Still There

Second and third thoughts on Monday's concert - that's how Dylan hits you; it takes time to process.

I'd been mildly worried ahead of the show that it'd be a reprise of 2011, with a lot of repeats. Of course, knowing how the Bobster likes to keep it new it was a very mild worry indeed, and in the event rightly so. We did get, It Ain't Me Babe, Honest With Me, Simple Twist of Fate, Highway 61, Love Sick, Tangled Up In Blue, Thunder on the Mountain and Ballad of a Thin Man again, but Tangled & Thunder were so different as to be unrecognisable (with something like a third of Tangled sounding like entirely new lyrics, or at least ones that I didn't recognise) and the sheer pleasure of hearing the others overrode any sense of dull familiarity. Actually Love Sick always sounds freshly spooky no matter what.

Everything from Tempest, and there was a lot, sounded instantly classic, and was enthusiastically received by an obviously intelligent audience. It's difficult to think of anyone else who manages so decisively not to be a nostalgia act. Even when you get the shivers-down-the-spine-I-can't-quite-take-in-I'm-actually-hearing-this-live stuff part of the fascination lies in the reinvention involved (as opposed to reproduction) and trying to figure why Desolation Row, When I Paint My Masterpiece, Blowin' in the Wind now mean something important again to him. Or why Tryin' To Get To Heaven needed to become jaw-droppingly new.

And then there are the sort of guilty pleasures. I enjoy Adele's version of Make You Feel My Love, and her version of it in tribute to Amy Winehouse in the Albert Hall concert lingers in my mind as something very special, but the warmth that Dylan (and that band!) brought to it on Monday was extraordinary. Sometimes it's the simplicity of the man that beguiles. (I've read more than one account of Time Out Of Mind that writes off the song as lightweight, by the way. But what did the critics ever know?) I was vaguely hoping for one of the songs from the Christian period as well, having been knocked every which way by the Trouble No More set of late, and sort of exploded with delight when we got a massive, pounding Gotta Serve Somebody.

It occurs to me that it's madness to be disappointed over Dylan not playing something since the list of stuff to be disappointed over is endless. All you can do is surrender to the perfection of the moment and be grateful you're there.