GEMINI SUITE: Bob Dylan's 2025 OUTLAW Blues (Concert review) by Harold Lepidus
GEMINI SUITE: Bob Dylan's 2025 OUTLAW Blues (Concert review)
There have been recurring themes that have been marinating in my cerebrum as I've listened to some live recordings from Bob Dylan’s recent performances as part of the 10th anniversary "Outlaw" tour. I had attended two “Outlaw” shows earlier this month, one at the Xfinity Theater in Hartford, the other the next day at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, MA (the one the locals still refer to as “Great Woods.”) While I noticed the themes of division and separation at the actual shows, mostly referring to the end of some sort of romantic relationship, since then I couldn't help but identify certain strands that infiltrated the set list, which commented on our present day world in ways even Dylan probably did not intend. After all, when “Love & Theft” was released on 9/11, didn't it seem like those songs had been written that morning?
In short, these days, everything is broken.
https://www.boblinks.com/090725s.html
The setlists on both nights I attended were identical, although Dylan was more playful and visible in Mansfield. After hiding behind his piano for most of the night in Hartford, he popped up regularly like a jack-in-the-box between songs in Mansfield. His band formed a kind of semi-circle around Dylan onstage, almost like a witches coven gathered around a cauldron, as they were mixing up the medicine, casting spells. Lights and lamps and the piano’s sheet music rack shielded the view of this mysterious hooded figure. It seemed to say - Don’t look, don’t gawk, just listen and learn. Bassist Tony Garnier could also easily be seen orchestrating the musicians with pronounced hand gestures, as if waving an invisible wand.
Bob Dylan is not a pop star, nor a rock star, nor an entertainer in the traditional sense. He is an artist. All across social media, you can see people listing some Dylan concert as their worst concert experience ever, because he didn’t schmooze with the audience, or he can’t sing, or he didn’t play his hits, or even if he did, they didn't sound like the record. They don’t get it, which is fine with Dylan. He doesn’t need them. He’s got nothing left to prove.
While it is rarely a good idea to think one’s interpretation of what Bob Dylan is up to is what he intended, it is also part of the fun of what it might mean, as well as how it affects one’s connection to his art.
Listening to performances of songs at recent shows with fresh ears can sometimes unlock or recontextualize how one can absorb the contents of a particular song. For instance, have I ever made the connection - tenuous as it might be - that in Ray Padgett’s favorite Dylan song, “Early Roman Kings,” there is the phrase,”Hell bent for leather,” which was the name of a song and album by the band Judas Priest, who obviously got their name from Dylan’s song, “Frankie Lee and Judas Priest”? (The band also covered Joan Baez’s “Diamonds and Rust.”)
Speaking of tenuous, there were repeated references to “birds” throughout the set, although some of you might cry fowl:
“Early Roman Kings”: Fly away little bird, fly away, flap your wings.
“Under the Red Sky”: Let the bird sing, let the bird fly.
“‘Til I Feel In Love With You”: Girls like birds flying away.
“Blind Willie McTell”: Them charcoal gypsy maidens / Can strut their feathers well.
(Obsessive? Moi?)
Was this Dylan addressing the avian flu which currently affects wild birds and (U.S.) dairy cows? Even more tenuous: The original outtake version of “Desolation Row” includes the phrase, “the boiled guts of birds.”
But seriously, folks …
First of all, there were some interesting, updated lyric alterations::
In “Love Sick,” the second verse ends, “You thrilled me to my heart, then you ripped it all apart / You went through my pockets when I was sleeping.”**
In the third verse of “Blind Willie McTell,” two lines were altered - “Some of them died in the battle / Some of them survived as well.”**
In the last verse of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” “Goodbye is too good a word, babe,” is now followed by (something like) “So I’ll just say, I wish you well.”
The figure on stage at first appeared to be suffering from a broken heart. This mostly felt like a commentary on the end of some recent romantic relationship. Upon closer examination, however, it appeared to also possibly address a break from childhood and its promises, a lack of empathy, and absent friends.
The inclusion of the first song, “Masters of War,” at this point in time, really needs no explanation, nor does the ominous “All Along the Watchtower.” It’s the never ending string of broken promises and broken rules, the retreat from morality, both here and abroad.
At least four of Dylan’s original compositions directly addressed the end of romantic affairs: “Forgetful Heart,” “‘Til I Fell In Love With You,” "Love Sick,” and Dylan’s restless farewell, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” (A nod to A Complete Unknown?) Whether this is a reflection of something going on in Dylan’s life, or an artist trying to set a mood - or is it just a coincidence? - is really besides the point. The music is as much ours as it is his.
Throughout the night, Dylan was in his own zone. Much like a Jimmy Kimmel monologue, he rarely waits for any applause from the audience before moving ahead. Dylan would begin to improvise by playing on his piano keys just moments after the previous song ended, alternating between a kind of honky tonk style and a jazzy one. He doesn’t give a damn about your dreams. Or expectations. Once again, it was Dylan as some sort of wizard, conjuring up magic on stage before our very eyes.
The mood was certainly set by the second song, “I Can Tell,” first recorded by Bo Diddley. Each chorus ended with the plaintive, “I can tell/You don’t love me no more.” Dylan doubles down with the eighth song, a cover of Charlie Rich’s “I’ll Make It All Up To You,” originally covered by Jerry Lee Lewis. Lewis died not that long ago, in 2022, and the loss of musicians could be another thread, whether intentional or not. Dylan covered Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Share Your Love WIth Me,” which The Band covered on 1973’s Moondog Matinee album. The final two leaves of The Band’s tree also fell recently - Robbie Robertson died in 2023, and we lost Garth Hudson earlier this year. In these days of even more racial strife than usual, the inclusion of “Blind Willie McTell” needs no explanation, but the arrangement is based on the version by the 1993 lineup of The Band, as it has been for years.
The song "Under The Red Sky” could be a reflection on childhood innocence, but again it could be a tribute to George Harrison, who played slide guitar on the original album track. (David Crosby, who we also recently lost, sang backing vocals on two songs from that album.)
There are also other examples of the gemini split. The current version of “Soon After Midnight” features an instrumental section playing the melody of “Blue Moon,” previously covered by, among many others, Elvis Presley and … Bob Dylan. Of course, midnight is the dividing line between one day and the next.
Near the end of the set, Dylan and his band played a rocking version of "Highway 61 Revisited.” The actual roadway is one that has divided the U.S., from Minnesota to New Orleans, for 99 years. That separation divided the east from the (mid) west. I’d suggest that now we have a split between the left and the alt–right.
Now, all that I’ve just shared with you could be dismissed as nonsense, and you would not necessarily be wrong. However, Bob Dylan has been getting me to think differently about all sorts of things for more than five decades. For me, a Dylan concert doesn’t end when I leave the venue, nor does a Dylan song end when the phonograph needle ejects after it is finished. His music stays with me, consistently tugging at my sleeve, demanding my attention. It makes me feel things no other artist can manage to do. He’s the gift that keeps on giving. Of course, your mileage may vary.
As Bruce Springsteen said when he inducted Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, “The way Elvis freed your body, Bob freed your mind.” There are certainly more important things going on in the world, but when absorbing art, it can make one feel connected, and helps one face the avalanche of bad news that hits each of us every day, all in different ways.
As Bob Dylan sang all those years ago, “I could make it without you if I didn’t feel so all alone.”
** These lyrics were actually updated as such on Dylan’s official site
(c) 2025 Text and images: Harold Lepidus. Please do not share the entire contents on social media. Excerpts are ok. Thanks in advance.
RELATED ARTICLES:
An Elegy for a Lost America - Bob Dylan live in New England 2019
Bob Dylan live in the time of the plague (New England shows revisited) (2021)
