Dylan, Nash & Conversion
Joseph Palmer
Bob Dylan’s a genius. Or, at least, he must be, given how revered he is by nearly every acclaimed musical mind of the last fifty years. It would be arrogant of me (or anyone as hopelessly tone-deaf as me) to contend otherwise. But, he’s just never been for me. Many of his contemporaries became permanent fixtures in my life with little effort on my part—Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez, The Velvet Underground, Paul Simon, and so on. Not so with Dylan.
Appreciating Dylan’s catalogue has always felt like a requirement, like reading Romeo and Juliet in school. A more apt comparison may be that listening to Dylan is like watching classic cinema like Pather Panchali or Citizen Kane—they’re undeniably iconic and beautiful, and I’m sure a connoisseur grasps nuanced leitmotifs and expert craftsmanship beyond my comprehension. Film philistine that I am, however, I only appreciate them because I know they’re already part of a pre-determined “high culture,” rather than as a result of my own interest.
My own interests always veered more to pop, even if the pop I devoured was from the same era as Dylan. The influence of my parents meant that I grew up listening to the Beach Boys and the Eagles. To me, Dylan and his ilk were also a bit too academic—one only needed to listen to the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” or the Eagles’ “Hotel California” to realize that music could be both approachable and beautiful. To me, catchiness was the sugar that helped the medicine of musicality go down.
As I matured, however, so did my patience with difficult art. The appeal of Ernest Hemingway’s declarative writing style, for example, was always obvious to me (even if his problematic qualities only became apparent later in my life). The works of poet Ezra Pound, a contemporary of Hemingway (and with whom he had a complicated relationship)—not so much. To an adolescent me, inaccessible art demonstrated a lack of effort and common touch from the artist, not a lack of taste from my side. Nevertheless, my literary idols had time for the difficult works of people like Pound, so I decided that the least I could do was put in a bit of effort toward appreciating them.
In a similar manner, my favourite musicians idolize Dylan, so I’m willing to give him as many shots as it takes. He is, of course, a singular presence in the history of music, whose work has overtly inspired everybody from the Beatles to Post Malone. He probably holds the impossible-to-measure record for songwriter who has inspired the best covers, from Jimi Hendrix’s unsurpassed version of “All Along the Watchtower” to Adele’s emotive rendition of his nineties ballad “Make You Feel My Love.”
Such accolades, however, don’t always translate into memorable live performances—at least, not memorable for the right reasons. Ageing music legends, particularly those who first rose to prominence in the Sixties, have an occasionally earned reputation for being curmudgeonly, or even resentful of their fans. It is with this baggage that the non-fanatic arrives at a Bob Dylan concert.
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I settle into my seat and hope the live experience will make a convert of me yet. The concert begins promptly at 8:00 PM. As Dylan starts his set, I fear my suspicions were warranted all along . He engages in zero repartee with the audience. The six-piece band consists of unsmiling men dressed entirely in black, five of them (including Dylan) wearing suits. The strange, unchanging lighting on the stage floor casts upward shadows onto their faces in the manner of old Hollywood horror films. The band begin the performance with a strong sense of the routine, like factory workers starting up a machine before a long shift.
This is probably the best time to address the irony that, for an artist whose lyrics have earned him a Nobel Prize in Literature, it can be difficult to understand Dylan when he sings. For the first couple of songs (“Watching the River Flow” and “Most Likely Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine”), it is genuinely hard to decipher the lyrics, even if one has heard them before. Dylan’s voice is even more gravelly than his recent studio albums indicate.
The audience’s energy is distracted and talkative, only elevating above neutral about five songs in, when Dylan grabs his harmonica to play the intro to “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” causing a few scattered cheers to emerge from the crowd. Any momentum, however, quickly dissipates. The band seems disengaged. In a 21st century update of “Dylan goes tech”, both guitarists appear to read music from an iPad during “Black Rider.” Even after performing for thirty minutes, none of their faces express anything more than stoic emotionlessness. Despite all this, the knowledge that you are seeing an almost mythical artist in person makes the experience memorable, if not particularly magical.
I should be grateful for the experience, no matter the details. It wasn’t so long ago that my hometown encountered regular droughts of quality on the concert scene. An open-minded connoisseur of all music genres might find one gig a week to get excited about, but big tours rarely stopped by. Even rarer were concerts featuring genuine music icons, which fans could anticipate excitedly for months leading up to the show. Over the last decade, however, my hometown’s rising national profile seems to have made it a more regular stop on major tours. Dylan isn’t even the only folk/rock icon of the 1960s to have played here recently.
Three weeks before the Dylan concert, another octogenarian songwriter performed to a smaller, enrapt crowd at a cozy, local music hall. Graham Nash’s name may not be recognized by the casual music listener as quickly as Bob Dylan’s, but he is a legend in his own right. Nash’s musical output is nearly as prodigious as Dylan’s, initially as member of British Invasion-era band The Hollies, later as a solo artist, and most famously as a member of Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young).
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In many ways, the two shows make for a useful comparison. Dylan and Nash are of similar age (born in 1941 and 1942, respectively), have been releasing music since the early sixties, and possess discographies that include both solo releases as well as albums with supergroups (in Dylan’s case, the Traveling Wilburys). When comparing the experience of attending their concerts in 2022, however, that’s where the similarities end.
Dylan stands mostly hidden behind his piano, while Nash either sits on a stool or stands in the open. Nash plays the hits, while most of Dylan’s set is drawn from his 2020 album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. Dylan doesn’t perform an encore. Nash’s encore, on the other hand, includes a Beatles cover (“A Day in the Life”), an exceptional minimalist version of Buddy Holly’s “Everyday,” and ends with “Teach Your Children,” a Top 40 hit for Crosby, Still, Nash & Young that Nash first penned while touring with the Hollies. Nash even bonds with his mostly Baby Boomer audience about the difficulties of aging, making a joke about needing the bathroom more often these days before announcing the concert’s intermission, another aspect missing from the Dylan concert.
Nash’s self-deprecating humour may be directed primarily toward members of his own generation, but by breaking the fourth wall, he’s prompted me to examine my own experience of the concert through the prism of aging. For example, at Nash’s concert I’m sitting down in a plush theatre seat. Ten years ago, attending a concert without a standing-only area in front of the stage would have been anathema to me. Sitting at Nash’s concert, however, my feet aren’t sore and my lower back is pain-free. In early middle age, I’ve finally abandoned the preposterous conviction that music must be experienced as part of a sweating, swaying mass. This allowed me to focus on the nuances of Nash’s performance without having to think about avoiding drunk adolescents sloshing beer into my shoulder. As a consequence, Nash’s performance was the only object in my mind’s eye. The same was true at Dylan’s concert, and I notice nuances I’ve never detected before.
Where Dylan’s onstage persona is subdued, Nash is effusive. In many ways, Nash’s storytelling between songs is the most memorable part of the show. This observation is explicitly not a criticism of him as a performer—in fact, his singing voice has aged superbly, better than most of his generation. Rather, it is simply praise for his ability as a raconteur. In a different life, one could easily imagine him touring a one-man show. One particularly standout moment is Nash’s retelling of writing the Crosby, Stills & Nash epic “Cathedral,” a story which involves a day off in London, a chauffeured car, LSD, and Stonehenge. One cannot imagine Dylan divulging such a personal anecdote.
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As becomes clear later in his own concert, however, Dylan doesn’t need to broadcast an effervescent personality to be magnetic on stage. The lesson learned is to never leave a concert early. Despite a start that felt slow, his performance later crescendos to such heights that I leave the concert converted. My conversion is centred on a five-song stretch that begins about 45 minutes into the set. Judging by the reactions of those around me, I wasn’t the only one affected.
Dylan’s gothic “My Own Version of You” absorbs the previously murmuring crowd. Whereas whispered conversations could be heard throughout earlier songs, now the audience is silent during the music’s quiet portions. Musically suggestive of “I Put a Spell on You”, with lyrics at the intersection of “Monster Mash” and “Thriller,” “My Own Version of You” is strange yet hypnotizing. I recognize this because I can make out more of the lyrics at this point in the concert. This is partly because, while still gravelly, Dylan’s voice has noticeably warmed up. Admittedly, this improved understanding is likely also because my impatient ear has adjusted to the singer’s idiosyncrasies.
Speaking of his singing, rumours of the death of Dylan’s voice have been greatly exaggerated. Although never a virtuoso vocalist, he remains a master, whose most eccentric singing tendencies are conscious artistic choices. On the bluesy “Crossing the Rubicon,” he hits several notes clearly and with the strength of an accomplished singer— the gravelly mumbles are all part of the show. Even Dylan seems to recognize how the crowd has loved these two songs. After finishing “Crossing the Rubicon,” he steps from behind the piano for the first time and is showered with a sincere and spontaneous standing ovation mid-concert.
Later in the show, I try to keep my eyes from watering during the philosophical slow-burner “Key West,” despite having no connection to the Florida town. Audible sniffling around me indicates that others are brought to tears by the meditative “Mother of Muses.” The backing band is visibly enjoying themselves—a romping, faster than normal version of Dylan’s 70s-era, evangelical “Gotta Serve Somebody” has all the musicians on stage bopping to the rhythm, laughing and smiling. Even the otherwise taciturn Dylan lets a long smile escape from above the piano while singing over the honky-tonk “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” before finally addressing the crowd for the time to introduce the rest of his band. By the end, Dylan has been performing for over ninety minutes, and it’s all passed much too quickly. It becomes evident that Dylan is at the show because he wants to be—after selling his catalogue to Universal Music for hundreds of millions of dollars in 2020, he certainly doesn’t need the money.
Given their differences, it is tempting to set Nash and Dylan’s on-stage personas against each other in a duel of performance philosophies. Does Nash’s affable and approachable style ensure that everyone in the audience has a great time? Or does Bob Dylan’s indecipherable enigma act reward a patient audience with a greater payoff? Such a debate misses the point entirely—both have their place; the only right answer is that there is no right answer.
Having said that, as genuinely brilliant as seeing Graham Nash was, seeing Bob Dylan live was like encountering one of the wonders of the world. Such grandiose language is not an exaggeration, at least based on the overheard conversations of fellow concertgoers as they streamed out of the auditorium. Perhaps it was age or hype or the slow burn of the evening, but I left with a certainty that was the best show I’ve ever seen. I remain convinced of this today. Dylan’s performance that night was like seeing the California redwoods or the pyramids of Giza. The fact is, even in his eighties, the curiously captivating 80-year-old Minnesotan with a gravelly voice, born Robert Zimmerman but known to the world as Bob Dylan, still mesmerizes.
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About the Author:
Joseph Palmer is a writer from South Carolina. A former diplomat and bartender, his non-fiction work covers music, politics, wildlife, sport, travel, and art. His work has appeared in The Economist, The Guardian, The Caravan, BBC Wildlife Magazine, and various other publications.