“You can not prescribe to a symbol what it may be used to express. All that a symbol can express it may express.”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein to Bertrand Russell. 1919.
With Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020), his first album of new songs in eight years, Bob Dylan became the first artist to reach the Top 40 in sales in every decade since the 1960s. In the year prior to the Covid-delayed tour which brought him to Oakland’s Fox Theater for three sold-out shows, Dylan had exhibited paintings in China, offered 180 works for sale on-line through a London gallery, published his first book since 2004, sold his music catalog to Sony for $150-200 million, put up for auction a one-of-a-kind studio recording of “Blowing in the Wind,” which was expected to bring in an additional $1.25 mill, founded “an entire NFT project,” and saw the opening of a Bob Dylan museum containing 100,000 “treasures.” In the 98 days before Adele and I caught his opening at the Fox, he had performed 35 concerts in 18 states, at each of which you could pick up a t-shirt for $40 a pop. These shows brought the total, in what his fans have known since 2008 as the Never-Ending-Tour, to over 3000.
Within those 98 days, Dylan had turned 81. (He has between four and – accounts differ – 11 grandchildren, with several of them old enough to have children themselves.) Bob Neuwirth (82), a friend whom Dylan is said to have based aspects of his “distinctive persona” on,[i] had died. So had Ronnie Hawkins (85), mentor to Dylan’s former associates, The Band – and one of those to play Dylan in Renaldo and Clara.[ii] Adele had turned 81 too and I – my bad heart fluttering – 80. Why was he still doing this? Why were we?[iii]
“Enjoy the show,” my cardiologist said. “And…” She mimed drawing on a joint. “… stay hydrated.”
….
A mezzanine ticket cost $92, plus service charges. Proof of vaccination was not required but masks were. On arrival, cell phone would be sealed in pouches to be opened when you left. When I explained these precautions at the café, Dolly, dropping a treat before her lhasa aoso, asked if they were allowing guns.
“You think someone’s going to pay $90 to shoot Bob Dylan?” I said.
“Lots of people still mad at him for going electric,” Gus, who had studied washtub bass at the feet of Fritz Richmond, said.
“I wonder what John Wilkes Booth paid to shoot Lincoln,” Large Victor said.
I Googled. Orchestra seats at Ford’s Theatre cost 75-cents, dress circle half-a-buck, and third-level a quarter. “Figuring Booth wasn’t concerned with sight lines or sound quality…” I Googled some more. “Would have set him back $4.63 in today’s dollars.”
“Costs way more to change history now,” Dolly said.
….
“Remember how he used to have his Oscar on his keyboard?” I said to Adele when we left the house. “I wonder if he’ll wear his Nobel Prize around his neck.”
We felt more apprehension than excitement. It would be Adele’s first night out since the pandemic, my second. She did not want to risk a restaurant, so we would eat in the car. She did not want to stand in a line or mingle in the lobby, let alone the VIP lounge. Her plan was arrive early; sit; wait for the row to fill – and hope it didn’t.
“Are we having fun yet?” I said.
“It’s closer to being over,” she said. “It’ll be a miracle if we don’t get sick. Two miracles.”
Worry runs in Adele’s family. She was disturbed that I had e-mailed a nephew about the concert because he would tell her brother, who would tell her sister; then they all would worry. “I will wrap myself in pleasure to shut out my fear,” she said. “I will shield myself in joy.”
We parked behind a couple in a black Patagonia, its storage area packed with enough survival gear for several calamities. The man wore a black t-shirt and had a greying pony-tail. The woman had multi-shaded blond hair and a short, glittery dress. They were fighting over who had been meaner to whom. I did not get his position, but her’s was that she had never called him names, while he had called her “A whiney-assed bitch.”
….
Two women, one with dyed red hair, one with dyed blonde, sat to our left and a teenage boy and his grandmother to our right. Adele tried to stay clear of the beer with which the blonde was accenting her conversation, while I told the boy more than he wanted to know after he’d asked about the years Dylan had vanished.
When I realized I’d overlooked my dinner meds, I went searching for a drinking fountain. There were none, but a mini-dreaded bartender filled a plastic glass with ice and water. “Free,” he said, so I tipped him a buck and slid down to a free space to extricate my pills from the Saran wrap and aluminum foil.
“Anything good?” he said.
“Those days are long gone,” I said.
“I feel you.”
….
In his philosophical “guide” Think, Simon Blackburn posits a puzzler in which Theseus embarks on a long journey, during which he must replace, piece-by-piece, his ship’s planks, riggings, sails, and spars to the point he has replaced them all. Most people, Blackburn writes, would conclude Theseus has returned with the same ship; but suppose someone has trailed him, salvaging all he has discarded and reassembled them exactly. If he docks in the next berth, would we not say he has the original, even though “we cannot have two different ships, each of which is… the original”?
I had formed “Bob Dylan” out of a dozen or so songs – and memories associated with them – which had appeared on several albums released between spring 1963 and summer 1966. Would a performer who replicated these songs exactly in a theater down the street from the Fox be more truly “Bob Dylan” than the man who performed none of them?[iv] `
….
Six personality effacing, black silhouettes stood before a glowing orange backdrop. Then they took positions. Drummer, bass and guitar to our left; Bob, in cream-colored hat, seated at a piano; two guitarists to our right. At first there was only music, rocking, lilting; then “Watching the River Flow” kicked in.
Dylan performed 17 songs in under 90 minutes. No intermission. No encore. (He would perform the same songs in the same order the next night. His third, in what some saw as a nod to the Bay Area’s musical heritage, he subbed out “Every Grain of Sand” as his finale for a lugubrious version of the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil.”[v]) Of the 17 songs, in a departure from his past practice of often ignoring his latest release like a randy lord his bastard offspring, nine were from “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” omitting only the 17-minute “Murder Most Foul.”[vi] Of the other eight, only “You’ll Go Your Way…” was from my favorite years – and it was not among those in my canon.
Bob handled the vocals solo. He has basically given up guitar, due to, most speculate, arthritis, though his preferred explanation is he can’t find a keyboard player he likes. He played mouth harp only on “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” – and briefly then. (The audience cheered.) He stood only to sing the obscure Frank Sinatra ballad “Melancholy Mood,” appearing stiff and stick-like in his gestures and sitting quickly when done. (Reviews from tour concerts available at https://www.expectingrain.com/ describe him at this point in shows as “fragile,” “unsteady,” “tentative,” and looking “like a little old man.”) By my count, he said “Thank you” nine times, twice prefacing it with a slurred “Ahr,” once with “Well,” once “Why,” once following it with “… so much,” and once doubling down, “Thank you. Thank you.” I note this because, in my experience, this was Bob at his chattiest. (He also, my notes tell me, said, “Oh yes, we see you” – in response to what I do not know – and uttered some unintelligible but par-for-the-course mumbles, which every Dylanologist strains to parse like they were from Tracatus Logico.)
The band (Charley Drayton, drums; Bob Britt and Doug Lancio, guitars; and long-time associates Tony Garnier, bass, and Donnie Herron, violin, mandolin and pedal steel and lap steel guitar) was tight and powerful when propulsion was called for and spaced and languid when reflection was needed. It swung; it was fierce; and it was tender. Mainly it served Dylan’s lyrics and the mood he had selected for that evening’s presentation of them. The over-all sound was paramount; individual pyrotechnics, musical or personal were scarce. During “Rubicon,” half-way through the show, Lancio – I think it was – took three steps back, then three steps forward, and it was as if Chuck Berry had duck-walked down the center aisle.
….
The big takeaway from the show – and tour – seems to have been delight in Bob’s voice and spirit. “The best he’s sounded in years,” a fellow in the café told me the next morning, “a blend between Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. Late Leonard Cohen.” (He is somewhat a pretentious fellow.) This praise became leavened later in our conversation when he admitted to having become so disgusted by Bob’s past performances he hadn’t seen him in a decade. But others at Expecting Rain, whose opinions held greater currency, said he’d sounded “happy,” “engaged,” and “sincere.” They likened his presentation to a “beat poetry reading,” praised his “conviction and confidence,” called hin a “sing/talk master.” “Unbelievable,” people said. “Amazing.” “Incredible.” It left them feeling “Sheer joy.” My favorite comment came from a Michael Lederman, who seems to follow Dylan from show-to-show: “A master linguist forcing us to hang on every word.”[vii]
And what words! Prior to the show, I had only listened to the CD a couple times, unlike past Dylan discs I had played enough to burn into my brain. It had not come with printed-out lyrics, so, for this article, I Googled each song and found them. Others have praised Dylan’s courage simply for venturing forth with fresh material unlike, say, the Rolling Stones who treat their tours like PBS do-wop fund raisers; but not only were his songs new, he was writing like never before. He has scrubbed himself clean of political cant and over-poeticized obscurity. He explores resignation and aspiration, desperation and transcendence. His work seems simultaneously mysterious yet divinable. He is speaking for himself but reaching toward us all. He even uses language he never previously has: “raw-hide lash”; “size of your cock”; “cut you up with a crooked knife.”
This Dylan’s mind – aged, edged – flits among “lost” lands, “dying” flowers, “killing” frost, and “burning hell.” He is aware of “dark” days, roads of “despair, “naked” burials, “distressed” souls, “mystic hours.” His soul is “distressed.” He has abandoned “hope.” He is “visiting morgues” and guided by those “from the underworld.” He is positioned amidst Purgatory and Armageddon and Judgment Day. He suffers from “bleeding heart disease.”[viii] “Death” lies in bed beside him, and “skeletons” fill his walls. The entire album rings – tolls – with names of and allusions to the departed. “Lots of people gone. Lots of people I know.” Marlon Brando, Leon Russell, Liberace, Bo Diddley, Ricky Nelson. Elvis, MLK, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly.
Dylan used to infuse his singing with snarls and scorn. He would plant his feet and spit the words – “Like a ROLL-ing stone” – underlining his apartness. Now he is searching for “love” and “happiness,” even “paradise.” He has learned he is “blessed” and has assumed a capacity to bring others “to life… with laughter and… tears.” This Dylan gives us no anthems about changing times we can easily chant to prove our place in the vanguard. He displays no attitude we can easily ape to differentiate ourselves from Mr. Jones. He had mapped the ground and was leaving it to each of us to navigate the terrain. Perhaps the bouquet of “Thank you”s he tossed was in gratitude for his still being here, still able to do this, while Brando and Bobby Neuwirth are gone.
The night was above us. The bay and the mountain at our backs. Beyond the mountain lay the sea. We reached our car a minute before the fighting couple. “How’d you like the show?” I said.
“Great,” she said.
“Beautiful,” he echoed.
Notes
[i]. New York Times. May 19, 2022.
[ii]. See Levin. “Who Was That Masked Man.” www.firstofthemonth.org. Sept. 5, 2019.
[iii]. I have seen Dylan perform two-dozen times and Adele almost that many. This looks like my ninth article on him – plus four blogs.
[iv]. The one credentialed philosopher of my acquaintance suggests I ask myself how much continuity exists between the “was-Bob” and the “is-Bob.” “Is there an essential Bob or just an evolving collection of attributes that demonstrate some continuities and some deletions?” Each fan, he says, has equal rights to an “essential Bob.”
[v]. According to jambase.com, Dylan had performed the same set for 37 straight shows, breaking his previous record of 36, established in 2014-15. In my experience, he usually changed a couple songs from show to show, but I defer to jambase on this.
[vi]. See Levin. “Dylan Does Dallas.” www.firstofthemonth.org. May 1, 2020.
[vii]. I later met a couple who had been disappointed in the show. Because of the lighting, they hadn’t known who was who. In fact, it took several numbers for the woman to realize that Dylan was behind the piano and wasn’t the guy in the cowboy hat playing bass. When I ridiculed her to Adele, she admitted she’d had the same problem.
[viii]. In 1997, Dylan was hospitalized for periconditis, a potentially lethal infection. “I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon,” he told reporters. Believe me, that kind of thing stays with you – for good as well as ill.