening’s ultimate music, “Each Grain Of Sand”, it’s laborious to push that thought away, particularly when, for the one time, he picks up his harmonica and blows out one ultimate, wordless refrain, nonetheless sounding like Bob Dylan on harmonica, nonetheless a sound like nothing else.
The place simply erupts afterward, and erupts once more when, after they’ve made their exit, Dylan and the band return from the shadows to take one final bow, Dylan standing nodding because the roars and applause come lengthy and laborious, the group not desirous to allow them to go.
However after that, they’re gone. Dylan’s piano chair sits empty. Because the lights come up, I overhear a girls recall seeing him the primary time he performed Glasgow, again within the electrical mist of 1966, when he was altering issues, doing one thing new, shifting quick. I had to wonder if she had made it right here in time for his ultimate present on the town, too. And but, watching him nonetheless pushing, nonetheless working at it, nonetheless preserving his songs restlessly alive, nonetheless discovering one thing new, he looks like a person who nonetheless reckons he has quite a lot of work left to do. In the meantime, it’s simply Hallowe’en, and, on the door on the best way exterior, one of many usherettes is standing smiling with a pretend knife pushed by way of her head.
