Bob Dylan don’t play ‘em like he used to: Sydney | Luna Magazine

Going into a Bob Dylan show, the best thing to do is keep expectations low.

“Set them at rock bottom,” my friend directed. “Expect it to be crap.”

The man may be a living legend, but he has been underwhelming live audiences for years. For a musician with such an extensive back catalogue, who has been the soundtrack of multiple generations, his ability to consistently pull the rug out from under his audiences is remarkable.

But we knew we were going to have a mixed experience. With my teenaged sister, a rabid Dylan fan who owns every album, we were ready for Dylan to wow us any which way. You know, or not, if he didn’t feel like it.

He played Tangled Up In Blue and Jolene early on, in almost unrecognisable arrangements. With his five-piece band, all the songs were strangely up-tempo.

“They sound like a band at an RSL,” said my sister. “They sound like a band at my friends’ bar mitzvahs.” They sounded like a Bob Dylan cover band.

He sounded best when the band was restrained for the ballads such as Forgetful Heart and his mournful, gravely voice shone through – although he sounded a lot more like Tom Waits than Bob Dylan, with an incomprehensible muttering of the lyrics that still managed to charm.

His voice is still good; had he pared his set back with an acoustic band we would have felt a lot more of his original flavour. Of course, that wasn’t his intention. You don’t get the show you want – you get the show Dylan wants.

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall was almost impossible to recognise, with syncopated phrasing and that poppy tempo that pervaded the evening. Any vibe that the band was able to create onstage was sucked out into the cavernous void that is Sydney’s Entertainment Centre. The venue dwarfs the largest of stage spectaculars, never mind skinny Bob, who from where we were sitting resembled little more than a stick figure in a sombrero.

Image: m_art_ynka | 2010

Simple Twist of Fate and Highway 61 followed, with a little more of their original flavour. Ballad of a Thin Man was the song of the night, as Dylan crooned, “But something is happening here and you don’t know what it is.”

His encores of All Along The Watchtower and Like A Rolling Stone rounded out an impressive set list, had we been better able to identify them. I mistook Forever Young for Shelter From The Storm. Rookie error, said my scandalised sister.

Here’s the thing about a Dylan show. Bob Dylan: The Arena Spectacular has always been a very different affair from Bob Dylan: Turntable In My Lounge. This is a man who has been constantly rearranging and rewriting his work, not happy to let it stand and play the same version for fifty years, and that’s something to be applauded – and the audience did. They knew they were there to see a man continue to reinvent himself and play the show he wanted to play. Perhaps that is his greatest achievement – he has more autonomy than many other performers. Like it or leave it.

And yet throughout all of the new renditions, one thing remained the same – when he played the harmonica it was like hearing an old friend. There was the Bob Dylan we love. That’s the guy I’ll keep on playing, through all the seminal moments of my life. But on CD, when I can actually understand the lyrics.

Bob Dylan – Sydney Entertainment Centre – 27 April 2011

This review was first published by Luna Magazine.

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