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Rating: Rome, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Sala Santa Cecilia - April 4, 2018
Darkness. Soft lights. An acoustic guitar begins to strum some intro chords, while slowly, one by one, the musicians take their places on stage. The last shadow to step onto the scene is small, uncertain, hunched, unsteady on the legs; the audience rises in reverence at the entrance of the old sage in a leather jacket who stands behind the piano but does not sit down. Behind him, the soft lights reveal, on a small table, the unmistakable shape of an Oscar, perhaps the one he won in 2000 for Things Have Changed, soundtrack of the movie Wonder Boys. The first decisive piano notes interrupt the guitar intro, and immediately, at this signal, the band bursts into the just mentioned song, "epigraph" of the entire evening:
«This place doesn’t do me justice: I picked the wrong city, I should be in Hollywood... For just a moment, I thought I saw something move. I need to take dancing lessons, learn the jitterbug rag, there are no shortcuts, I have to disguise myself. Only a fool here would think they have something to prove. A lot of water has passed under the bridges, and more stuff has come around... Don't stand up gentlemen, I'm just passing through. People have gone mad, these are strange times, they’ve locked me out, I'm out of the game: once upon a time I cared, but things have changed.»
The audience - even those who didn’t expect it - is immediately captivated by the charismatic boldness of the old sage and his raucous yet powerful, expressive voice. Those who expected him to be listless, tired, indifferent (including yours truly) are pleasantly surprised: tonight, clearly, he is in the mood. Closely observed in the minutes before the concert began (precisely at 9:00 PM!), the audience turned out to be surprisingly colorful: many young people (who will turn out to be the most excited by the concert!) and not-so-young, more or less composed, or rock enthusiasts, or fans: a gentleman in the front rows even wears the same black shirt with white polka dots that Bob wore in his famous MTV Unplugged performance. Many among the young know the lyrics and try to sing along, but it’s impossible and frustrating because - as always - the old man never performs the same song as he recorded it on disk. The more "mature", who have been listening to the artist for decades but are less proficient in English, try to recognize the oldest and most famous songs, but the few that are proposed are - as always - completely unrecognizable. Of Tangled Up in Blue only the title phrase remains: the verses have been entirely rewritten, the music has been reinvented practically from scratch (it was a folk ballad, now it's an electric blues): only the few who manage to catch the title in the passionate murmurs at the end of each verse can identify what they are listening to.
The band has a good drive, the five musicians who have been accompanying Bob for years (Stu Kimball on rhythm guitar, Charlie Sexton on lead guitar, Tony Garnier on bass and double bass, George Recile on drums, Donnie Herron on steel guitar, violin, and mandolin; naturally, the five are not introduced at the end of the concert because Dylan, as we know, does not utter a word on stage) are a guarantee, but surprisingly at the center of the concert is actually Bob's unleashed piano: standing during the more rhythmic pieces, seated in the slow ones, Dylan - who has definitively abandoned first the guitar and then even the harmonica - leads the entire concert playing around on the keyboard, with a technique actually quite modest, often naive, but ultimately very effective in its attempt to reproduce (or at least so it seems in some pieces) those solo parts, often casually improvised, that he would have once entrusted to the harmonica. Only on four occasions does Bob move away from the piano and stagger to the center of the stage: in the concluding and very successful Long and Wasted Years (the last farewell before the encores: Ballad of a Thin Man and an unrecognizable to the point of alienation Blowin' in the Wind, but stunningly performed), but especially in the three covers, one for each of the albums of his trilogy dedicated to the standards of the Great American Songbook: Autumn Leaves from Strangers in the Night, Melancholy Mood from Fallen Angels, and Once Upon a Time from Triplicate. And here, for me, the biggest surprise: those songs, which I find boring and monotonous on record, live gain a special magic, with an invaluable Dylan ironically posing as a charming crooner with velvety and seductive tones: almost surreal, but unexpectedly moving. Just three songs of this kind, just enough not to overdo it: then he returns to the "autograph" repertoire, deploying an absolutely breathtaking Love Sick, in a version very faithful to the original one splendidly arranged by Daniel Lanois that opened Time Out of Mind: the highest point, for me, of the whole concert.
The "off-key notes," in reality, were not lacking: an extremely flat and overly leveled Tryin' to Get to Heaven, which unlike Love Sick does no justice to the beautiful original; a not very convincing and clumsily shortened Desolation Row (removing, moreover, my favorite verse, the one about the sinking of the Titanic); a previously mentioned Tangled Up in Blue too bewildering in its merciless distortion of the original. Inevitable flaws, which do not mar an overall more than satisfactory performance, indeed decidedly superior to the low expectations: great rhythms, little or no slackness, Bob’s voice holding up without any failures for almost two uninterrupted hours of concert. Undoubtedly, his live performance offers much less today than in the past, but what he has to offer - when it goes well - he still offers very well.
When at the end of the encores he leaves without saying goodbye and without acknowledging the audience, some people frown a bit, and the absolute ban on taking photos and videos has annoyed many; but (also) this is Bob, take it or leave it. And if the level remains this, I would say you can still take it.
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