Forget The Haters – Here’s How You Need To Approach Bob Dylan’s 2018 Australian Tour

For the past few weeks, after hearing the news that I had been given tickets to Bob Dylan, I decided to take it upon myself to listen to some of his more recent musical ventures, Time Out Of Mind (1997), Love And Theft (2001) and The Tempest (2012).

The long bus rides late at night and early in the morning commuting to and from work would prove to be the perfect environment to listen to Dylan’s moody and engaging take on the blues that seems to be such an integral part of his upbringing.

These long bus rides through streets that are dead on a particularly cold and wet Adelaide winter also proved to me as a musician that you are never too old to write something relevant, new and creative. At 77 years of age, he still seems to be chugging along like that Duquesne Train.

Dylan has had a huge influence on my own songwriting. I remember vividly an inquisitive six year old rummaging through dad’s CD collection and pulling out a greatest hits compilation, Masterpieces (1978). I was in awe of this strange looking man on the cover. It was, of course, Bob during his Rolling Thunder Revue mid-1970s phase. I laughed and raised the CD to my dad who decided to put it on.

It was then I heard Like A Rolling Stone for the first time and from the first isolated hit of the snare at (00:01), I was in awe. I started to really appreciate Dylan’s music, though, as a 13 year old when I started listening to proper albums, my first purchase being Are You Experienced? (1967) by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) was the second album I purchased on my own accord.

Dylan seemed to always be there for me in strange disjointed times through the years. From 13 to 18 years of age, I listened to the documentation of Dylan’s move from his early 1960s acoustic folk era to his mid to late ‘60s “going electric” era. I was an angsty 18 year old at this time, albums like Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Bringing It All Back Home (1965) and Blonde On Blonde (1966) nurtured my adolescent anger while earlier stuff like Another Side Of Bob Dylan (1964) and The Times They Are A Changing helped me (along with the music of Tom Waits) process the loss of my mother and generally my place in this world.

I love his voice because I can understand every lyric sung; he showed me if you have something to say creatively through music you don’t need to have the voice of Frank Sinatra or Sam Cooke.

It would be another six years until Bob Dylan found his way back into my heart. I was 24 by this stage and had been with my band, St. Morris Sinners, for a bit over four years. I was watching The Big Lebowski for the first time with a close friend and the opening track, The Man In Me, poured into my ears. It took a few seconds to process that it was actually Dylan, but after watching the movie, I discovered an absolute gem of an album - 1973’s New Morning.

I then proceeded to listen to the highly debated and polarising Self Portrait (1970) and his two masterpieces, Blood On The Tracks (1975) and Desire (1976). This was a new side of Dylan I had never heard. A more mature, worldly, downtrodden, soul penned these lyrics and I have always vehemently maintained the biggest tragedies produce the most beautiful art.

For Dylan, it seemed to be a divorce and near-death experience in a motorcycle accident. I was struggling recently with severe depression and anxiety, an ongoing problem, and these albums, through all the imagery of doom and gloom, longing and lust was strangely a beacon of light for me. It was almost as if he had written these albums for people who were hitting there mid-twenties and all that comes with that realization. These albums also helped me write some of the newest St Morris Sinners stuff that has still yet to be recorded.

But let’s move now to the night of August 11, 2018. I am celebrating one year with my girlfriend, Sophie, who was kind enough to give me these tickets. It is a cold windswept night and we basically ran to Bonython Park from The Wheatsheaf Hotel with a couple of minutes to spare. This is the first concert I have ever been metal detected at and also the first concert in a heated sizably impressive marquee. We are seated in row J, which is well... a long way back. Luckily I brought my glasses and I could just make out Dylan’s shaggy, weathered fro.

It was such a special night that I will always remember. Literal shivers went through me when, during the second song of the night, Simple Twist Of Fate, he brought out his harmonica and for the first time in 20 years of listening, I was hearing him play it in the flesh. It actually brought tears to my eyes. The whole set was an eclectic collection of Dylan’s musical repertoire and each song complimented the last so well.

Blowin’ In The Wind was played with a country waltz flavour. With the addition of a fiddle player, this reinvention proved how special Bob Dylan is as an artist. At the end of the show, as I walked out into the rain, a friend of a friend approached me with a disappointed look and said, “Yeah, it was alright, but I wanted to hear the bangers.”

I then realised that Dylan is a true artist in the sense that he reinvents himself still to this day, just shy of 80 years of age, still challenging his audiences and creating new music. If you paid for A-reserve tickets to hear him the play the “bangers”, you just don’t get it.