BOB DYLAN: REAL LIVE (1984)
1) Highway 61 Revisited; 2)
Maggie's Farm; 3) I And I; 4) License To Kill; 5) It Ain't Me Babe; 6) Tangled
Up In Blue; 7) Masters Of War; 8) Ballad Of A Thin Man; 9) Girl From The North
Country; 10) Tombstone Blues.
Although Dylan's touring activity did not slow
down from his usual 1970s rate — in fact, with the beginning of the «Never
Ending Tour» in 1988 it only kept accelerating — the same cannot be said about
the verve with which he would continue to release live albums. In fact, Real Live is, in a sense, his last
«proper» live offer: Dylan & The
Dead should rather count as a misguided memento of a star-crossed event, Unplugged was all but forced upon the
man by MTV, and all other subsequent live releases would be culled from the
archives for the «Bootleg Series».
As one of the many who actually had a chance to
catch one of Bob's live acts (Albuquerque 2007, if my memory serves me right),
I kind of understand this decision. Throughout the Sixties and Seventies, Dylan
kept experimenting with the live format, switching from acoustic to electric,
there and back again, sometimes leaning towards a harsher rock'n'roll sound (Before The Flood), sometimes trying out
a «symphonic roots» approach (Rolling Thunder), even taking risks with a glitzy
big band sound (Budokan) or, of
course, adding gospel elements to his Christian-era touring. However, once his
«hardcore Christian» days were over, the live Dylan sound became, on the whole,
more streamlined and typical. The backing bands (including the one I saw) are
never anything less than professional, but most of the time they tend to
gravitate towards well-established, predictable forms, with limited
opportunities for spontaneity. Thus, Real
Live may sound seriously differently from everything that came before it, but it does not radically
differ from anything that came after
it (granted, I am nowhere near an expert on the extensive field of Dylan bootleg
studies, but those few dots that I know of are
connected in a rather straight line).
Of course, sonic streamlining has never
prevented Dylan from continuing to experiment with his songs, whose original incarnations he has always regarded as experimental
material rather than sacred cows — all fans know that going to a Dylan show, be
it 1984 or 2014, always presumes taking part in the «guess-what's-playing»
game. But the downside has been the progressive deterioration of his voice,
already well evident on Real Live,
as it converts much of its former color into a high-pitched whine, and, more
importantly, as Bob seems to be losing much of his control over it. It is
almost as if his voice problems took him by surprise, and he never really learned
to cope with them (unlike, say, Tom Waits, who gave us all a lesson in
capitalizing on his guttural issues). Many people have learned to disregard the
issue and keep insisting that Dylan continues to be a «vocal master» both in
his «whiny» period and even later, when his frequencies took one more somersault
and landed in «deep pharyngeal croak» territory — I cannot share this opinion
and pretend that I have any love at
all for Dylan's live vocal performance after his turning 40-45. (Studio records
are a different matter, since he seems to be paying more attention to his
limits and capacities there, and attunes his new songs respectively).
So that is what Real Live is: a tolerable, mediocre, middle-of-the-road live
rock'n'roll album, with old hits and newer compositions alike all reduced to a
single common invariant and «graced» by a singer who seems a little lost and
confused — he'd like to roar like a lion, perhaps, but all he can is yelp like
a jackal. His backing band would like to help, perhaps, but they gel fairly
mechanically, and although Mick Taylor is given plenty of opportunities to
shine on lead guitar, he does so without letting his hair down, and comes
across as competent, but boring (he really needs a Keith Richard around for
both to profit from the contrastive effect — on his own, he's just another
careful, politely groomed, not-too-inspiring blues-rock guitarist). You really
get to know that there is a big problem, though, when the guest star on one of
the tracks (ʽTombstone Bluesʼ) turns out to be Carlos Santana, and when his
leads on that track turn out to be stylistically undistinguishable from
Taylor's on all the others.
As usual, Bob has a little acoustic set in the
middle, with ʽIt Ain't Me Babeʼ to have the entire audience subtly glorify
their male chauvinism (I wonder if the girls, too, are always singing along to
"it ain't me you're looking for, babe"?), and a newly revised version
of ʽTangled Up In Blueʼ with alternate lyrics, a serious collectible for fans,
but not something I'd like to pay attention to because the vocal delivery sucks
anyway. Of the new songs, ʽI And Iʼ, as befits its Rastafari title, is slightly
reggaeified as compared to the studio version, but the results are crude, and
the song is simply stripped of its moody atmosphere; and why they preferred to
perform / include ʽLicense To Killʼ instead of ʽJokermanʼ is beyond me.
In the end, the only «interesting» bit of the
album is in how ʽMasters Of Warʼ became radically reinterpreted as an
«ominous-apocalyptic» rock song, now closer in spirit to (and even partially borrowing
the riff of) ʽAll Along The Watchtowerʼ than ʽNottamun Townʼ which it
originally copied — and maybe Taylor was reminded of his past glories playing on
ʽGimme Shelterʼ under those conditions, so there is a little extra heat and
freedom of expression in the several solos he takes on that particular song
(not to mention length). But one song is not enough to revert the trend, and
the verdict should be a grim one: Real
Live marks the breaking point at which Dylan's live legacy generally becomes
expendable. It ain't bad, but it
ain't something you should be looking for, babe. A thumbs down here, in loving
memory of all those other live
albums.
Check "Real Live" (CD) on Amazon
I agree the sentiments expressed in "It Ain't Me Babe" aren't exactly pleasant, but "male chauvinism"? Please.
ReplyDeleteI actually really like this version of "Tangled Up In Blue," including the vocal performance. Actually, I don't have much problem with his vocals at all on this album, like you seem to. There are a couple of moments here and there where his vocals don't quite fit, but for the most part, I'm quite taken in. I love the way he sings "He had one too many lovers AAAAAAND/None of them were too refined...all except for you," or his "OOOOOOOOOH NOOOO" in "Ballad of a Thin Man," for example.
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