Peter Viney's Blog

Bob Dylan & His Band

The Rough & Rowdy Ways Tour

Bournemouth International Centre (BIC)

Saturday 5th November 2022, 8 p.m.

BAND
Bob Dylan – vocal, piano, harmonica
Bob Britt- lead guitar, acoustic guitar
Charley Drayton – drums
Tony Garnier- bass guitar, double bass
Donnie Herron – violin, mandolin, pedal steel, lap steel guitar
Doug Lancio – guitar

SETLIST

Watching The River Flow
Most Likely You Go Your Way (& I’ll Go Mine)
I Contain Multitudes
False Prophet
When I Paint My Masterpiece
Black Rider
My Own Version of You
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
Crossing The Rubicon
To Be Alone With You
Key West (Philosopher Pirate)
Gotta Serve Somebody
I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You
That Old Black Magic
Mother of Muses
Goodbye Jimmy Reed
Every Grain of Sand

Bob Dylan’s own site is putting up set lists. They appear identical. Even going back to November 2021, only two songs differ. Gone are the days when Tom Petty said he and The Heartbreakers were given a list of 140 songs which he might choose to call on a tour. This might be a good thing.

Dylan has got fed up with bootleggers to the point where no mobile phones are allowed in the hall, and they have to be stored in special pouches which you can carry with you. I didn’t bother. It was annoying for me- in central Bournemouth I normally get a lift down, then get a taxi back on the grounds that a taxi one way is cheaper than parking in Bournemouth council car parks. You can call a cab in the street, but rain is forecast and a phone would be useful so I could call my wife to pick me up. She won’t attend Dylan again – at five foot tall she had standing concerts where she never actually saw him. At least I’m not of a generation that rate phones along with their vital organs as essential. It’s a few years since I saw such stringency- a Van Morrison concert had phone storage areas outside. More recently artists have said that if a phone screen is seen lighted, they’ll stop. It might be a relief not to gaze through dots of light all over the place. There was a downside too. The car parks nearby were full at 7.20, forty minutes before the start. People had travelled a long way. I was born here. I worked at the old Winter Gardens opposite. So I found a street parking space, but it was PAY BY PHONE only. Doh! I had left my phone at home. I stayed in the car for ten minutes and decided a back street with deep puddles in heavy rain was safe enough for the half hour before restrictions expired at 8 p.m. Incidentally, in spite of the phone restrictions I saw someone taking pictures with an old fashioned basic camera … no flash, no lighted viewer. I doubt they were any good.

This is the second from last gig of Leg Three of a tour stretching from 2021 to, apparently, 2024. My seat is in the upper gallery, the cheapest and worst at £100. This was not on the original list of venues, ad I didn’t know it was on until a week ago, when a friend told me. The BIC is notorious for bad sound … previous concerts with appalling sound have included Bob Dylan (yes!), Crosby, Stills & Nash and worst of all, Hall & Oates. Victoria Woods opened her show by looking round and declaring, ‘This is the first time I’ve played in a Tesco Loading Bay.’ That describes the sound of the hall perfectly. On the other hand, Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen got near perfect sound here. It’s the quality and ability of the sound guys that counts.

I ponder value. Chichester’s Minerva Theatre has 283 seats. On Thursday we were in the best seats at £37.60 to watch a Broadway musical star in Local Hero. Music by Mark Knopfler. Seven piece band, and fifteen acting singing and dancing cast on stage. Here we have a capacity of 4,100 for a seated concert at £100 minimum – in the past, Dylan insisted on standing downstairs which increases that considerably. At least it’s all seated. Much of the stalls area was £160. The phone pouches with large numbers of people operating them must have cost quite a bit, but if you reckon the £60 difference in the stalls covered band and transport and hotels, and that ticketing costs, agency, management, hall, publicity absorbed 25% to 33% (unlikely), it’s still ends up close to a quarter of a million pound payday.

Prices are driven (not only by avarice, but) by what scalpers sell on tickets for. Artists have got pissed off with selling seats at £60 to see them re-sold on the internet at £200. Dylan’s prices are actually modest compared to what The Eagles have been known for – tours with £400 seats. The thing is, the Minerva seven piece band were as good instrumentally, and sounded better and far more varied in their space. That’s not why we’re here. This is BOB DYLAN. He’s eighty-one. Will this be the last time he plays Bournemouth / the UK / anywhere?

Also Rough and Rowdy Ways is the best album in many years. Let’s not argue how many. I’m in the mood for lyrics too. I’ve had a couple of weeks where Street Legal has been playing in the car on all short journeys. It is unprecedented for him to play every track from an album, let alone to stick with the concept through long tours.

Sound

I’ve never heard Dylan with good sound before. They’ve been working hard on it. The band are playing through tiny amps each mic’d into a large suspended PA system so the sound engineer has total control on what you hear, which is all through the PA. It looks and sounds as if the central PA speakers column, suspended in front of stage centre is dedicated entirely to Dylan’s vocals. It’s apparent at once that every instrument is clear, clean and distinct from the others. Unusually for the BIC, the bass guitar notes are clear and clean, though I’d credit Tony Garnier for that.

What isn’t clear in the first three songs is Dylan’s voice. I can hear that his mic is pushed up as far as it would go, just below where it would begin to distort, but in the first three songs, the band are drowning him out. Is it technology? It’s been like it forever, so I think he is incredibly hard to amplify. Lack of voice projection.

They got a partial handle on it by the fourth song, in the only way you can when the lead vocal mic is full on … they lowered the volume of the band. I had the feeling they kept doing it as well. I reckon it was by Key West that they achieved the best balance. However, I’d reduce the band volume considerably more. Even at the quietest point, it was very hard indeed to follow the lyrics. Yet, as I’ve often said, I saw Leonard Cohen at the O2 (20,000 people), Mercedes World (outdoors in heavy rain) and here at the BIC. In all those situations he could go down to a whisper over the full band backing, and his voice soared and the lyrics still had absolute clarity. It must be partly technique – I’ve seen Kenneth Branagh on stage, unamplified, and he can go really quiet, almost a whisper and still be heard in the back row. After sixty years in the game, Dylan still doesn’t know how to do that.

The stage

They’re standing on a raised platform of under-lit squares, with a plain orangey backdrop, It’s subtle. It looks good. Drums are old jazz style, at extreme one side, not the rock band central drummer on a drum riser. It’s more often stage left (i.e. audience right) , but Charley Drayton is stage right here. Tony Garnier on bass guitar and double bass is next. He has been with Dylan for many years. He has taken the title of Man in A Long Black Coat to heart.

Bob Britt on lead guitar is next … mainly electric (Les Paul early, Strat later), but acoustic on some numbers.

Dylan is central, behind an upright piano. By which I mean a conventional upright piano like the one on our landing, not electric piano. Strange choice. Carrying an acoustic piano on tour is a pain in the arse … worse than a Hammond organ for road crews. It has to be tuned every time it’s moved. Fortunately, cold LED stage lights mean it should stay in tune for the show. It would be easier in most venues to use the existing theatre grand piano and just have it tuned. Venues have grand pianos, they don’t have uprights. They should sound better too. Bob Dylan must want that basic church hall piano vibe. I have seen theatre plays where they want the appearance of an upright piano, but actually have an electric piano mounted in it. It could be.

The upright piano visually is another issue. He stands most of the time, so we can see him from chest up. When he sits, it’s just eyes and hair. ‘That’s why I didn’t come!’ said my wife when I told her, ‘You can never see him properly!’ His website says he also plays guitar and harmonica. He didn’t touch a guitar all night, and saved harmonica for the end of Every Grain Of Sand the closing song.

The second guitar player, Doug Lancio, adopts a weird stage position. He’s just behind Dylan’s left shoulder throughout. It’s as if he’s been told to watch Dylan’s fingers on the piano for chord changes.

Then extreme stage left is multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron, an essential player in adding SOME variety to the sound. Not enough.

Bob Dylan emerged from behind the piano twice. He managed to introduce the band, but having seen Al Stewart’s relaxed and interesting intros a few days earlier, I really missed even the remotest sense of interaction with an audience. Leonard Cohen did it. Paul Simon did it. It doesn’t take much just to acknowledge the audience exists. Bob Dylan (and Van Morrison) don’t feel that need.

I was not impressed with the musical arrangements at all. The band sounded very ‘samey’ with much the same approach to every number. switch to double bass here, violin there, electric to acoustic guitar, but there was little variety in the overall sound. Incidentally the whole sound improved considerably when Bob Britt was on acoustic guitar rather than electric.

Watching The River Flow

This isn’t an obvious choice. It dates back to 1971,. with Leon Russell (then at his peak of acclaim) on production and keyboards. It had a lengthy instrumental intro, but when Dylan started singing he was way too far back in the mix. It has never been a memorable song.

Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine).

Now we’re talking. In those lists of Greatest albums ever, Blonde on Blonde is usually Bob’s highest placed album. It was also the major opener or encore on the 1974 Before The Flood tour with THE Band (rather than the current HIS Band). However, this version is truly abysmal. OK, I know that Dylan abandoned the melodies of his major songs years … no, decades … ago. It’s totally unrecognisable if you don’t know what it is (I picked up the semi-spoken lyric), but I really loathed the sound of the rhythm section (Drayton and Garnier) plodding away in such a loud and leaden fashion. Go and listen to Levon Helm and Rick Danko playing this in 1974, then stand up and admit, ‘We are not worthy.’

As for Bob, ‘You can’t sing this any more, mate. Don’t try.’ Frighteningly bad.

I Contain Multitudes is my favourite song on the album. We saw Emma Swift cover it earlier in the year (REVIEW HERE). It’s on Blonde On The Tracks, a whole album of Dylan covers.

When Bob Dylan released “I Contain Multitudes” this year, I quickly became possessed. It’s magnificent and heartbreaking, a love letter to words and art and music, to all that has been lost and all that might be redeemed. To me this song has become an obsession, a mantra, a prayer. I can’t hope to eclipse it, all I hope to do is allow more people to hear it, to feel comforted by it, and to love it the way I do.” 

Emma Swift, May 27 2020

Now here the sound balance revealed that they hadn’t got the balance right at all yet. Britt’s lead guitar fills irritated me incredibly, being much louder than Bob’s voice, and so pissing all over a splendid lyric. They were interesting enough fills in themselves, but he is not Robbie Robertson. Robbie complemented the lyric, he didn’t drown it. I would say in Bob Britt’s defence that he had no control over the soundboard, who should have mixed his feed right down. As it was, the intrusive lead guitar completely ruined the song for me.

False Prophet

A churning blues riff. I just got Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern song in the post, haven’t started it yet, but throughout this album come snatches of song titles

Hello Mary Lou, Only The Lonely, Hello Stranger, Ball and Chain are in this song alone.

I sense the lead guitar is less dominant, but it’s still a real strain to pick out the lyrics. That works for rock. Robbie Robertson once said the pleasure in listening to Chuck Berry was puzzling out the lyric, but the thing about Rough and Rowdy Ways is the intimacy of the voice and the fascination of the words. Drown out the words, and you’re not left with much at all.

When I Paint My Masterpiece?

The fifth song. Did he play It? It’s on every set list at this point in the programme. The next one, the sixth song, was certainly Black Rider. By 23.30 on the night of the show the setlist was published on Bob Dyan’s website, and there it is. Confirmed. I had no idea I’d heard it. I just thought it must be a song I didn’t know.

This, the fifth had violin and acoustic bass, but I did not hear the tune, nor the words. I had no recognition. I kept hearing ‘Someday’ which is in the chorus of When I Paint My Masterpice, but the words weren’t at all clear. I thought they were trying to push Dylan’s mic and it approached distort. Could I not have recognised a song I’ve loved for years and written about at length?

The song was generously donated to The Band to bop up Cahoots. Their version, as with Tears of Rage, was the first released, then Dylan did it along with Watching The River Flow on More Bob Dylan Greatest Hits in 1972. Once you’ve heard Levon Helm sing it, there is no comparison with Bob’s version even back when Bob was able to sing the melody.

If this was inded When I Paint My Masterpice, it was truly fucking dreadful.

Black Rider There’s some old style folk club bawdiness hidden in the languid drawl of the song.

Black Rider, black rider, hold it right there
The size of your cock will get you nowhere
… Black rider, black rider, you’ve been on the job too long.

Then there’s the blues theme
Go home to your wife, stop visiting mine

I had expected the band to switch significantly between blues and other songs, as on the album, but everything sounds much the same.

My Own Version of You makes it on album with its sinuous backing. As with the rest of the album, you really really want to hear the words perfectly. The lyric points back to the opening song:

I’m gonna make you play the piano like Leon Russell
like Liberace, like St. John The Apostle

He’s also in Shakespearean mood:
Well, it must be the winter of my discontent …
Can you tell me what it means, to be or not to be …

Then he references the 20th century Shakespeare obliquely:

See the rawhide lash rip the skin from their backs (Blind Willie McTell)
A blast of electricity that runs at top speed (ghosts of electricity … Visions of Johanna)

There must be more hovering in there, but the point is you want to let those words wash over you. Acoustic bass again … it’s better when Tony Garnier is on acoustic bass, and they are finally establishing a band /voice balance,.


I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight right back from John Wesley Harding.

The tuneless spoken voice recitation version. I hate these versions of great Dylan songs with abandoned melodies.

Go and check out someone who could sing it … Bob Dylan once upon a time, or for me, Cher. OK, he can’t sing this kind of thing anymore. So leave it. Stick to later material like Rough and Rowdy Ways which he can perform well.

Crossing The Rubicon

A second Julius Caesar reference in one album (compare My Own Version of You). This is fierce stuff:

You defiled the most lovely flower
in all of all womanhood
Others can be tolerant – others can be good
I’ll cut you up with a crooked knife, Lord, and I’ll miss you when you’re gone

and

Go back to the gutter, try you’re luck, find you some nice pretty boy …

This is the best song so far in terms of presentation and balance.


To Be Alone With You

This is from Nashville Skyline.

The violin is a welcome change of instrumental texture with double bass and acoustic guitar. Generally a gentler instrumental better suits his current style.

Obviously, he pisses on the original song from a great height though. Terrible.

Key West (Philosopher Pirate)

Not the longest track (that’s Disc Two, Murder Most Foul) but it’s the longest here. I’m surprised that his pirate radio reference in the lyric is Radio Luxembourg, but then he was in Britain a few times in the pirate radio era. Radio Luxembourg was earlier pre-pirate (when he was here doing the TV play The Madhouse on Castle Street with David Warner, broadcast in January 1963. Radio Luxembourg wasn’t illegal, it was just a foreign station that every kid in Britain had their radio tuned to (and they recorded the DJs and shows in London). This is one of those glorious Dylan lyrics where I haven’t any idea what he means, nor do I want it interpreted for me, but I’m happy to let it wash over me on the record.

Twelve years old, they put me in a suit
Forced me to marry a prostitute
There were gold fringes on her wedding dress
That’s my story, but not where it ends
She’s still cute and we’re still friends

I thought they had the sound just right at this point. It was my least favourite track on the album, but here it’s standing out as the best so far.

Gotta Serve Somebody

This was on Slow Train Coming, but it was an introductory piece to the mind-numbingly crass lyrics on Saved, his worst ever album. Yes, worse even than the Christmas one. Still the original was with Mark Knopfler … see Local Hero above.

I do have the Saved era box set, and that was great playing if you could ignore those lyrics. You miss the absence of any backing vocals whatsoever on the current rendition. Can none of them add a chorus somewhere?

As through the evening, the Rough and Rowdy Ways material succeeds far better than the mangled versions of past glories like this.

I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You

I love this one, again a song with a great cover, this time by The Cowboy Junkies. You can hear the influence of those Great American Songbook projects on the words:

If I had the wings of a snow white dove
I’d preach the gospel, the gospel of love
A love so real (guitar section) … a love so true
I made up my mind to give myself to you

The song will out. I enjoyed this,

That Old Black Magic

This was recorded on Fallen Angels in 2016. I simply don’t like Dylan’s attempts at Great American Songbook material. Period. Any of it. It’s deliberately placed though, reinforcing the comment on I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You.

The jazzy ‘bugger the melody’ treatment works surprisingly. Maybe I can accept Dylan doing it to other people’s songs in a way I can’t take him trashing songs I’ve listened to and loved for years.

Mother of Muses

This has him badly stretched on the higher notes on the record. It’s a lovely song, and it’s one that a female singer will one day do a magnificent treatment of. At his age, the lyrics have tremendous poignancy, and it has an almost Irish air.

Mother of Muses, wherever you are
I’ve already outlived my life by far

then

I’m travelin’ light and I’m a-slow comin’ home.

Has he dropped it a key or two? The stretching for the notes is less apparent live. The balance has been established by this point. Great song.

Goodbye Jimmy Reed

You won’t amount to much, the people all said
‘Cos I didn’t play guitar behind my head
Never pandered, never acted proud
Never took of my shoes, throw ’em into the crowd

They get the blues riff down well. It’s simple enough but done with aplomb. Though plodding aplomb.

Every Grain of Sand

It was on Shot of Love. Bono of U2 once compared it to ‘the great psalms of David’ and Rolling Stone rated it tenth in the ‘Best 100 Dylan Songs’ list in 2015. Emmylou Harris put it on Wrecking Ball. Barb Jungr did a fabulous cover version too.

PLUS the melody is still intact. Phew! He can still sing it too. He introduced the band before it, which kind of makes it an encore, or rather just a closer. We got harmonica at last to great applause.

That’s the end. I’d read the playlists and knew it, but house lights stayed down, and lights on amps still glowed. The audience stomped for more. At last the stage lights came on to reveal Dylan and band standing stock still in a line at the back. Lights off. House lights on. Off we go. No encore.

OVERALL

I disliked the samey nature of the band and arrangements. I’d have had them even lower in the mix. We all came to see Dylan, and the attraction of his recent material is lyrics. Put that at the front.

To be fair, I enjoyed Mark Knopfler’s songs at Chichester two days before much more (and the younger less famous musicians were equally as good), and also Al Stewart more. Sorry!

***

OTHER REVIEWS ON THIS SITE:

• Bob Dylan 2002
• Bob Dylan 2006
• Bob Dylan 2017