Seventeen In '88 - A story of teen angst, long walks, dirty jokes, haunted rooms, haunted psyches, records as refuge, roads like mazes, young love, bonding and unbonding, deep foreboding, senseless death, and innocence peeled away slowly, layer by layer.
On July 22, 1988 Bob Dylan
performed at Starwood Ampitheatre in Nashville, a show that my friends and I
attended. This was among the earliest shows of what would come to be known as
Dylan’s “Never Ending Tour”, which is still in progress today.
I’ve seen Dylan a number of
times in the years since. Each show is generally a unique experience, but that 1988 show remains memorable not only because it
was the first, but also because my friends and I all had a similar reaction to
it; we thought it kind of sucked.
At the time Dylan was at a
low point artistically. His recent albums had been misguided, uninspired
affairs, with Dylan perversely attempting to make slick, radio-friendly
product; a sharp contrast to the approach he'd taken to making records over the previous two decades. Realizing that it wasn’t working, Dylan found himself at a
crossroads. He recalls this time with candid insight in his Chronicles
Volume 1, explaining that he felt
washed-up, directionless, not sure if the world needed more Bob Dylan music.
If my friends and I could have
talked to him we would have told him “Screw all that, you’re Bob Dylan, man!” Teenagers always have snappy answers for
difficult problems.
Turns out Dylan found the
necessary inspiration elsewhere. As he recounts in Chronicles, somewhere near the end of the decade Dylan had a
mysterious epiphany. Finding himself moved by the performance of an obscure jazz singer at an out-of-the-way little
bar, Dylan came away with an idea – a whole new way of approaching his music.
He spends many pages explaining the musical and practical implications of his
new process, which is, typically, both absolutely fascinating and completely
baffling. For page after page Dylan explicates the technical aspect of the
approach in a way that is so confusing I would believe it was a put-on, if I
weren’t absolutely certain that Dylan would never dream of doing such a thing. He is known for his sincerity, after all. Yes, kidding.
In layperson’s terms, the new
approach turned out to be a pared-down band playing a free-wheeling (what other
way to describe it?) setlist night after night (and eventually year after year)
using a musical formula that Dylan stresses is not improvisatory, even though
it often sounds like it.
What we heard that Saturday
night in summer 1988 was the early fruit of his new approach, and we found
it…odd. People often complain, especially upon hearing him live for the first
time, that Dylan renders his songs unrecognizable by rearranging them
drastically and delivering his lyrics in a voice that veers between mumble and
croak. That complaint definitely held true for us. I think we got all the way
down to the weatherman and the wind blowing before we recognized the opening
number, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”.
In a way, I didn’t care. Such
was the impact of the man’s mystique on my impressionable mind that merely
being in the same outdoor amphitheater might have been rewarding enough.
Concerts were still a new thing to me. At the time, the only major musical act
I’d ever seen live had been R.E.M., so the weeks and days before the show had
been full of giddy anticipation. Bob Dylan is coming here! And we’re gonna see
him!
Maybe it’s a fundamental fact
of life that the build-up, the anticipation before a big event is usually more
fun than the event itself. I remember my brain spinning
with songs that I hoped he would play. “Maybe he’ll do “Just Like Tom Thumb’s
Blues”! Maybe he’ll do “To Ramona”!” That summer I had become enamored of the Desire album, so I harbored an altogether unreasonable hope
that he might do “Oh, Sister”. 24 years later I’m still waiting for Bob Dylan
to play “Oh, Sister”. This is what being a fan is about.
He did pepper the set with a
few wild cards, as would become routine. (There’s even a website on which
participants play a game trying to guess what songs Dylan is going to play.) In
addition to warhorses like “It Ain’t Me Babe” and “Like A Rolling Stone” he
dragged out a rather affecting version of “I’ll Remember You” from the
misbegotten Empire Burlesque, and much
to our surprise and delight he also played “Simple Twist Of Fate” from Blood
On The Tracks. Not that we were able to
easily distinguish it.
It all went by in a blur. And
of course it was anticlimactic. The performance sounded chaotic and rushed, as
though the band felt they were being chased by unseen assailants. The arrangements
sounded diffuse, shambolic. The set itself was short – just over an hour. And
of course, Dylan mumbled all the words.
Being so enamored of Dylan and
his myth meant that I searched for meaning in his every move, so I strained to make excuses for the haphazard performance. “Maybe he played badly because
that’s what we deserve!” I remember saying. “So, it’s okay to have contempt for
your audience?” Elliot retorted. I had no response.
Through the years though, I’ve
come to an understanding about the Dylan live experience, and how Dylan feels
about his audience would seem to be a moot point. (And good luck figuring out
how he feels, anyway.) Some people are of the opinion that the quality of a
Dylan show is dependant on the mood that Dylan is in. Dylan contests this idea,
insisting that his own emotions never enter the equation, that nothing in his
shows is left to chance. I’ve come to believe that he’s not bullshitting. Maybe
this is the re-emergent impulse of that seventeen year-old who still wants to
look for ways to excuse a hero, that kid who’s still besotted by the myth, but
I’ve seen Dylan live many times through the past two decades and I think
whatever the specifics of the formula he decided on back in the late ‘80’s
consist of, it’s working. Maybe the shows vary in intensity or tone, but the
result is usually the same, at least soundwise. Drawing on the spirit and
formal strictures of decades of American song, Dylan and his band create a sly,
wildcat brand of music that is unerringly earthy, evocative, challenging,
invigorating. He’s just consistently good, like the Stan Musial of rock and
roll. Whether or not the listener enjoys it, is moved by it, is dependent on
the mood of the listener, not Bob Dylan.
Expectations are a tricky
thing. “What was it you wanted? Tell me again, I forgot.” Dylan would demand on
his next album, knowing full well that if he asks a few thousand people, he’ll
get a few thousand different answers. Art is subjective, of course, and people apply
their own personal preconceptions to any artistic work, which can be especially
complicated when the artist in question has previously created work that has
profoundly affected them emotionally. This is particularly complicated in
Dylan’s case. All through the years of the Never Ending Tour I’ve seen and
heard people exulting, aloud, in print, online, about how the most recent Dylan
performance was the best they’ve ever seen, the man has never seemed so vital,
so alive, fiery and funny. And all through the years I’ve seen and heard people
complaining, aloud, in print, online, that the most recent Dylan performance
was a typically erratic one, with Dylan mumbling and growling unintelligibly
while his backup group played a glorified bar-band brand of roots rock.
Maybe everyone is right.
Dylan’s shows could be just an aural Rorschach test. Or maybe the experience of
hearing Dylan’s music is just a slippery, ever-evolving process.
Perception, after all, is a
tricky thing too, and this is one of the many things that Bob Dylan’s music
communicates. The set that Bob Dylan recorded for MTV’s Unplugged in 1994 was
widely derided at the time, for many of the same reasons listed above – bar
band shabbiness, unintelligible singing, etc. Back then I didn’t necessarily
disagree with that response. But I listen to it now and I’m startled at how
direct, how purposeful and clear the music comes across. Even Dylan’s voice
seems to have smoothed, attained a kind of clarity, with the age of the
recording. Which makes me wonder if I would think the same about that 1988 show
if I heard it again.
Who knows. Maybe the show
really was as rushed and haphazard as we thought it was. It was early on in the
process of Dylan discovering his true voice again, and maybe he hadn’t quite
found his groove yet.
He would. Over the course of
the next several months and years Dylan would slowly climb back into full-on
cultural and artistic relevance. Summer 1988 had found his latest single, the
Grateful Dead-alike (fitting, given the Robert Hunter co-writing credit)
“Silvio”, getting all kinds of radio airplay, even hitting #5 on Billboard’s then-new Mainstream Rock chart. But that was maybe just a blip. Or maybe a warning shot.
Later in the year he would find even bigger chart glory with his pals in the
Traveling Wilburys. And in 1989 his Oh Mercy album got the best reviews of any Dylan album that decade. That same
year my friends and I went to see Dylan again at the same venue. Part of
Dylan’s strategy, for whatever reason, was to hit the same cities repeatedly, year after year.
The crowd had been cut in half, but this time we thought the show was much
better.
Was it? Or were we just more attuned to it, having had the experience of seeing him the year before?
Dylan has been out there ever since, still on the road, headin' for another joint, night after night, year after year. Couple hundred dates most years. Band members come and go (and occasionally come back), and set lists mutate, but Dylan has stayed true to the same basic approach. It was a cool thing to see him at that point in his career, a point that ended up being so important, where having come to the crossroads he chose a path and resolved to stay on it.
