I can’t help it if I’m lucky….
Early last year I read a book called Glimpses by Lewis Shiner, a wonderful book about a guy who changes rock ‘n’ roll history just by thinking about what might have been. I was so enthused by the book that I could hardly wait to write about it. The words came quickly and easily and I mailed the zine off at least a month before deadline. I don’t think that I’ve written anything so fast before or since and I consider the review to be some of my very best writing. As I was putting the finishing touches on the piece, I happened to receive the first issue of my subscription to Crawdaddy! magazine. The feature article was an amazing essay on the Beach Boys by Paul Williams and the very first words of the article were “In Lew Shiner’s book Glimpses….” I knew I had found something special in Crawdaddy! and wrote to Paul and told him so. He asked to see my Glimpses piece and before I knew it, I found myself writing for his zine. Imagine, all this started just from reading a book and wanting to tell people about it.
It was Paul Williams’ Performing Artist books about Bob Dylan that inspired me to write about music in the first place. His writing is unpretentious, full of passion and honesty and changed the way I listened to Dylan’s music. One of the main points of the two Performing Artist books is that Dylan’s career should not be evaluated solely on his officially recorded work. Since Bob Dylan is a “performing artist,” his concerts are opportunities for him to constantly reinvent his music, so his live shows should be considered, alongside his albums, in order to fully appreciate Dylan’s artistry. Needless to say, Paul Williams has gone to quite a few Dylan concerts over the years. Just this year, he traveled to Europe and followed Dylan around on tour there for a number of shows. So when a whole slew of west coast dates for Dylan’s U.S. tour were recently announced, I was looking forward to the possibility of meeting up with Paul at a few of the shows. Not only was I lucky enough to get tickets for two out of the three Seattle shows scheduled in June, Dylan was playing Spokane for the first time in almost fifteen years. I’d only seen Bob Dylan once before in Portland, Oregon in 1993 and now I’d be seeing him three times in less than a week and one of these times was virtually in my backyard. I couldn’t believe that I would be following Dylan around myself, even if it was only for the Washington State leg of the tour.
It was unusual that I hadn’t heard from Paul as all of this U.S. tour news was happening. I figured he might have stayed in Europe longer than he had planned to catch some more shows or that he was busy finishing up the next issue of Crawdaddy! But when I finally called to tell him about my good fortune, Paul’s girlfriend Cindy Lee Berryhill told me some bad news. Shortly after he returned from Europe in April, Paul was seriously injured in a biking accident and had to undergo brain surgery. She said that he had been hospitalized for the past month but was due home the at the end of the week and encouraged me to give him a call later. After days of worrying and not knowing what to expect, I made the call. Paul sounded good. He said he was still going to rehabilitation every day, that he had to be on anti-seizure medication, and had trouble sleeping and concentrating sometimes but said he thought he would be fine. It may be a long recovery but Paul said that he considered himself very lucky. He only sounded a bit frustrated over the fact that the doctors wouldn’t let him drive a car yet. It was encouraging that he talked about getting the next Crawdaddy! out and to hear that he was able to see Dylan play in Santa Barbara. (He would have liked to have seen a few more shows, of course!).
My excitement over going to my shows was diminished more than a little by the news of Paul’s accident. I was going to hear and see the very artist that Paul had written about so wonderfully. How could I not think of Paul and feel a bit sad while at the concerts? And it didn’t help that the my friend Jon, with whom I had planned on going to the shows, bailed out on me, claiming that he’d seen Dylan before and didn’t need to see him again. So it looked like this time I would be on my own, like a rolling stone (heh). Since I’m disabled and on crutches, I don’t think I’d ever taken a trip completely by myself before. On other trips when Kathy didn’t accompany me, I usually had someone to meet me or stay with once I got to my destination. This time I would be staying at a downtown Seattle hotel that was within walking distance of both the bus station and the Paramount Theater where Dylan was playing. So I managed to conjure up some of the adventurous spirit that I felt when I read Jack Kerouac’s books fifteen years earlier, hopped a bus and hit the road to follow the performing artist. I wouldn’t be able to see my friend and mentor in person on this journey but since I’d be following in Paul’s footsteps for a short while, I felt he would be there in spirit.
Seattle, June 2. Speaking like silence…
Bob Dylan’s recent appearance on MTV’s Unplugged has now been officially released in both audio and video formats. The video includes all of the eleven songs that are on the CD plus an additional bonus song. It is this extra tune, “Love Minus Zero/No Limit”, that is the highlight of the video for me. The song is a favorite of mine but the Unplugged performance especially exceptional. “My love she speaks like silence,” Dylan sings in a voice that matches the mood of the line. His vocal is subtle and restrained and the band plays with an equal sympathetic tenderness. After experiencing the first Seattle concert, I think tenderness may be the key to his current performances. A couple years ago, fans named Dylan’s seemingly non stop string of live dates the “Never Ending Tour.” Well, I’m going to dub these recent shows the “Try a Little Tenderness Tour.” What made the June 2nd show so special were the quiet moments, the tender moments. I’m not just talking about the way Dylan played the songs either. He also presented himself in a more tender way than ever before.
While he was in Europe, Paul was nice enough to send me a postcard from Prague with a brief report on the first shows that he went to see there. He indicated that Dylan had performed much of the time without a guitar and sang instead holding just a microphone. This was unusual. I couldn’t even imagine Bob Dylan on stage guitarless. He had done this occasionally on the much maligned 1978 tour, where fans and critics alike accused Dylan of “going Las Vegas”, but Bob as a crooner certainly hadn’t been a common sight at his live shows. Until now, that is. Two songs were performed sans guitar at the first Seattle concert but I wouldn’t mistake this new direction as a Wayne Newton impression at all. Once again, as with his singing and guitar playing, Bob Dylan has found his own particular style of doing things. Holding the microphone in his right hand, he rather stiffly grips the cord in his left while taking a step or two from side to side every once in a while. He doesn’t look entirely comfortable. In fact he looks pretty vulnerable and I think this only makes the performances more endearing. By putting down the guitar for these few moments, Dylan appears to be trying to share more of himself with the audience, making them focus their attention on the words he is singing and the way he is singing them. A new way of presenting himself. A new way of seeing him.
The first two songs of the mid-show acoustic set were sublime examples of this new on-stage method in action. Backed only by two of the band members, one on acoustic guitar and the other on stand up bass, “Mr. Tambourine Man” became almost prayer-like in it’s quietness, with his words and harmonica ringing throughout the theater. (If only the audience had been as quiet and respectful. Everyone around me talked throughout the whole song.) In contrast, the same spare instrumentation made “Masters of War” an even more scathing indictment of the powers that send their pawns off to battle. The first song, a meditation on songmaking. The second, a cry of burning outrage. Amazing. I continued to be awestruck as Bob put his guitar back on for the final acoustic number, a version of “Love Minus Zero” that was even better than the one on Unplugged! It’s beauty gave me shivers and almost some tears.
When I last saw Dylan in Portland he and his band rocked pretty hard. Most of the songs featured powerful instrumentals led by Winston Watson’s explosive drumming and Dylan’s rough but intense guitar solos. The overall impression of the first Seattle show was that it was more restrained and subtle than the 1993 performance. Not that Seattle night one didn’t have it’s moments of white heat though. A few concert standards made return appearances: “All Along the Watchtower” done a la Jimi Hendrix, and “Silvio” and “God Knows,” both rather minor album tracks that have become live highlights where the band really cuts loose. Even better was a blistering version of a song unearthed from the Blonde On Blonde album called “Obviously Five Believers,” which was an unusual but masterful choice to close the show. The final encore was a dark, stomping rendition of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” with Dylan taking one guitar solo after another while gazing up into the rafters, looking the audience right in the eye. And when the song ended he continued making contact by slapping and shaking hands with those in the first few rows. He really did seem to be letting his guard down for the first time in who knows how long. He seemed more giving. More tender. The evening passed by much too quickly but, wow, I have two more chances to see the artist at work ahead of me!
Seattle, June 3. Seeing the real you at last…
What makes following Bob Dylan around on tour so rewarding is that you never know what he’s going to do from one night to the next. Only four songs were repeated from the night before during the second Seattle show. I knew as soon as the concert started that this night was going to be different. The first song was the same one that has started every show this year so far, “Down in the Flood”, a somewhat obscure down and dirty blues from the Basement Tapes sessions. It was a great opening shot, like it was the previous evening, but this time with one difference: Bob had already abandoned his guitar. There he was, center stage, holding the microphone and stepping back and forth, as he did for the acoustic set the night before. Only this time the entire band was with him and was playing full tilt. It took me a while to get used to this odd juxtaposition of contrasting styles. Dylan’s on-stage demeanor certainly wasn’t made up of the usual rock ‘n’ roll moves but I ended up liking this new way of seeing him. It started the show with a real feeling of openness, an openness that was carried through the whole evening. What I’ll remember most about this concert is the feeling I got from it. It had a real friendly and relaxed atmosphere.
The second night’s crowd seemed to respond to Dylan’s more laid back and generous approach. Unlike the last evening’s audience, who were quite noisy and stood up throughout the whole show, the June 3rd crowd politely stayed in their seats for most of the concert. The song selection reflected the warm mood. “If Not For You,” a gentle and wistful love song, made an uncommon live appearance as the show’s second song, and the benevolence continued with the melodic “Simple Twist of Fate” from the Blood On the Tracks album, along with the lazy blues of “It Takes a Lot to Laugh.” The more attentive audience and the intimate feeling made me think the acoustic set, so transcendent the night before, would be something really special on a night like this but it wasn’t. The acoustic songs were very nice but the performances didn’t seem to be exceptional this time. Dylan got lost during the harmonica solo on “Mr. Tambourine Man”, breaking its fragile spell; “Gates of Eden,” a song that I’ve always found ponderous, was next up and didn’t help regain any of the lost magic; then “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, which may have been overshadowed by the memory of far greater versions that Dylan has played recently, ended the set. A less intense group of songs than the first time around but maybe a quieter mood was what Dylan was going for this time.
But the mood changed instantly near the end of the concert. With the first notes of the rousing rocker, “Seeing the Real You at Last,” the audience appropriately showed it’s true colors and rushed the stage, and remained wildly enthusiastic for the rest of the show. Dylan picked up on the change in attitude by offering a menacing, apocalyptic sounding “Ballad of a Thin Man” and even dusted off “Like a Rolling Stone” for one of the encores. I was a bit wary when I heard he’d been pulling out “Rolling Stone” again for some of these recent shows. He has done the old chestnut so many times before that I wondered if he could possibly even add anything new to it. I expected a rather tired version but that isn’t what I got. Instead, I got perhaps the most impassioned vocals out of all three shows I went to. Bob put his heart into the song and it was honestly very moving. It fit right into the generosity of most of the rest of the evening’s performances. This wasn’t some has-been slogging through his greatest hit one more time. This was a seasoned but vital artist still in love with was he does best: Creating a one of a kind musical experience in front of an audience.
I was very tempted to stay another day for the June 4th show. Very tempted. I probably could have gotten a ticket from a scalper for not too much money. But it had been a challenging trip and I was tired and a little lonely so I decided to go home and wait for Bob to come to my town. I’ll catch the final night of the Seattle stand through the magic of bootleg tapes anyway. Already, I can hardly wait to hear it.
Spokane, June 7. Jeeze, I can’t find my knees…
The Spokane show was announced after I had bought my tickets to the Seattle concerts and at first I wasn’t going to bother to go because it was going to be a general admission outdoor show. I figured that I would not be able to see the stage, and besides, Jon said he wasn’t going to this one either (though he did decide to go at the last minute) and I couldn’t imagine tackling this adventure all alone. So I asked my sister’s boyfriend Jim, who plays in a band himself, to go with me. He seemed genuinely excited about my offer so I got us both tickets. Even though I now had a bodyguard to protect me, I still prepared myself for the worst possible concert-going experience and looked at the Spokane date as little more than a bonus after seeing Dylan in Seattle. It turned out I needn’t have worried. In Spokane I probably had a better view of the stage than at either one of the Seattle shows. Amazingly, people were standing all through the show but no one stood up in front of me. (The Bob gods must have been looking out for me. Or at least the traveling spirit of Paul.) And since it was outdoors and the sun didn’t set until the last third of the show, a whole new dimension was added by the natural light. Dylan rarely uses elaborate stage lighting, but seeing him in the daylight added to the sense that he was really right there in the park with us. He looked great too! It was very uncomfortable sitting on the grass (my knees may never be the same) but I’m sure glad I ended up going. The Spokane gig came in second place after the June 2nd Seattle concert in my opinion.
It wasn’t too surprising that this night’s performance was like a combination of the two previous performances I saw with a few added bonuses thrown in. A gentle full-band version of “If You See Her, Say Hello”, another broken-hearted Blood On the Tracks song, was a pleasant surprise that filled the second slot of the set, and “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” was played with a slight country lilt to it, rather than the hot metallic 1965-66 arrangement of the song. Jim expressed his admiration for the way guitarist J.J. Jackson complimented Dylan’s own guitar playing and was astonished at the three guitar attack on “Watchtower.” My favorite part of the show was also back in top form. The non-electric contemplation and rage returned with “Tambourine Man” and “Masters of War” respectively. Then came “To Ramona,” a beautiful, sensuous bittersweet love song as only Bob Dylan can create.
Hearing “Tambourine Man” for a third time made me realize that Dylan is using the song’s harmonica solo in much the same way he used his vocals on the Unplugged performance of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” One gets the feeling that Dylan is aware of what a trademarked “Bob Dylan” performance is and when he exaggerates and plays around with these qualities, it’s fun to hear. It certainly was a lot of fun to hear on the Unplugged “Heaven’s Door” where Dylan hit a vocal groove that made it the best version of the tune in years. The “Tambourine Man” harmonica solo begins with one note rhythmically repeated over and over again. A string of delicate and kind notes until Dylan lets go for a climactic ending. It doesn’t sound like much on paper, I know, but it is very effective. And perhaps only Bob Dylan can make it work. It is a joyous moment. You may not be able to see him smile during the solo but you can feel him smile, as if he’s saying “I know this is a bit silly. But it’s GREAT, isn’t it?”
After seeing just three concerts, I understand why Paul goes to so many Dylan shows. It is a very addicting practice indeed. By the end of my little tour, the excitement of just getting to see Bob Dylan was replaced by the excitement of wondering what he was going to play and how he and the band were going to play it. At the Spokane performance I was settled in quite comfortably (well, mentally if not physically) and ready to take in all the evening’s subtleties. What an experience! The word is that he’s coming back around in the fall and if he hits my part of the world again, I’ll be there as many times as I can. Although right now Dylan looks like he’s in good shape, who knows how much longer he can continue touring? I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able tour along with him either. It’s exhilarating but exhausting at the same time. I figure I’d better grab it while I can and savor the moments. You never know. One day you could be riding your bike and……
How did I do on my first extended Bob Dylan experience, Paul? I missed you. See you next time around.
JUNE 1995
Letter to the Vatican 