BOB DYLAN: AT BUDOKAN (1979)
1) Mr. Tambourine Man; 2)
Shelter From The Storm; 3) Love Minus Zero/No Limit; 4) Ballad Of A Thin Man;
5) Don't Think Twice, It's All Right; 6) Maggie's Farm; 7) One More Cup Of
Coffee; 8) Like A Rolling Stone; 9) I Shall Be Released; 10) Is Your Love In
Vain?; 11) Going, Going, Gone; 12) Blowin' In The Wind; 13) Just Like A Woman;
14) Oh Sister; 15) Simple Twist Of Fate; 16) All Along The Watchtower; 17) I
Want You; 18) All I Really Want To Do; 19) Knockin' On Heaven's Door; 20) It's
Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding); 21) Forever Young; 22) The Times They Are
A-Changin'.
Certainly not the best live album in Dylan's
career, but just as certainly the most unusual — and, together with Before The Flood and Hard Rain, At Budokan completes a trinity that might be reasonably called «the
most sensible live trilogy to be released over just five consecutive years of
touring». Not a single one of these albums sounds close to its predecessor, but
it is At Budokan that confounds all
possible expectations. A one-of-a-kind experiment here, so viciously trashed by
the majority of the musical press that you just know it's gotta be good...
...but all in due time. Fact is, this is where
Bob took his Street Legal band on
the road — together with the violins, the mandolins, the saxophones, and the
gospel lady choir. In fact, the actual performances here were recorded on February
28 and March 1, preceding the bulk of studio sessions for Street Legal rather than following them, and this means that Bob's
«big band style» rearrangements of his classic hits were invented and rehearsed
before the same style was applied to
newer material, not after.
Essentially, the tour was an experiment,
carried out in order to answer a simple question: what would happen if Bob
Dylan were to pass himself for a «normal», «accessible» artist? Practise some
singing in tone. Calculate, compose,
rehearse, play in pre-planned mode. Eschew minimalism for large, complex,
bombastic arrangements with diverse, polyphonic instrumentation. Exchange rock'n'roll
spontaneity for lush pop professionalism. In other words — go on a Dylan tour
and make a Dylan album that would seem to go against everything that a Dylan tour
/ album is «supposed» to stand for. How does that sound?
Critics like Christgau fell for this lock,
stock and barrel: some people were so stupid as to state that Dylan had gone
the «Vegas route», comparing him to Neil Diamond or late-period Elvis. Given
that this here was the age of «rock revitalization» by the punk movement,
albums like Budokan must have
sounded particularly cringeworthy — and to make matters worse, Cheap Trick had
only just released their own Budokan
experience, so, even if on an everyday basis you'd never imagine the
possibility of comparing Bob Dylan with Cheap Trick, in this particular case
such comparisons were inevitable. A power-pop guitar band making some of the
loudest and fiercest rock'n'roll ruckus in recent years — and a washed-up,
prematurely senile has-been tarnishing his legacy with «gratuitous sax and senseless
violins», to borrow a Sparks album title for an adequate description.
However, just as it happened with Self Portrait and not a few other Dylan
albums that clashed with people's expectations, the reputation of the Budokan
shows has seriously improved in recent decades. Looking back, and assessing it
all in the proper context, it is perfectly clear that Dylan was not «pandering»
or «selling out» to anybody or anything — it is just that there is a time for
everything, and every once in a while the man felt a need to shed the
«rock'n'roll rebel» image and settle for a more relaxed, easy-going attitude.
Yes, the downside of Budokan is
that, unlike almost anything else in the Dylan catalog, it lacks his trademark spontaneity.
The music runs on a captured, bottled and canned spirit here, rather than
inspiration generated on-the-spot as the band hits the stage. But there is also
an upside to that downside — at the very least, it is curious, and I would say fun,
and maybe even exciting, to hear a
pre-planned, carefully rehearsed, so openly «music-oriented» Dylan show. If what
they mean by «Vegas» is «enhancing the melodic component in both the musical
instruments and the singing», I'm game.
And it isn't just the enhancement of the melody
— what we have here is a near-total reinvention of the classic numbers, to an
extent that Dylan, famous for his reinventions, would never ever replicate. The arrangements are so recklessly
experimental that, most likely, nobody will like all of them, but an unbiased listen, free from the local superstitions
of 1979, will most likely result in liking at least some of them, depending on the listener. Some of the rearrangements
preserve the general message and emotional atmosphere of the originals; just as
many of them do not, opening up dimensions that you'd never suspect to have
previously existed in these numbers — and even if some of these dimensions
sound silly, well, silly or not, they're all there, and the inventiveness and
hard work that Bob put into them seriously belies the image of a broken down,
depressed, mid-age-crisis-bound artist that had just been created by Street Legal. In other words, the frustrating
Dylan enigma strikes again.
For those in doubt, I will list and laud some
of my favorites. First and foremost, a big thank you to Steve Douglas (who, by
the way, used to be one of the session players on Pet Sounds) whenever he
picks up the flute, particularly on ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ and ʽLove Minus
Zero/No Limitʼ, both of which, big band style or small band style, had never
sounded lovelier — the arrangement of ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ, in particular,
turns it from a beautiful early morning serenade into an equally beautiful
early morning symphony, a great, uplifting introduction to the whole album. And
the transposition of the three descending chords of ʽLove Minus Zeroʼ to flute
was an equally inspired choice (additional kudos to David Mansfield for the
great violin solo, which sounds particularly life-asserting in tandem with the
flute).
Many darts have been launched at ʽMaggie's
Farmʼ for its evolution from an almost «proto-punk» statement into a mastodon
of R&B bombast — what has been lost on the critics is that the rearranged
melody, now sewn into a steady sequence of symmetrically ascending / descending
lines, simultaneously played on sax, violin, and guitar, still bears an air of defiance and determination, and
just as, back in 1965, one used to interpret the song as Dylan's refusal to
conform to the expectations of the «folkies», so here it could be interpreted
as his refusal to conform to the expectations of the «rockies». As in,
"it's my Neil Diamond interpretation
and I'm ready to sock it to anyone!" And for those who used to complain
that the «fire and brimstone» had gone out of Dylan, well, they probably did
not have the patience to sit all the way through to the new avatar of ʽIt's
Alright Maʼ — done big-band hard-rock style, with as much fire and brimstone as
could be seen necessary in Bob's voice. Yes, the song used to work perfectly as
a dark, creepy soliloquoy, and it
works all right as a brash, pre-apocalyptic dark gospel anthem, too.
Other rearrangements that I am quite fond of
include: the «generic country-pop», but still lovable, take on ʽI Shall Be
Releasedʼ, with tasteful slide guitars and a completely redone chorus hook;
ʽBlowin' In The Windʼ, redone as a piano pop ballad; ʽOh Sisterʼ, shorn of its
melancholic tenderness and now performed almost «cold turkey-style», with not
just the singer, but the entire band behaving as if they were suffering from
virtual (spiritual!) constipation; and ʽAll I Really Want To Doʼ, redone as a
cheery, bouncy, martial Brit-pop song, closer to Sonny & Cher's version
than anything else but with even more rhythm and energy.
Speaking of Sonny & Cher, several other
songs, too, are done closer to cover versions than originals — ʽAll Along The
Watchtowerʼ traditionally incorporates scorching heavy rock guitar solos, in
honor of Jimi, and ʽKnockin' On Heaven's Doorʼ is done reggae-style à la Clapton version (not a
particularly wise decision, but understandable). But applying the same reggae
groove to ʽDon't Think Twiceʼ was, of course, unprecedented, and so was the
reinvention of ʽI Want Youʼ as a slow, rhythmless, quasi-accappella number; I
am still undecided about either of those.
Still, particular preferences and dislikes
aside, on the whole I insist that the tour, commemorated with this Budokan album, was a triumphant
success, and really the last time that a live Dylan experience «mattered» as an
artistic experience, not just an
excuse to go have a good time or go see that Zimmerman guy before he takes
Highway 61. For those who dislike the «tunelessness» of Dylan as a singer or a
guitar player, the album could even be a good introduction — in a way, it's a
classic case of «Dylan for the anti-Dylanites», and one would have to be quite
tonedeaf, I think, to continue to deny the man's gift for melody or mood after
sitting through it. For those who condemn At
Budokan for «betraying» some thing or other, dispensing with artistic
integrity, etc. — just get a life. And for those who simply think that the whole
experience is kinda boring and lifeless, even despite all the hard work that
went into the rearrangements and rehearsals, well, I'd only say that, after
sixteen years of seeing and hearing too
much life and excitement from the artist, it is quite a lively and exciting
experience to hear him sound so boring and lifeless. Give me the boredom of At Budokan over the liveliness of, say,
1984's Real Live any time of day — the
album was a firm thumbs up when I first reviewed it about ten years before this,
and my admiration of it has only grown since then.
Check "At Budokan" (CD) on Amazon
Agree here. I used to despise this record on first, nah, thirty ninth listen. Then, It struck me how much talent it actually takes to make a campfire singalong "Shelter from the storm" sound like this. It still makes me wonder how did that Japanese audience react? Did they recognize any of the songs at all? Or were they just so thrilled to see a superstar performing that they couldn't care any less? Man, the 70s must have been a weird time...
ReplyDeleteI share your enthusiasm about the tour; however, this particular recording is a weak one compared to some kickass bootlegs from the tour. "Border Beneath The Sun" (Paris, July 6, 1978), for example, totally kicks da booty and is worth 9/10 lovely little dots. Budokan, for my money, is 5/10 at best. Then again, its version of Blowin' Chinks in the Wind is the best one I've heard yet.
ReplyDeleteWow, you are not Mark Prindle.
Delete