`Things Have Changed,' But Dylan's
Still Vital
Joel Selvin
Sunday, June 11, 2000
People tend to ignore Bob Dylan these days. There
was a time when the world hung on his every new
release, when each new song was subjected to
intense analysis and quoted everywhere. But
nobody seems to have noticed that the mature
Dylan, who turned 59 on May 24, has done some
of his finest work after passing the midcentury mark.
His latest song, ``Things Have Changed,'' probably
would have disappeared like a stone in a lake if it
weren't for lone sentry KFOG banging it like a hit.
The album from which it comes -- the soundtrack to
``The Wonder Boys'' -- already has sunk off the
charts, following the film itself into obscurity. Like
an extrapolation from his dark 1998 album ``Time
Out of Mind,'' a brilliant, acclaimed work that might
have won the Grammy as album of the year but
barely passed 1 million in sales, ``Things Have
Changed'' catches Dylan casting his wary eye
across the contemporary moral landscape:
``People are crazy and times are strange,
``I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range,
``I used to care, but things have changed''
It's classic Dylan -- acerbic, cryptic, truthful. The
snarl of his youth has given way to a distracted
ennui. He is a man disconnected from his own
emotions, watching his own life pass by, but still
feeling hunger and wondering what happened. He is
a long, desparate way from ``Like a Rolling Stone.''
Dylan at this stage of his career resembles nobody
so much as his onetime idol, Johnny Cash. He lives
on the road, playing one-nighters in towns as
remote from big cities as Visalia in the Central
Valley, where his endless tour touched down earlier
this year. Dressed in black, playing with a crack
band, seasoned to a fare-thee-well, Dylan is quietly
giving some of the best live shows of his life these
days. Drawing from one of the great songbooks in
American music -- his own
--he also mixes in a few tunes by others. He opened
a show at Shoreline last year with a number from
bluegrass greats the Stanley Brothers and has been
known to occasionally perform the Grateful Dead
staple ``Friend of the Devil'' (in fact, he has
contributed a live recording of that song to a
forthcoming collection of Dead songs performed by
a variety of other artists, ``Stolen Roses'').
Onstage he transforms his own songs into fresh,
tough fables, the kind of knowing, detailed
interpretations that come only after a life time of
experience. He is a reinvigorated performer. Two
years ago at the San Jose Arena, where he
appeared with Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell, he
was dancing on his tiptoes. On the 1996
double-CD set ``The Concert for the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame,'' he is captured taking back title
to one of his many masterpieces, ``All Along the
Watchtower,'' from the likes of Jimi Hendrix and
Neil Young. Dylan doesn't sell tickets the way he
once did. When he and the Band hit the road in
1974, it was the biggest tour in rock history at that
point. Now he does OK business on his own but
needs to double-bill himself in the summer to play
the larger arenas and amphitheaters. Last year he
made the rounds with Paul Simon; this year he's
touring with Phil Lesh and Friends (a tour that plays
June 23 at Chronicle Pavilion in Concord and June
24 at Shoreline). Giants like Dylan might be rare on
the pop scene these days, but the Dave Matthews
Band is a much bigger attraction. |
