Although the sun has long since set on the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and a bad moon is on the rise, occasionally the planets still align in the heavens. And so it was that on a trip from Portland to New York and back followed by an early morning breakfast meeting in Boston the following day, we realized we might have a free evening in Maine’s biggest town. And it also happened to be a night when our two wives were free for the evening and that the Bob Dylan’s concert in Portland had not miraculously yet sold out. Which is how four 50-somethings found ourselves marveling at the throng of 10,000 at the Cumberland Civic Center a few weeks back as we began to measure the distances between our present and ancient selves.
Over supper we happened to run into an old friend whose wife and son, he allowed, were going to the concert. The son, a precocious 12-year old, told his father he wanted to hear the Raconteurs, who were the opening act of the concert, and might stay around to hear “an old geezer” perform because his friends told him that the geezer was performing electric tonight. “What’s that I smell?” the smart kid’s mother asked him within moments of Dylan’s opening number. Looking squarely back at her, he said, “I don’t know.”
We arrived at the concert within moments of its official 7:30 start and entered the cavernous arena amidst an aural din from the Raconteurs that was truly and painfully surreal. There was an immense sea of bodies down on the arena floor that looked both driven and confused, but we spied a few empty rows of seats at the most distant part of the house and we made for it before we would be forced to stand all night and dance.
They were all there — weary mothers in Mexican peasant skirts and their pierced children. Fathers in gray ponytails with kids who were still sweet enough to stand in proximity, even if not exactly to acknowledge they had forebears. But there were also Gen X-ers and Tweens and 30-something yuppies who had been able to find the only baby-sitters not in the audience.
The lights exploded off the walls of the arena with the first crashing chord from Dylan’s tightly woven band and all of us along for the ride were soon holding on, as if for dear life. Rolling thunder and heat lightening. The tempo rarely subsided, as every song had clearly been polished to Dylan’s exacting standards. The band was front and center in gray suits, black shirts, hats and ties, with Dylan off to one side, stage left, in black western attire like the hero in the movie Shane. Even in pure black with silver buckles shining, Dylan seemed a chameleon, changing from outlaw to jester to prophet to magician and back with each classic, sound and song.
Dylan has perfected his “up-singing” diction, where every phrase ends with an emphasis on its final syllable ever since his 1969 signature rendition, “How does it FEEL, To be on your OWN, A complete unKNOWN, Like a rolling STONE.” You end up leaning in toward the edge of your seat and reach for the references to his newly scored songs that are like, machine code, written deeply in your core. “There must be some way out of HERE, said the joker to the THEEF. There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no reLEEF.” And then seamlessly into old ballads, tuned to a razor’s edge. “God said to Abraham, Kill me a SON. Abe says. Man you must be putting ON…Well Abe says, Where do you want this killing DONE? God says Out on Highway sixty-ONE” and then into the 15-minute trance-like retake: “The Good Samaritan, he’s dresSING, He’s getting ready for the SHOW. He’s going to the carnival toNIGHT, On Desolation ROW.” Anyone who wondered about Dylan’s born-again conversion in the 1990s certainly failed to appreciate his apocalyptic lyrics that have always flowed from some inner wellspring and out his mouth, without the appearance of conscious intercession.
There is nothing easy about Dylan — as he’s already made clear, he’s an artist, he don’t look back. The good news is that he is as raw, edgy and unpredictable as ever. Including in his encore that I did not expect. Dylan has been known to play his designated sets and not return no matter how loud and ceaseless the devotional roar. But maybe he’s mellowed. He came back on stage after ten minutes of pandemonium during which the audience created a phosphorescent sea of little lights from cellphone cameras and Bic lighters. Dylan kindly introduced his band — all night he had played more to his pedal steel and electric mandolin player, Donny Herron, than to the audience, while his longtime band leader, Tony Garnier on the electric bass, ran the band. But then he played to us, “May God bless you and keep you always, May your wishes all come true, May you always do for others, And let others do for you. May you build a ladder to the stars, And climb on every rung. May you stay forever young.” Indeed.