Back in the rain… Dylan opens the gates to his brilliant worlds

It was like a painting out there.

An Edward Hopper, but with people … security guards, revellers, drunks, grifters, barkers, all peddling and paddling through this liquid night.

Neons and cafe lights have become vivid blotches in the rain.

The theatre lights flicker and go out.

Hull – around its glassy grey brutal Bonus Theatre at least – is grid-locked.

And stuck inside of it all are Bob Dylan’s tour buses which should be eating up the 90 miles to his next date in Nottingham.

It was a strange feeling out there.

Bob could be in one of those buses flouncing his ‘bouffant’ and being Mr Cool despite being ’crabbed’ tonight by what looks like a very bad back indeed.

But nobody on these Humberside back streets was humping for piggybacks to peak through his swag-n-tail caravan curtains.., nobody was hammering on the flimsy vinyl wrap doors either …no girls screamed Bob and took bouncy selfies hoping he might stumble in to one.

What is going on?

Is it the rain?

Is it City-of-Culture’s pseudo cool?

Or is it just our pink-robot society’s disinterest?

One of the world’s most enduring and diverse geniuses is stuck on a bus in traffic in Hull! People should be mobbing his buses and snapping at the air with their plastic crocodiles!

Then it hit me …

Bob’s not actually there, not on that bus, not in the rain … he is the real gone kid now.

Yes, his one foot remains, still firmly, in our moribund world. But the other remains on that train.

No. at 81 he is the lost youth of every generation people as old as I am can remember.

And now everything he performs telegraphs a sense of urgency, like a perfect last waltz or an elegant swan song.

Bob surely lives in his own brilliant world inside an old-time music hall filled with growling riverboat captains, tough cowboys, snarling murderers, ghosts of lost loves. There’s blood and redemption in his world still, mountains and streams, iron ore smoke and stormy flatlands.

Thank God Bobstill lives inshadowy kingdoms.

At least one hundred times a year though, Bob opens his flashy gates to the public and we rush on in.

And we know as we step through, we’ll be greeted by this gruff old man hiding behind an upright piano and bashing out lost chords like Jerry Lee on Monad.

You know, sometimes Bob’s tousled head is like a glove puppet performing a strange dance on the lid of his piano. The head howls and whoops, sneers, leers and grins like the Joker he is.

Yep, the image is bizarre, comically grotesque – but there has always been the grotesque in Bob’s world. Always.

Tonight in Hull his band rocked slowly in stringy gravity against the honey glow of the set.

The music was blue, different, old-timey. Yet brand new…

But on a rainynight like this in Hull Bob revealed himself completely only twice. And for less than 10 seconds at a time.

He was dressed to the nines but he barely got his fist to his hip before he retreated back behind the piano. At that moment Bob Dylan looked more vulnerable than Blood on the Tracks.

Yet he still had the air of a young Jack of Hearts with all the winning cards.

He was singing beautifully too, rolling dark clouds, skidding up and down his own forked lightning, a bird careening across the storm, coyote desert howl.

Every voice he has ever had is still there and he is using them all.

And all the time there’s that rocking and rolling boat of splintered notes, a cacophony of keyboard symbols and aural hieroglyphics. It’s the essence of his wild mercurial sound…

When Dylan opens his creaking gates and lets us in, all of history, the history of Americana and music is on display for us to commune with.

And the emaciated curator in too big a shiny suit and pointy boots tells his stories of betrayal and loss with dignity, skill, passion and romance.

Dylan might not be wildly mercurial any more but he is pure solid gold.

As the last owls and hoots of his harmonica faded, the lights went out.

So, we waited – cheered and roared for a couple of roadies by mistake – watched the colour and life drain out of the stage, turning it cold and skeletal.

Reluctantly, we joined the long cattle queues to reclaim our phones and our very own digital world. It blinged and whistled all around, a whole new cacophony, false and thoughtless.

Then we wandered out, plastic pinned to our ears, no jolly chats between strangers about how brilliant Dylan was. No interaction at all. We’ve all got our own worlds pinned to our ears now. Everything is back to normal, heads down in the rain, buds in our ears, reading the glassy glow in hand…

What does it matter that Bob Dylan might be stuck in a traffic jam in inclement weather in the back streets of Hull.

And it looks like he’s got a bad back…

Things have changed, huh.

Thanks to Luke and Victoria for arranging this night…

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