You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

A night with Bob Dylan, a master of his craft. The Capitol Theater, 11/8/23. An appraisal of an artist who is brilliant combination of Muddy Waters and Shakespeare.

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I saw Bob Dylan at the Capitol Theater last night and it was a pretty amazing experience. He’s 82 years old and performing like a madman on “The Never Ending Tour,” which Wikipedia says commenced on June 7, 1988 and has included about 100 shows a year ever since. Thousands of performances for decades, so it’s nor surprising that he has five in metro New York over the current two weeks. This was the fourth time I’ve seen him in six years and I’ll try to catch at least one more, because I find being in the room with him to be exhilarating. His strength and ongoing creative fervor and ferment is an excellent reminder that no one has to live in the past or revel in past glories, regardless of their age or place in life.

Bob has morphed into the perfect embodiment of what he should be at this stage of his career, a master craftsman who is no longer inventing new things, but is instead working in the grand American traditions and perfecting them into something very unique and very special. He’s riding into his 80s like a wild, brilliant mix of Muddy Waters and Shakespeare, placing himself both within and above some very august traditions.

When Gregg Allman died in 2017, I decided to see as many older legends as I could and in short order I saw Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. I had already started this “better see ‘em while you can” approach a few months earlier, maybe starting with a terrific John Prine show in Newark. Of those artists, Bob was by far the biggest influence and most important artist to me – but not just to me.

I think Bob Dylan is the most important, influential artist of the modern rock and pop era. The Beatles were singing “Love Me Do” before they started listening to Dylan. He altered the conception of what a rock song could be, he merged pop, rock, folk, blues and country to the point where the distinctions didn’t matter. And I think he established the idea that to be taken seriously, a rock artist had to write their own music. (I think this gets taken too far sometimes; think Bonnie Raitt singing Prine, or Gregg singing Jackson Browne.)

In 2017, I had never seen Paul and it had been too long since I saw the other three. The Petty and Dylan shows were on consecutive nights and my experiences were so different. On June 15, at the Capitol, I wormed my way up close to the stage and for the second song, Bob strapped on a Strat – he’s mostly played keyboards for years, due to arthritis I think – and played a fairly faithful version of “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” and I shut my eyes and got chills. Literal chills. I felt elevated, otherworldly – floating above myself and looking down. It was a transcendent experience, the kind that you can’t calculate or anticipate. Nothing else in the rest of the show came close to hitting me like that. Bob then was in a crooner phase and while it was amazing to be in the same room as the great man, a lot of the material just wasn’t much to my liking. I didn’t recognize the encore of “Blowin in the Wind” until the chorus because he had chopped it up that much.

As much as I enjoyed the show and, of course, valued the transcendent song, I didn’t feel a huge need to see him again. But two years later, I saw a review of his tour opener in St. Louis, which not only was a rave, but showed a setlist where mid-period classics like “Simple Twist Of Fate” and “Serve Somebody” had re-remerged. I needed to see that, so I went to the beacon on 11/26/19 and saw a transcendent show. The next year, I didn’t hesitate to return for his Rough and rowdy Ways tour. Knowing that he would be playing most of the album, L=I listened to it over and over. The performance was akin to theater or a string quartet to me. Not much jamming and the volume was nice and low, and everything had its place. Another great show.

I would have gone to this tour after those regardless but seeing that he was doing new covers every night – “Truckin.” “Stella Blue,” Chuck Berry’s “Nadine” and Muddy Waters’ “$0 Days and 40 Nights” and Howlin’ Wolfs “Killin’ Floor” meant I had to go.

And what a show it was. His band is terrific, locked in and following his every quirk, holding a chord, dropping a bridge, adding an improvised introduction. Bob was sitting centerstage at a grand piano, and his playing drove a lot of the tunes. Previously, he was playing mostly a stand-up keyboard and it could be a struggle to even hear what he was doing. Not now. With guitarist Doug Lancio up front playing mostly acoustic, and longtime bassist Tony Garnier switching between upright and electric, Bob’s piano was loud and clear. Guitarist Bob Britt and pedal steel/filled/mandolin player Donnie Herron added the color and texture, and new drummer Jerry Pentecost kept things sturdy and moving. Dylan sometimes started a song off with some piano noodling and a first verse of wildly reimagined vocal melodies, before the band kicked in and the songs took shape.

The band sans Bob kicked off the night with a simple, toe-tapping swinging blues shuffle, the kind you could hear in any good honky tonk roadhouse bar anywhere in America since about 1955. Bob strolled out, gambler’s hat on head, waved at the cheering crowd and sat down at the piano and didn’t move much, except taking the hat on and off and occasionally standing up for the next two hours. It was a mesmerizing performance, aided by the lack of distractions, as all attendees had to lock our phones in pouches on the way in. I lost my focus on a few songs, but most of the night was just superb, very much including this faithful version of “Stella Blue,” one of the most haunting Garcia/Hunter compositions.

I’ll try to make the Beacon next week, and I’ll be back somewhere when Bob comes back to town next year.

I interviewed John Mellencamp in 2021 shortly after seeing Bob at the Beacon Theater and had the following dialogue with him about it.

I saw Bob Dylan just a couple of weeks ago at the Beacon, and it was incredible. Very much like going to the theater or symphony -- sitting and being attentive and the music is almost like chamber music. It's not really improvised, it's very controlled, but it's just beautiful. His voice is incredible. The arrangements are spectacular. It was great. Not just good, great. 

I went to see Bob and felt the same way, but I felt that the tour before this was better, just perfect I did a tour with Bob and Willie Nelson, and we did like 100 shows together, playing outdoors in ballparks and that I saw people staying for me and leaving the minute Bob came on stage. I thought, ‘They're staying just to hear these fucking hit records of mine and Bob's not playing hit records.' It was during those shows that I decided I was done playing outside. I'm done playing to the gallery.

Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was my third straight instant New York Times bestseller, following  Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and  One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book was Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band. It was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions.  I am also a guitarist and singer who fronts two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band. We may well be playing near you soon. Click here to find out.