On the road the past few weeks, the 82-year-old singer-songwriter has been peppering sets with surprising crowd-pleasers.
Bob Dylan famously does not do fan service. As a folkie, he went electric. As a mainstream artist, he had a Jesus phase. The Christmas albums: Not for everyone.
And in his live act, Dylan is also not a crowd-pleaser, at least in the conventional sense. He has played more than 2,500 concerts since beginning his so-called Never Ending Tour nearly 40 years ago, according to Bloomberg, and often performs his songs with new arrangements. In recent decades, though, Dylan, 82, has largely sat at the piano stone-faced and offered no more than a few words of banter to the crowd. As he once sang, “The man in me will hide sometimes to keep from being seen.”
Which is why Dylanologists have been so surprised and charmed by a feature of his current Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour, which is named for his 2020 album: geographically appropriate covers.
It started on Oct. 1, when Dylan, playing Kansas City, Mo., for his first American date in more than a year, opened with “Kansas City,” the Leiber and Stoller standard first made famous by Wilbert Harrison and then the Beatles. A few days later, Dylan opened his St. Louis show with “Johnny B. Goode,” in presumed tribute to the city’s native son Chuck Berry. Next up was Chicago, where Dylan opened with … “Born in Chicago.”
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Source: Music - nytimes.com
