Dylan Live + Triplicate Q&A

So I got to see Dylan play one of three nights at the London Palladium at the end of April, thanks to my neighbour who bagged tickets as part of his bucket list year post-40. When he texted me asking if I'd like to join him, I hesitated a little at first because of the mild disappointment I'd felt seeing Dylan live previously – most notably at Wembley Arena 20 years ago, where the acoustics were terrible – but decided life's too short not to give your heroes another go. Knowing that so many musical greats had died in 2016, including Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen, I was also aware that Dylan's never-ending tour may one day come to an abrupt end.

I was so glad I went. Dylan was on blistering form, and had a real swagger when he sang the old classics, and sensitivity when he crooned the Sinatra standards. The Palladium was the perfect venue, intimate enough to avoid the sound problems and sense of alienation from the performer that you get in larger venues like Wembley Arena and The O2, but large enough to make sure the tickets weren't ludicrously expensive (we paid £100). His opening night also had a real sense of occasion, and it was fun to hang out in the Palladium bar after a Soho bar crawl and spot celebrities like Bill Nighy and Tom Stoppard.

As for the gig itself, we had great seats in the stalls, though we ended up next to a woman who asked us to be quiet when we talked between (and occasionally over the start of) songs. This is the problem with some high-end London audiences, they tend to behave like they're at a classical concert performance rather than a music gig. Dylan is a song & dance man, not a museum piece. We later got an apology from her, and I shrugged it off as just a minor irritation, which didn't affect my enjoyment of the show.

Another small reservation I had about seeing Dylan was my not being completely fond of his recent 3-album run of Sinatra standards, though mercifully only 6 of these covers featured in his Palladium setlist, along with 5 tracks from his last album of original material, 2012's Tempest, and 3 songs from my favourite Dylan record, Highway 61 Revisited. Dylan's strange – in the way he stabbed at the piano keys – but wonderful performance of Desolation Row was worth the entrance fee alone for me. His band were superb too, especially lead guitarist Charlie Sexton, and managed all the quick transitions in style and mood seamlessly. 

I enjoyed the ragtime jazz feel of Don't Think Twice, It's Alright and the undimmed passion with which Dylan sang Highway 61 Revisited. Other memorable moments were the dark and dramatic performance of Pay In Blood and the completely reworked version of Tangled Up In Blue – as with the encore Blowin' In The Wind, it took me a few lines before I realised what exactly Dylan was singing. Of the standards, Stormy Weather and Autumn Leaves were my two favourites, the latter of which Dylan sang perfectly, as if it was his very own meditation on mortality. Ending the set with Ballad of a Thin Man made for an even more perfect evening, with Dylan sticking close to the lyrics and sound of the original, but still making it sound relevant to our modern sense of disorientation.

Next time Dylan's in town, I won't hesitate.

On another note, in the run-up to his 2017 tour, Dylan did a rare Q&A that was published on his website (see link here). It was picked up by the music papers for various reasons, not least because Dylan expressed an odd affection for the music of the Stereophonics, but beyond that there was a wealth of interesting responses about his recent change in performing style, his favourite music and films, his inspiration for recording Triplicate and his inspiration for being a songwriter and performer more widely, especially the enduring allure of rock & roll. See my selections (from the very long Q&A) below:

On his new performing style

For the last few years you’ve mostly been playing piano on stage, very little guitar. How come?

I play at sound checks and at home, but the chemistry is better when I’m at the piano. It changes the dynamics of the band if I play the guitar. Maybe it’s just too tedious to go back and forth from one to the other. I’m strictly a rhythm player anyway. I’m not a solo player and when the piano gets locked in with the steel guitar, it’s like big band orchestrated riffs. That doesn’t happen when I’m playing guitar. When I play guitar it’s a different band.


On music & films he likes

Heard any good records lately?

Iggy Pop’s Après, that’s a good record. Imelda May, I like her. Valerie June, The Stereophonics. I like Willie Nelson and Norah Jones’ album with Wynton Marsalis, the Ray Charles tribute record. I liked Amy Winehouse’s last record.

Were you a fan of hers?

Yeah, absolutely. She was the last real individualist around.

Some records are social, good for parties and dancing. Some records are great in the car. [Triplicate] is an album made for late nights, solitude and reflection. When you find yourself in that place, what records do you reach for?

Sarah Vaughan’s My Kinda Love. Also the one she did with Clifford Brown.

No one can hear “As Time Goes By” and not think of Casablanca. What are some movies that have inspired your own songs?

The Robe, King of Kings, Samson and Delilah, some others too. Maybe, like, Picnic and A Face in the Crowd.


On his own work & himself in other songs

Which one of your songs do you think did not get the attention it deserved? 

“Brownsville Girl” or maybe “In the Garden”

A lot of other songwriters have mentioned you in their songs – John Lennon in “Yer Blues,” Ricky Nelson in “Garden Party,” David Bowie in “Song for Bob Dylan.” It’s quite a list. Do you have a favorite?

“Garden Party"

In Don McLean’s “American Pie,” you’re supposed to be the jester.

Yeah, Don McLean, “American Pie”, what a song that is. A jester? Sure, the jester writes songs like “Masters of War”, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”, “It’s Alright, Ma” – some jester. I have to think he’s talking about somebody else. Ask him.

On Triplicate

The title Triplicate brings to mind Sinatra’s trilogy. Did that album have any influence on this one?

Yeah, in some ways, the idea of it. I was thinking in triads anyway, like Aeschylus, The Oresteia, the three linked Greek plays. I envisioned something like that.

Each of the three discs tells a different story. Did you set out knowing it was going to be that way or did the themes reveal themselves as you went along?

The themes were decided beforehand in a theatrical sense – grand themes, each of them incidental to survivors and lovers or better yet, wisdom and vengeance, or maybe even exile – one disc foreshadowing the next and I didn’t want to give any one song preeminence over any other. No old wives’ tales and memoirs, but just hard plain earthly life, the hidden realities of it. That’s my perception.

Were there songs you considered but left off because they didn’t fit any of the three stories?

Yeah there were; “I Cover the Waterfront”, “Moonlight in Vermont”, “Let’s Face the Music and Dance”

Any tracks here where you came in with one approach and ended up with something completely different?

No, that happens more with my songs. A couple of times I picked the wrong approach to a song I wanted to do; “Deep in a Dream”, I recorded that but it didn’t resonate so I didn’t use it. It was the wrong approach to begin with.


On finding inspiration

You’ve been spending a lot of time in all these old songs. Do you think the next song you write will be influenced by them? 

I doubt it. These melodies are so structured in musical theory, they’re so tricky with time signatures and shifting melodies, that it’s beyond me. It’s hard to be influenced by any of it if you’re not familiar with that world. I could be influenced by a part of a melody or a phrase, but that would be about it. I don’t think I’d be influenced by anything lyrically.

The way you do “Sentimental Journey” reminds me a little of Roger Miller – it’s kind of a folk song, isn’t it?

Yeah, kind of, it’s in that realm, it’s like a song Lead Belly might have written. There are a lot of songs like that – “Moanin’ Low”, “He’s Gone Away”, “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good”. The writers of those songs were folk and blues influenced.

“My One and Only Love” is a rewrite of a song called, “Music from Beyond the Moon”. The original version was a flop, so a new lyricist came in and put in a whole new set of words to the melody and the second time it was a hit. When that happens with folk or blues songs, it’s called the folk tradition; when it happens with rock songs, people yell about plagiarism; in hip hop, it’s sampling. But it has always gone on in every form of music, hasn’t it?

I’m sure it has, there’s always some precedent – most everything is a knockoff of something else. You could have some monstrous vision, or a perplexing idea that you can’t quite get down, can’t handle the theme. But then you’ll see a newspaper clipping or a billboard sign, or a paragraph from an old Dickens novel, or you’ll hear some line from another song, or something you might overhear somebody say just might be something in your mind that you didn’t know you remembered. That will give you the point of approach and specific details. It’s like you’re sleepwalking, not searching or seeking; things are transmitted to you. It’s as if you were looking at something far off and now you’re standing in the middle of it. Once you get the idea, everything you see, read, taste or smell becomes an allusion to it. It’s the art of transforming things. You don’t really serve art, art serves you and it’s only an expression of life anyway; it’s not real life. It’s tricky, you have to have the right touch and integrity or you could end up with something stupid. Michelangelo’s statue of David is not the real David. Some people never get this and they’re left outside in the dark. Try to create something original, you’re in for a surprise.


On rock & roll

“Braggin’” was done by Duke Ellington in 1938 – it’s the sort of big band swinging blues that led directly to rock and roll. As a kid, did rock and roll feel like a new thing to you or an extension of what was already going on?

Rock and roll was indeed an extension of what was going on – the big swinging bands – Ray Noble, Will Bradley, Glenn Miller, I listened to that music before I heard Elvis Presley. But rock and roll was high energy, explosive and cut down. It was skeleton music, came out of the darkness and rode in on the atom bomb and the artists were star headed like mystical Gods. Rhythm and blues, country and western, bluegrass and gospel were always there – but it was compartmentalised – it was great but it wasn’t dangerous. Rock and roll was a dangerous weapon, chrome plated, it exploded like the speed of light, it reflected the times, especially the presence of the atomic bomb which had preceded it by several years. Back then people feared the end of time. The big showdown between capitalism and communism was on the horizon. Rock and roll made you oblivious to the fear, busted down the barriers that race and religion, ideologies put up. We lived under a death cloud; the air was radioactive. There was no tomorrow, any day it could all be over, life was cheap. That was the feeling at the time and I’m not exaggerating. Doo-wop was the counterpart to rock and roll. Songs like “In the Still of the Night,” “Earth Angel,” “Thousand Miles Away,” those songs balanced things out, they were heartfelt and melancholy for a world that didn’t seem to have a heart. The doo-wop groups might have been an extension, too, of the Ink Spots and gospel music, but it didn’t matter; that was brand new too. Groups like the Five Satins and the Meadowlarks seemed to be singing from some imaginary street corner down the block. Jerry Lee Lewis came in like a streaking comet from some far away galaxy. Rock and roll was atomic powered, all zoom and doom. It didn’t seem like an extension of anything but it probably was.