Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind | Hacker News Reader

Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind

nytimes.com

23 pointsartur_makly35 comments

Speaking of being lost you might enjoy this story from 2009 where people called the cops on Bob Dylan for being "an 'eccentric-looking old man' in their yard," and the officer did not recognize him:

"'I asked him what his name was and he said, 'Bob Dylan,' Buble said. "Now, I've seen pictures of Bob Dylan from a long time ago and he didn't look like Bob Dylan to me at all. He was wearing black sweatpants tucked into black rain boots, and two raincoats with the hood pulled down over his head."

"He was acting very suspicious,'' Buble said. "Not delusional, just suspicious. You know, it was pouring rain and everything."

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/jersey-homeowner-calls-cops-bob-d...

Saw him 234 nights ago. My date and I have each seen-heard him a few times before but none of them shared. We both thought it was an incredible show, which we wouldn't say about all of them.

This interviewer had good questions. Didn't know him, but was pleasantly surprised to read a bit about him.

I get a free assist over that paywall from my public library.

What is the significance of the 19th?

Anyone have a link without a paywall?

http://archive.is/eMHFp

The com. trick works

More to the point, Bod Dylan has a new record, Murder most Foul. It might be a good album or not, though there's probably no going back to the Dylan of the '60s, or the '60s anyway. In any case, noone's going to find out how good the album is from a NYT article and I don't know why we have to spend so much time reading adverts disguised as thoughtful interviews.

The new record is “Rough and Rowdy Ways” and comes out on June 19th (note that this is a significant date).

Songs for the album: “Murder Most Foul”, “False Prothet”, and “I Contain Multitudes” were pre-released in the past month or so.

Thanks, my mistake. I confused the title of a song with the title of the album.

Of course it's common for musical artists to speak up when they have a new release, but the interview was actually pretty thoughtful. That, and most if not all of his new stuff is available essentially for free through various channels...he doesn't need our money.

Dylan is among the treasures our lifetime and continues to influence many other musicians. The fact that he's not only still alive but also making music (even though it's gone in a direction I personally am not fond of) is a great gift for the world we live in now more than ever. A true intellectual.

Worst concert I ever attended. Absolutely zero engagement with the audience. Played what he wanted to play, and that didn't include most of his hits. Showed up, collected his fee, left.

Strangely, saw him (twice!) almost 25 years ago and thought the same thing.

I saw him in 2008 when I was doing rock journalism covering what was then Rothbury Festival. Crowd was attentive but it was not the highlight of the weekend.

This quote struck me:

“What role does improvisation play in your music?

None at all. There’s no way you can change the nature of a song once you’ve invented it. You can set different guitar or piano patterns upon the structural lines and go from there, but that’s not improvisation. Improvisation leaves you open to good or bad performances and the idea is to stay consistent. You basically play the same thing time after time in the most perfect way you can.”

That struck me too... But now that I have read others here saying that he is known to rework his songs on the fly, this answer strikes me as BS. Was he just being completely sarcastic?

He may have played one of his hits but you didn't notice. When I saw him live last summer he played Like a Rolling stone but it was unrecognisable. He changed the vocals completely, different melody, different rhythm. The only consistent part was the lyrics themselves (which were hard to make out) and the chords. I only realised halfway through what song it was.

I personally enjoyed listening to his new stuff; his new voice is better suited to it.

I've seen him twice – once in Stockholm and once in Gothenburg. I had heard before that he basically just gets on stage, plays his set and then leaves, barely saying a word.

Being prepared for that I expected zero interaction and given that frame of mind it actually kind of worked. It'd probably work better in a smaller, more intimate setting, but it did work – I enjoyed both concerts. I'd probably not pay to go see a third though, I'll be happy playing the records instead.

Yeah - I don't really need musicians to stand up there and tell their life story, I'm there to hear the music and I assume most of them prefer to just play. My beef was - there are shows where you can tell the musicians are there because they love to play their music and share the experience with their fans. Watching Dylan, all I could think about was that Don Henley line about "Saw a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac" IE: someone who has sold out.

Ray LaMontagne was the same way when I saw him a decade ago. In interviews he said that people came to hear him sing, not to hear him talk.

> played what he wanted to play > Didn't include most of his hits

I am always baffled when people expect a jukebox from artists of this caliber. When I go to see an artist I want a unique experience. Dylan is known to rework his songs on the fly live and you never know what you're going to get. He's got one of the best backing bands on earth who can go wherever he wants too. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. Sounds like you might have caught the former which sucks but it's the nature the way he approaches live music. It's anything but safe and doesn't always work. That takes serious guts IMO and it's much more exciting that seeing some geriatric geezer punching out his hits and "collecting his fee".

> I am always baffled when people expect a jukebox from artists of this caliber

Plenty of artists of his caliber perform shows with regular renditions of their hits. But some artists just do things differently.

And the argument goes both ways: I don't, personally, want a "unique" experience when I'm paying several hundred dollars to see an artists whose songs I love (particularly the way they were recorded). There shouldn't be anything baffling about that.

Don't call them artists if you're expecting them to give the audience what it thinks it wants.

I am a big Dylan fan and also of improvisational (jazz, jam bands like Phish and Grateful Dead) music. I don't need/expect anyone to "jukebox play the hits". Your comment states a few generalities trying to discredit parent, but I don't think they apply here.

I saw Dylan a few years ago and it was a nightmare. He played 3 Sinatra covers IIRC. He'd recently done an album of that. No idea why, the whole point of those songs is to be a really good singer / crooner and he isn't. The band was good of course but he was not engaged. When he did Tangled Up in Blue I didn't recognize it until the second verse. Changing a song is cool, but couple that with detached incomprehensible singing and it is not good at all.

I'm long-time Dylan fan and I've seen him live quite a few times.

I can honestly say he puts on one of the least coherent concerts of any famous musician. Yes, he reworks the songs nightly but he can barely sing anymore and no one can tell what he is saying anyway, so the results are unpredictable. But sometimes it can be great.

He's been doing it like this for decades so it's just part of the deal. Take it or leave it. I think it's fair to call it out and fair to enjoy it.

There was a question in this interview where the interviewer asked what role improvisation played in his performances, and Dylan said absolutely none.

I was a bit surprised by this answer but too it at face value. I am a Dylan fan but haven't seen him live. Now that I have heard a description of live shows, I assume the response to the interview question was pure sarcasm.

i've had similar experiences with other 'older' artists.

I saw BB King a few weeks before he died. He was practically asleep on stage, stooped in a chair, with his backing band doing the hard work. His guitar work was beautiful, of course, but it was sad as a fan to see.

I was at Dick Dale's second to last concert. Similar stuff.

Similar stuff with artists that aren't yet dead or dying, but are 'tired'.

The Rolling Stones are better experienced by watching a good cover band. Same with The Sex Pistols.

It sucks as a fan, but as a human I understand. Can you even imagine living that life style for that many years and that many concerts?

I get burned out thinking about it.

Seen BB King in the early 2000s. It was basically the same thing.

That said, I don't think you goto a BB King concert for him to be standing up wailing on a guitar. If you want that maybe check out Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

The one I want to see is Derek Trucks...

Bonamassa. I've seen Trucks before, and while I'll recognize his skill, I find his blues kind of... blah. But that's on me; to each their own.

Bonamassa is another good one. I'll give you that one.

I'd love to see Samantha Fish as well.

Conversely, I saw Paul McCartney in 2013 (at age ~70) and to this day it's the best concert I've ever been to. But I saw Bob Dylan around that same age (I think in '09 or '10) and he managed to underperform my incredibly low expectations.

That's how it was when I saw John Lee Hooker too - was amazed he made it through the show without falling out of his chair, but oh man, there were still moments of greatness in his voice and fingers. I saw BB King in the mid-2000s and he was so engaged with the audience, so clearly happy to be there sharing his music.

> Played what he wanted to play, and that didn't include most of his hits. Showed up, collected his fee, left.

This I had zero issues with.

What really ruined the show I saw was the sloppiness of both dylan and the band. I know he kind of just improvises live and his band has to catch up, but I'd have figured they'd have gotten the hang of it by now

also, technically they played plenty of hits, unrecognizable versions of the hits, but hits nonetheless

Thank you!

Again - I don't really have a problem with the set list so much as the sloppiness. People have voted in a sense, when they choose which of your songs they believe to be the good ones. They come to your concerts because they want to hear you play those songs. If you want to do different arrangements to keep it interesting, that's just awesome! and fans will probably love you for it. If you are tired of those songs and want to do other things too - great! But, if your musicianship is sloppy and your rearrangement of those hits suck, then you are doing your fans, who pay a butt-load of money these days, a serious disservice.

Yes, dear downvoters, I too enjoy the live aspect of concerts where they don't just lip-sync to the studio versions of their music. And yes, he did play some of his hits in otherwise unrecognizable form. My point was it still wasn't enjoyable. He looked completely miserable: it was not entertaining. Musically it was not a quality product. It was exactly what Steven Stills told him when Dylan first played through the Blood on the Tracks album: He's a fine songwriter, but he's not a very good musician.

Just for context, let's include the complete text of that anecdote from https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-oral-histo...

Nash: “Somewhere in the Midwest, I think in Minneapolis, we were at the hotel after the show and Bob Dylan came by. Stephen and Tim Drummond immediately corralled him into a different room and shut the door. That wasn’t nice.”

Drummond: “He played us all the songs from Blood on the Tracks on acoustic guitar. We were on twin beds, across from each other. Oh God, I can’t tell you how great it was. At one point Stephen said something to him about the songs not being good. I was so Goddamn embarrassed. He was probably coked out. Dylan, being the arrogant man that he was said, ‘Well, Stephen, play me one of your songs.’ That was the end of it. Stephen couldn’t even find one string from another at that point.”

Nash: “Stephen walked out of the room and said to me, ‘Bob’s no musician.’ In the back of my mind, I also remember Stephen buying a Precision bass for Paul McCartney and telling him it was time to start playing a ‘real’ instrument and not his old Höfner. He’s saying this to one of the greatest bass players in the world.”

You have described every Dylan engagement ever played. You might not be aware that he spent an entire tour, 18 months on multiple continents, enraging audiences who felt betrayed that he strayed beyond the strait and narrow of "folk" music by using e.g., electric guitars.

I don't know how to encourage you to engage with Dylan's music, except to say that perhaps he's there to show you something you didn't expect - and it's worthwhile to try to understand what he's doing.

He's not really there to entertain you. He's more likely there to talk to you, to relate something to you.

> Worst concert.. Zero engagement.. Played what he wanted to play..

I also attended a luke-warm show of Dylan's, but I actually sympathized with him. Sure it's insulting to the audience, but that's who he is.

I think Bob Dylan has always had a love-hate relationship with the public and the media, and being an "entertainer". He's a poet and song-writer first; inconsistent as a singer - amazing at times, unlistenable at others; and kind of un infant terrible at playing the expected role of performer.

He's "selfish" in a way that many artists are. When he's inspired and loves what he does, maybe there's an audience that can share the experience with him. Otherwise, I don't think he cares about the job of entertaining people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com