April 27
Bob Dylan does not make life easy for his fans. He might be the only performer who fills his set lists with crowd pleasers while doing everything possible not to please the crowd. This two-hour concert at the cavernous O2 stadium was no exception. Immobile behind a little keyboard to the side of the stage, his face shadowed by the brim of a fedora, Dylan treated his adoring followers with the disdain of a haughty lover. He barely acknowledged their presence. He wilfully contorted his legacy with hard-to-recognise versions of his most famous songs. He started early (8pm) and finished early, as if he had better places to be. And he left his audience wanting more than he was prepared to give.
Having been pretty much constantly on tour since 1974, Dylan has grounded his concerts in that timeworn musical style with no beginning or end: bar-room blues. As his band launched into a long, chugging version of Maggie's Farm, it became apparent that Dylan was stitching his own material into the wider fabric of American music. It took a long time to work out that an extended electric blues jam was in fact The Times They Are a- Changin.' On The Chimes of Freedom, he gruffly raised the inflection of each line in a way that made him sound like a malevolent imp. Dylan is the Rumpelstiltskin of popular culture, cackling at his own cleverness and ability to keep everyone guessing. It's a bizarre and unique spectacle. This is not a rock show, given the lack of theatrics, nor does it have the intimacy of an evening with a singer-songwriter, as Dylan sings in a way that makes his words hard to decipher. It's more like a brief stop on a journey that presumably only ends when he either dies or gets too old to keep on touring.
Songs from the much lauded Modern Times featured heavily, but there was nothing from his masterpieces Blood on the Tracks or Desire or, more surprisingly, from his just-released Together Through Life. An atypically faithful version of Like a Rolling Stone, one of the greatest songs written, finished the main set. When Dylan spoke in order to introduce the band, the crowd went wild. Then, after a short encore that included All Along the Watchtower and Blowin' in the Wind, the band shuffled off. Dylan's genius is such that he cannot help be compelling, but as a performer he is wilfully frustrating.
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