Bob Dylan
Waterfront, Belfast
★★★★☆
It’s a few minutes past eight when Bob Dylan follows his four band members on stage and steps nimbly towards his baby grand piano.
He takes a seat and immediately swings around to his right, picking up his electric guitar, so that his back is to the crowd, and with that he starts jamming out loose chords as his band kick in around him. The sound is foot-stomping loud from the off, and they promptly find their groove.
A minute or so later Dylan swings around again to face his piano, partly obscuring himself as he reaches for the keys and starts into the opening verse of I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight. At age 84, the voice of a generation is straight away startling and crisp clear.
It’s the first of his two sold-out nights at the Waterfront theatre in Belfast, part of his five-night stop in Ireland. There is no support act, no stage intro, certainly no “good evening, Belfast”, but it’s a perfectly lively opener, as if Dylan is singing “are you with me tonight?”.
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In these opening few minutes, he’s already played more guitar than on his last visit here, in November 2022, and Dylan repeats the guitar-intro trick several times over the 17-song set list. The songs and sequence seem carved into stone now, he hasn’t yet tinkered with them on this 26-date, nine-country European tour.
The band are whip-tight in parts but also well able to keep things loose. His Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, named after his 39th studio album released in June 2020, has been going for four years now, more than half the songs tonight – nine to be exact – are off that album.
After a joyful It Ain’t Me, Babe, he continues with I Contain Multitudes and False Prophet, both suitably rough and rowdy in parts. Dylan repeatedly shifts between slow drawn-out expressions and hasty rushing of lines, as if he has no time to lose.
Over the hour and 45 minutes he never lets up, the singing bold again on When I Paint My Masterpiece, before two more tracks off Rough and Rowdy Ways, a haunting Black Rider, a powerful My Own Version Of You.
There is less raspiness to his voice, and he holds the absolute attention of his audience, aided by all our mobile phones being locked away in fancy zip bags until after the show.
[ Bob Dylan’s special relationship with Ireland began in 1984Opens in new window ]
He drops in When I Paint My Masterpiece in another fresh arrangement, before Desolation Row comes mid-set, and soon after a sweetly melodious It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, peppered with glorious harmonica.
The band appear to close in together at the end of each song (Tony Garnier on bass, Anton Fig on drums, Bob Britt and Doug Lancio on guitar), and each time Dylan comes to his feet.
“Some of these songs aren’t easy to play,” Dylan says in his only breakout line of the night, “But the band play them pretty good, don’t you think?”
Mother of Muses and Goodbye Jimmy Reed give way to Every Grain of Sand, one last harmonica blast, and with that they’re done. Dylan moves out from behind his piano to greet the standing ovation, then nimbly walks off, briefly returning for a second bow, the low lighting catching his face and the heartfelt smile written across it.
Bob Dylan plays the Waterfront Hall again on November 20th, the Gleneagle Arena in Killarney on November 23rd/24th, and the 3Arena in Dublin on November 25th
