On 24 May Bob Dylan turns 80 and that gives fans like me the perfect excuse to celebrate our love of the great man (not that we ever really need one, of course). As well as regularly listening to the records, I spend far more time than is probably healthy trawling YouTube for videos of Dylan in action. So, if you fancy joining me down a freewheelin’ wormhole, here is a small sample of my favourite live performances from across his career.
Boots of Spanish Leather, 1963
This is a YouTube video to listen to rather than watch. It’s an absolute wonder, not only because it is a lovely version of one of Dylan’s great ballads, but also because we hear him at ease, perhaps even enjoying himself, in an interview that bookends the performance. Often in this period, interviewers would irritate Dylan by asking him to speak as the voice of his generation, but as he chats to Studs Terkel, he seems relaxed, offering to play the song almost as an afterthought. He also gently corrects Terkel when the DJ asks to hear a ‘boy meets girl’ song. Dylan chuckles and replies: ‘This is girl leaves boy’, before unfolding the tune to stunning effect.
Idiot Wind, 1976
The key break up song from Dylan’s legendary breakup album Blood on the Tracks, Idiot Wind comes in a few distinct guises, and every Dylan fan will have their own favourite. Both the heartbroken New York version that preceded the more polished album recording are spine-tingling in their own ways, but for me the finest reading of the song comes from this concert at Hughes Stadium, Colorado (the same version that’s on the febrile live album Hard Rain). Dylan rips through Idiot Wind, unleashing all of the song’s pent up bile. It’s disturbing and exhilarating in equal measure.
Jokerman, 1984
It’s no secret that radical changes in direction have always been a hallmark of Dylan’s career. One of the most short-lived and tantalising came with his debut appearance on Letterman, an episode in which fellow guest Liberace did a cooking demonstration. Dylan blazed through three songs with a young LA punk band called The Plugz backing him.
After a cover of Sonny Williamson’s Don’t Start Me Talkin’, they played License to Kill and Jokerman, transforming two tunes from Infidels, the album that had come out the year before. Jokerman is particularly superb. The reggae-lite instrumentation of the album version is replaced by a razor sharp punk rock rendition, which suits the labyrinthine lyrics much better. Not even a prolonged instrumental section, the result of Dylan needing a replacement harmonica halfway through the song, can dent the pure rock ‘n’ roll energy of the performance. When it’s all over, Letterman asks if Bob and the band will come back and play every week. A smiling Dylan agrees, but sadly it wasn’t to be. His punk period began and ended here.
Blowin’ in the Wind, 1985
Dylan has played thousands of shows over the years, so they’re not all going to be golden. Take this performance of Blowin’ in the Wind from the US leg of Live Aid as an entertainingly egregious example. Introduced by Jack Nicholson, a sweating, wasted Dylan is joined by a sweating, wasted Ronnie Wood and a sweating, wasted Keith Richards for a dreadful, dirge-like attempt at the song.
It’s an awful performance by any measure, but in hindsight the amateurishness stands as a nice corrective to the overblown pomposity of Live Aid. My favourite bit is the raised eyebrows/cheeky grin combo Dylan gives Wood at the three minutes 39 seconds mark that seems to be saying, ‘Maybe we should have practiced, Ron’. Don’t worry Bob, only two billion people were watching.
Mississippi, 2001
A regular complaint about Dylan’s Never Ending Tour is that thanks to his idiosyncratic vocal delivery and penchant for rearranging the songs, it can be tricky to pinpoint exactly what Bob is singing at any given time. This can certainly be true of the old classics, but he often gives more faithful readings of his more recent songs. Take this shakily recorded version of Time Out of Mind’s standout track Standing in the Doorway from 2000, or this excellent crack at Love and Theft’s Mississippi, recorded at a gig in Washington in 2001.
The song is a brilliant distillation of the kind of world-weary Americana that has become one of Dylan’s trademarks in the last couple of decades. In fact, it’s one of the best songs of his entire career and he more than does it justice here.
And finally…
I haven’t included any of the famous footage of Dylan’s ‘going electric’ in the late 60s in this list. Instead, I’ve picked a clip about a Dylan live performance from this time, the vox pops featuring irate northerners, upset by their hero’s new approach. I always turn to these earnest fellas when I need cheering up. The guy who utters the immortal line, ‘Bob Dylan was a bastard in the second half’, is a hero for the ages, despite the fact he couldn’t be more wrong.
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