Busy Being Born

This past weekend I saw the Bob Dylan show which is part of a tour Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson are doing of minor league baseball stadiums across the country. Willie was, as always, Willie--happy, entertaining, and enthusiastic (although of the few times I have seen him over the last ten years I have to say he might have finally slowed down just a step). Dylan, of course, was the great unknown factor, and he turned in a hell of a performance: foreboding, enigmatic, and yet strangely giving for a man who has become so reclusive. He reinterpreted his early work to the point that on some songs people in the stands would openly debate what he was playing (see the Savannah setlist here). And he ended the show with the most blistering rendition of All Along the Watchtower I have ever heard live outside of a Neil Young show.

A baby boomer that I saw the show with made an interesting observation that Bob Dylan makes the same song twenty times until he finally gets it right. It's an interesting lens through which to look at his career. Like Neil Young, whose path he has often crossed, Dylan continually retools and reinvents himself, trying to find exactly the right song at exactly the right moment. And like Neil, he has had both extraordinary hits and misses. In two recent interviews, one on CBS and one on NPR, Dylan comes across as a man who is finally comprehending the immenseness of his legacy and who, in typical fashion, is still trying to reshape it decades after it began.

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