Bob Dylan wasn’t great. But that doesn’t really matter

The jazz expert and festival director Richard Williams is one of the most perceptive and humane observers of the great  musicians of our times. If you don’t know his writings, start right here.

Richard has been to a Bob Dylan gig. Again. Like many others, he felt let down. But is that really the point?

There were moments of grace, mostly when the instrumentation was reduced to voice and piano, as in “Key West”, or voice and guitars, as in “Mother of Muses”. The first two verses of “Made Up My Mind” were lovely, as were the out of tempo bits of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, delivered against Tony Garnier’s bowed bass. By the time Dylan got to “Goodbye Jimmy Reed”, the penultimate item on the set list, he was singing beautifully, with clarity and marvellous timing.

Every time you see him now, you think it might be the last. So this one wasn’t great. But that doesn’t really matter, even if there aren’t any more. Time past, time present: lucky to have it at all, all of it.

Read the full review here.

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