By 
By Paul Moore
I went to see Bob Dylan last week. I had seen him once before a hundred years ago and felt this might be the swansong for both of us.
I suspect I was not the only person thinking this. The audience was, shall we say, of a certain age although there was a smattering of younger people there through curiosity as to what the fuss was all about or dragged there by parents or relatives to see the man who defined their youth and, perhaps, even their adult years. While I am indeed old, Bob still, at eighty-four, has a good few years on me.
These years were abundantly apparent when the frail, thin and clearly diminished figure that is now Robert Zimmerman literally shuffled on to the Waterfront stage at a few minutes past eight.
It was difficult not to think seeing this icon one last time may have been a mistake and that the memory thread stored away could be fractured for ever. But we were here for nostalgia – even though the tour is named after his latest album – and we would forgive any lessening of the man, the voice, the intellect and the musical genius.
My concerns were not helped by the fact that I was accompanied by a close colleague who just happens to be a professor of music and who, crucially, indicated he was not a fan of Bob and was merely doing me a favour by being there.
It is a source of great joy to report that I, and everyone else in the hall who shared my fears, could not have been more wrong.
Not about the frailty, not about the shuffling, but about the musical stature of the man. I was also deeply mistaken about the possibility of a nostalgia trip.
Once Dylan had manoeuvred himself on to the piano stool, tuned up and slipped into the first song it was evident here was a man still at the height of his powers.
My musical colleague had already spotted, being an expert in modern jazz, that the four musicians with him were globally renowned musicians and probably in the top five of their respective fields.
The stage setting was carefully choreographed; central grand piano, all black surroundings, two small standing lamps giving the impression of a small intimate gathering in a private club, instruments placed carefully on stands across the stage like musical sculptures.
Even the four members of the ensemble – this was just not a band – were dressed in black suits and black shirts. When the first words emerged from Dylan they were a delivered by a voice stronger than many of his recent albums and a voice which belied the frail body which did not leave the piano stool for the entire evening, guitars being brought to him as he needed them.
The songs, especially the older compositions, were completely reconstructed. It was as though he had thrown them up in the air and then reformed them according to how the pieces fell.
The central opus entered a space which I have never witnessed before in a popular music concert, one which my professor friend said ranked alongside classical composers such as Debussy or Stravinsky. I have to take his word for that.
All of this is, of course, the difference between mere mortals and genius.
The man who framed the birth of the folk scene, and then blew that scene up by going electric at the Newport Festival is doing it again, redefining what popular music is and how it should be presented, creating a kind of classical popular. The post audience debate was divided. I imagine this is what the physically aged, but intellectually charged, Bob Dylan would have been most delighted by.
