“The Answer, My Friend, Is Blowin’ in the Wind”

Bob Dylan played to a packed house last night at the Hard Rock Casino in Atlantic City.  I’m not sure what I was expecting.  The 77-year-old iconic artist’s voice hasn’t improved with time. It sounded like a muffled rasp.  But Bob Dylan has never been known for his voice. He has been known for his unvarnished commentary on the times.

As Barbara and I leaned forward in our seats trying to divine what song he was singing, it became clear it wasn’t Dylan’s muffled rasp of a voice.  It was the way he rearranged the music. The instrumentation for some of his greatest hits – “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Like a Rolling Stone” and others – had been dramatically altered so that they were barely recognizable.

When an artist’s voice yields to the ravages of time, it’s understandable that some rearranging is necessary. But Dylan, it seemed, had rearranged his songs not in a way that accommodated the limitations time had placed on his voice, but as if to give them a fresh sound, or maybe to suit his own muse?

Rolling Stone magazine reported that his new rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone” was described by one fan as “a lovely new arrangement with slow passages where [bassist Tony Garnier] bowed the double bass.”  Kudos to Tony, and I don’t mean that in the least way facetious. He and the other members of Dylan’s band are all talented and accomplished musicians.

Besides, Dylan, in fairness, has always marched to the beat of his own drum. It’s one of the reasons his music has played a meaningful role in America’s changing social landscape.

On the other hand, we went to the concert hoping to hear new music of Dylan’s and expecting to hear some of his old songs, performed in a way that was recognizable to us. But as The Guardian reported about Dylan’s 2018 tour, “You don’t get what you want; you get what he needs.”

I’d be fine with that, if I was Dylan’s therapist and he was paying me $200 to sit on my couch for 45 minutes. But I paid $200 bucks along with several thousand other people to sit in his audience and listen to him “get what he needs.” Iconic artist or not, I have a problem paying for someone’s narcissism.

Maybe I need to leave the sixties and seventies in my rear view mirror. Maybe life has a way of coming full circle.  And maybe the answer has always been blowing in the wind.