Bob Dylan live at the Hammersmith Apollo 2011

Before I start this review, I should probably say I am a huge Dylan fan. This review may be biased, just a warning.

Anyway, I went to see Bob Dylan at the Hammersmith Apollo on the 21st of November with four friends, two of which had never even listened to the man (incredible to me as that is). With Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame as a warm-up act, this was looking to be a good night. Arriving extra early, on my insistence, we got very close to the stage. I was, to say the least, very excited, as was my other Bob-loving friend who I’d brought for moral support if Dylan turned out to be, as I feared, terrible. The lights dimmed and Knopfler came on. There was a pretty good energy going in the room.

Knopfler, I’m sad to say, was as boring as easy-listening music, which is essentially what he was playing. I love and respect Knopfler as a guitarist, and I was pretty dismayed at how bored I felt by the songs he was playing. Even Brothers In Arms, though I usually hate ‘waiting for the hits’, I felt was yawn-inducing. Taking five-minute long guitar solos in every song, even for a guitarist of that caliber, got very very monotonous after the first few songs he played. Though all my friends agreed with me that that set was pretty lackluster to say the least, we did all agree that Knopfler was a pretty cool guy anyway, and his banter with the crowd was enjoyable enough. As my friend put it: ‘the kinda guy you’d have a drink with, not listen to’. Anyway, after his set failed to blow me away, I was very hyped for Mr. Dylan himself to appear. His Grammy was brought on stage and I was delighted to realise that his keyboard was set up right in front of me.

The fanfare announcing Dylan’s entrance to the stage whipped the crowd up to a fever pitch. In his cowboy boots, black suit with rhinestone collar, and white hat, he looked liked he’d stepped out of a fun-fair from the 1950s. At the first chords of Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat, I knew this music had a lot more balls than Knopfler’s had ever hit. Dylan, very surprisingly, almost crooned this number, his voice only occasionally lapsing in to his now trademark growl. It was enjoyable romp, though didn’t really hit the level I was hoping for. Surprising me again, Dylan picked up his guitar to strum along to a brilliant It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, twisting the syllables delightfully, and shockingly smiling to himself. In fact, Dylan smiled through the whole night, and played with the audience with his lyrics and his manner. This was not more evident than in the fantastic Things Have Changed, where he danced with his microphone stand and shrugged like the rebel from the sixties with the chorus ‘I used to care/But things have changed’. He seemed on fire with energy, humour, vigour and youthfulness. He looked and acted like a man of fifty, not seventy as he has recently turned. The music the band produced was the most powerful and danceable things I’d heard all year, and there level of skill and ability really blew me away. Dylan worked incredibly with them, prolonging sections as in Highway 61 Revisited and grinning as they effortlessly kept up. Dylan himself is the consummate performer, and he commands a presence on stage of which I’ve never seen the like of. His harmonica was powerful, sparse and brilliant. As my friend, who’d never listened to Dylan but now I think is an ardent fan, told me ‘I don’t think I’ll ever see a guy like that again’.

But I digress. After Knopfler left (he’d played with Dylan on his first three songs), the pace really picked up. Honest With Me burned with vitriol, humour and passion. Forgetful Heart saw Dylan’s ravished voice show how powerful an emotional tool it could be. The Levee’s Gonna Break felt like going back in to the fifties, people where dancing all around me. I realized what a songwriter Dylan was as he stepped away from his keyboard, pointed an accusing finger at the crowd and spat out ‘I pick you up from the gutter, and this is the thanks I get?’. Man In The Long Black Coat was fantastic, Dylan sounding like the devil as he snarled the line ‘every man’s conscience is vile, and depraved’. Ballad Of A Thin Man felt incredibly important and recent, a comment on everything. Again, Dylan’s broken voice added a passion and feeling that the original lacked. Shouting along to the chorus of Like A Rolling Stone was incredible, and Dylan smiled wryly as he acknowledge the effect of what he’d created all those years ago. However, the highlight of the night was the stunningly beautiful Forever Young, which was sung as a duet with Mark Knopfler. Knopfler, acknowledging his elder, almost bowed to Dylan as he sung the line ‘may your song always be sung’, Dylan nodded in acknowledgment of the well-deserved praise. As we left the venue, all of my friends seemed amazed and deeply impressed. So was I, Dylan’s live performances seemingly written-off in the recent years. As all my friends agreed, Bob Dylan seemed infused with this energy that was overpowering. He seemed, at all times, entirely present on stage. Lucky, the gig converted all my friends who had come with me. And for me, it was the best gig I’d ever been to. I felt honoured to see Dylan on such top form, and it was, certainly, a huge privilege.