What can be said about Bob Dylan that hasn’t been said before? A titan of popular culture whose influence and legacy may never truly be fully appreciated until long after any of us have had the chance to cast our final judgement.
Folk troubadour, protest singer, country and western film star, gospel preacher, traditional bluesman, archetypal rock and roll star, to name but a few. Dylan has seen, and shaped it all. Though in his own words…‘I think of myself as just a song and dance man’.
In recent years, Dylan’s decades long ‘Never Ending Tour’ was brought to an abrupt halt by the pandemic. Instead, he chose 2020 to drop his 39th studio album release (yes…thirty nine), with the somewhat out of the blue Rough and Rowdy Ways dropping like a cultural vaccine.
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The O2 Apollo tonight hosts the reignited tour of the same name. Celebrating the lush blues noir which saw the album receive widespread critical acclaim.
With the stage bathed in orange light, lights lifting on Dylan’s initial vocal delivery, , Watching the River Flow sets the tone early. All honky tonk piano over playful 12 bar blues. Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine follows, rollicking along in that inimitable mid sixties way, snare drum rolls front and centre.
The first from Rough & Rowdy Ways, I Contain Multitudes is a gorgeous, captivating waltz. Steel guitar dancing across the rhythm as Dylan croons reflectively about Anne Frank, William Blake and The Rolling Stones. ‘I’m a man of contradictions, I’m a man of many moods’
The sultry blues of False Prophet and folk stomp of When I Paint My Masterpiece pick up the tempo. The latter, with its acoustic guitar and fiddle front and centre, transports us to the back room of some lost pub on the west coast of Ireland, waves crashing up against the rocks outside.
Dylan’s voice, famously divisive, feels like it’s on form. In his later years he’s settled into a more measured, part speaking, part singing approach. There’s experience notched into every tone, and with lyrics as good as this, there’s myth, magic and wisdom in endless tales of decades gone by.
With his delivery, he stands up and appears from the piano to deliver the lyrics he seemingly wants to land harder. ‘Can’t remember when I was born, an I forgot when I died’
His backing band motor things along, all as sharp as they come. Dressed in black, silhouetted by the onstage light and looking like they’ve fallen from an all night New Orleans jazz bar, they accompany Dylan perfectly.
One thing it’s not, is a night for the greatest hits. No Like a Rolling Stone, no Blowin’ in the Wind, no Knockin’ on Heaven's Door. And yes, there is perhaps that nagging desire to hear something of that ilk. It’s like going to the Louvre and being told the room with the Mona Lisa is closed. You know it’s in there somewhere, though it’s not for today.
Though equally, this set of songs deserve attention in their own right, and to expect Dylan to come along and crowd-please would be to misunderstand what lies at his very core. Especially by us here in Manchester, where just over a mile away at the Free Trade Hall in 1966 he was famously heckled ‘Judas!’, as he gleefully upset the folk scene with his move towards that electric, ‘thin wild mercury’ sound.
In each and every way he pushes back on any pressure to conform. ’Dont Look Back’ as the D.A Pennebaker docufilm proclaimed. Even the stage set up is provocative. It’s dark and moody, you can’t really see him from behind behind the piano, he engages with the audience on occasions you can count on one hand. Difficult, or genius? It’s art and it’s for the audience to decide. Tonight, it falls to the latter.
That’s not to say he doesn’t reach back into the dustier corners of his back catalogue.
I’ll be Your Baby Tonight, from 1967’s John Wesley Harding is reworked into a Shakespearean like drama, Dylan solo on piano, clattering into a honky tonk full band jam with the band fixated on Dylan’s every move. Whilst 1979’s Slow Train Coming’s Gotta Serve Somebody is a jangly rock number.
As the show progresses and he narrates his way hypnotically through Key West (Philosopher Pirate) , name checking the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Buddy Holly and the crackly radio stations of his youth, one realises that this is Dylan sat with us ruminating on his life and his achievements, his own mortality front and centre, though all the while comfortable and content to do so. It’s a privilege to witness.
With the band clearly enjoying themselves , Goodbye Jimmy Reed is another provocative bluesy riot, before Every Grain of Sand , from 1981’s Shot Of Love brings us to the culmination of the evening. Another philosophical, big picture lyric. No coincidence it’s here tonight, sat amongst his newer reflective material.
And for the first time of the night, saved right for the end, he blasts away on his trademark harmonica, sending shivers down spines. It’s a final knowing wink, and a poetic, fitting finale. ‘…just a song and dance man’. You wouldn’t want him any other way.
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