Tuesday 16 July 2019

Bob Dylan, Neil Young etc at Hyde Park 12th July 2019


I feel like I finally came to understand Bob Dylan as a live performer on Friday. This was the 5th time I’d seen him and by far the best. The last time was at the Albert Hall in 2013 and, after a slightly muted show where I had a bad view, the sound was a bit muddy and the set didn’t inspire me (though there were still fine moments) I thought that would be it in terms of seeing him live.

Lured back by a bill shared with Neil Young and the promise, with it being a Hyde Park BST show, of a summer’s day filled with excellent supporting acts (as these BST shows tend to have), I was dismayed when Young kicked up a fuss shortly after the show was announced, because he didn’t want to be sponsored by Barclaycard. The show would remain, though without the corporate sponsorship. I assumed the support bill would suffer too.

And the day seemed even more ill-fated when the person who I was due to go with couldn’t make it. I decided, generally dispirited, to sell both tickets.  I got to the ticket site and something stopped me. I may seriously regret it, I thought. So I sold one and kept my own.

I won’t write a huge, full review of the day – here is a really good one of those from an even bigger Dylan fan than me, which says a lot of what I’d say
There were also some really, really bad reviews, bad as in terrible, dull-brained bits of reviewing, in mainstream newspapers. Normally, I’ve found Dylan live reviews to be pretty solid, pretty even-handed, able to take the thing at face value. But, this time, perhaps because of the central setting and dual headliners, the gig attracted some pretty spectacularly amateurish and by-rote takes: if, in 2019, you’re writing about a Dylan gig “he doesn’t sing like he used to and these versions of the songs are unrecognisable”, you’re not really excelling in insight and originality. I mean, that was a dull take in 1966. Fair enough for some casuals fans to be a bit nonplussed, but actual music reviewers?

The frustrating thing about that kind of unimaginative response to this gig is that it really wasn’t like that. The songs were perfectly recognisable. I recognised all 19 he played within the first 30 seconds or so. Yes, I’m a big Dylan fan, but “Dylan plays fittingly reworked versions of classic songs in ways that are recognisable to Dylan fans” seems fair enough … and people around me were loving it, no grumbling, laughter, big smiles, rapture, whoops, attempts to sing along etc.

And there were, for me, other very significant improvements from the Albert Hall show in 2013. Firstly, there have been (reasonable) grumbles in recent years that Dylan doesn’t allow himself to be shown on big screens at his big gigs. The screen was on all day for other acts, but I was still worried it would be switched off for Dylan. But, thankfully, it wasn’t. Whatever his reservations had been, it does not only the audience but also the artist a real service. I was relatively near the front (more of which later) but he was still a bit of a speck to me without the screen. The screen allows the audience to see how much fun he’s having and how much effort he’s putting in. Considering (as always) he didn’t talk to the audience, this massively helps the audience to feel connected.

Furthermore, while Dylan and his piano were side-on the last couple of times I saw him, now he was head-on and front-stage – much better. And this was where my big moment of understanding came.
Of course, to most people, Dylan is the definitive man-with-guitar troubadour (acoustic or electric) and he did play guitar for most of his live career. But he hasn’t led on guitar for most of the last two decades. There’s a fairly strong chance that this move has at least partly forced by some kind of arthritic condition. He hasn’t confirmed this, at all, though; he’s said he still plays a bit of guitar but piano suits the band now.

And the truth is, it really does. Piano lies at the heart of many of the arrangements. But there’s more to it than that, which this front-on, big screen Dylan showed me - Robert Zimmerman’s stated high-school yearbook ambition was “to join Little Richard” … and here, more than 60 years later, you see little Robert’s finally living his dream.

In the past, I’d thought of Dylan’s piano as a bit of a prop for an aging performer. But, here, with the piano loud and high in the mix and the big screen on it, you can see that Dylan, mainly standing at the piano, occasionally sitting, in a fantastical cowboy pimp outfit, is having the time of his life on it – hammering away like Jerry Lee Lewis or, yes, Little Richard. Dylan’s band is famously superb, but it was only this time I realised how fundamental his rock’n’roll piano is to the whole sound. Maybe it was all those years on the guitar that were the aberration, eh?

And the key thing is, he plays songs which suit that set-up – leading on Ballad of a Thin Man (piano-led even in ’65) and picking perfectly from throughout his back-catalogue. This set is such a crowd-pleaser, especially compared to 2013, where there was an awful lot from recent albums, not that there’s anything wrong with that per se … again, worth remembering that Dylan’s albums between 1997 and 2012 were all not only highly acclaimed but highly successful – they’re hardly “obscure new stuff,” certainly not for him and the many fans that watch him regularly.

This set leaned mostly on ‘Highway 61 Revisited’(65) and ‘Time out of Mind’ (97) but there are selections from throughout his career (apart from the 80s … what I’d have given for Blind Willie McTell, but you can’t have everything).

Here is the setlist … 

  • ·       Ballad of a Thin Man
  • ·       It Ain’t Me, Babe
  • ·       Highway 61 Revisited
  • ·       Simple Twist of Fate
  • ·       Can’t Wait
  • ·       When I Paint My Masterpiece
  • ·       Honest with Me
  • ·       Tryin’ to Get to Heaven
  • ·       Make you Feel my Love
  • ·       Pay in Blood
  • ·       Like a Rolling Stone
  • ·       Early Roman Kings
  • ·       Girl from the North Country
  • ·       Love Sick
  • ·       Thunder on the Mountain
  • ·       Soon after Midnight
  • ·       Gotta Serve Somebody
  • ENCORE:
  • ·       Blowin’ in the Wind
  • ·       It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry


There was, among lots of great moments, one clear and acknowledged highlight, the rare moment of transcendence I’d hoped for but not previously experienced at a Dylan gig. And once again, we need to go back to Dylan’s childhood for context.

Zimmerman’s first serious girlfriend in the mid-late 50s, back in Minnesota, was called Echo Helstrom (good name, eh … there have been literally been books written triggered by her name being Echo …). Girl from the North Country is understood to have been inspired by her.

Girl from the North Country was written in late 62/early 63 when Dylan was 21, written with a sense of longing and deep nostalgia for a time and person 4/5 years earlier, because when you’re 21, 17 feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?

Echo Helstrom died in early 2018, and here, in 2019, is this 78-year old guy, singing Girl from the North Country with a reverence he didn't give any other of his songs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN0Rkfe_fxk

The musical setting is beautiful, the singing is beautiful (if you don’t think his singing is great here, then there’ll be no persuading you on any more of this), it raises the bar even further for what Dylan is still capable of.

Not that I am complaining about the rest of the set or the singing – again, I saw more clearly than before that he employs quite a few different styles – yes, there’s the staccato rasp which is off-putting for new comers, but there’s an impressive range and hold on things like ‘Can’t Wait’, tenderness on ‘Soon after Midnight’, something close to rapping on others. I think the (frustrating) Sinatra covers albums have really improved his voice, actually.

Anyway, it’s Girl from the North Country I’ll remember above all.

Despite my misgivings, the whole day was pretty great – the supports on the main stage were Sam Fender, Cat Power and Laura Marling. I’m probably a bigger fan of Marling than I am of Neil Young. She was superb, though it’s a tough gig doing support at these big all-day shows, especially at Hyde Park with its “Golden Circle” at the front for people prepared to pay over the odds. It’s a bit shit, though an understandable money spinner.

Particularly shit for support acts, where the enclosure is nowhere near filling up, so there’s this huge gap not far in front of you. I can imagine it felt to Marling and co that they were playing to a bit of emptiness and indifference, whereas in fact, 200 metres away, at the front of General Admission, there were a few thousand people who were really into it …

Neil Young was very good – didn’t go too heavy on the guitar stuff – played plenty of classics. Funnily enough, on the way out and the train home, I hear several Neil Young fans say that he was ok, a little disappointing, whereas they'd loved Dylan. This being the first time I'd seen Neil Young, I was pretty happy, His voice holds up really well, and he seemed to be having a great time.

When he finished, I was actually worried Dylan might be a damp squib. Needn't have worried ...

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