A Personal View – Dylan at The London Palladium 23/10/2022!

I had flown into London for the last remaining days of my Mother’s life as she was dying of cancer at the St. Pancras Hospital in London. I arrived with my son and eldest daughter on Tuesday 18/10/22 (on my 43rd wedding anniversary) having been advised the previous day by the hospital doctor treating my Mother to come as soon as possible. We arrived in time to see her and to exchange a few final words, and sadly she passed away the next day on Wednesday 19/10/22. Her remains were cremated on Friday morning 21/10/22 and we arranged for her ashes to be scattered in the flower beds at Golders Green Crematorium on Monday 24/10/22 (where, Matt Monro was also cremated, and his song ‘On Days Like These‘, was one my Mothers favourite songs and was played as her coffin was carried in, as was her other favourite song, ‘Human‘ by Rag ‘n’ Bone Man that was also played at the ceremony) .

To be honest, and not unsurprisingly with all that I was going through, I forgot that Dylan was performing a run of concerts at the London Palladium, a theatre I had never been to despite having been born and having grown up in London for the 1st 21 years of my life (in fact I went to school not far from The Beatles Abbey Road Studio in the 60’s, read when I met Andy Warhol), although the venue was well known for the regular ‘Sunday Night At The London Palladium’ shows on TV in the 60’s that most of Britain watched and many great acts have performed there. After my Mother’s Friday cremation ceremony, my son had reminded me about Bob’s shows but that he had checked and there were no seats available at all and anyway, we were due to fly back to our homes in Israel on Tuesday 25/10/22 although, my children urged me to try to see him for it would most probably be the last opportunity to do so.
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Thanks to the well known helpfulness of Dylan fans, like Karl from the expectingrain.com site, I got to see Bob on Sunday 23/10/22 at the Palladium, thanks also to Daniel Hildebran from Frankfurt who agreed to sell me a spare ticket he had at face value, and we met outside the The Palladium’s front entrance on the evening of the show. I had gone around at about 6.30pm to the stage door and saw the tour buses were parked up but we were told that Bob and the band were already inside, as the rain started to fall. I had hoped to pass a letter to Bob however hopeless that  I knew it would be, that contained a hope that at some stage he could perform Death Is Not The End, and also how I had sent a song that I had wrote with my song writing partner, Paul Odiase using some of Bob’s unpublished lyrics to Bob’s ex-band member, Bucky Baxter in the hope that Bucky would play the song when he next came to Israel, as he often did in order to stay with Bob’s doctor here as they had become good friends, but it wasn’t to be as Bucky passed away 2 weeks later, and I also wrote about those lyrics that I had been given via the Untold Dylan website by Peter McKenzie when Bob had left his notebook after Bob had stayed in his New York apartment in 1961 and which we had turned into songs, the project I had named as Dylan Found and that I had tried to contact Bob’s lawyer, manager, publishers and even Bob himself but with no response from them.
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I had last flown in from Israel with my son in 2019 for Bob’s concert with Neil Young at Hyde Park, but it’s hard to appreciate Bob in such big venues despite the huge video screens that were there (I’m also reminded of his 2002 UK tour when I followed the tour starting at Brighton and Bournemouth, that are 2 intimate venue’s, to the big stadium’s at Birmingham and Manchester where Bob seemed lost in the vastness).
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I sat in my ‘Row S’ aisle seat next to a charming German lady who had followed Bob’s tour from Paris and I had a nice clear view of the stage and more importantly, I was able to see the top half of Bob playing at the piano that faced the audience, and I wondered how many of those in the front rows could see any of Bob playing behind the piano facing them, although I’m sure that they all were clapping and weren’t ‘rattling their jewelry‘!
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Although appreciating most of Bob’s work, I had not up to now really got into the songs from Rough And Rowdy Ways, and as the saying goes, ‘It was all Greek to me’! Of course I was thrilled when Murder Most Foul was released as a single to give us a foretaste of the album to come, in fact Murder Most Foul inspired me as a lyricist to reference many of the events that Bob mentioned in the song on some original new songs of my own on our album Scared of America – Volume Three which was easier for me to do as I was a child in the 60’s, with Bob being only 15 years older than I. I don’t really pay too much mind to what ‘experts’ say a song or album is supposedly about, and the songs mean to me what they mean and feel to me, and a song like, for instance, Crossing The Rubicon was initially hard for me to relate to and more poignantly, as was a song like Black Rider as death was not then on my mind, as sadly it was now that my Mother had just passed away, and some of these songs made me too realize that it wouldn’t be that long until I too would be perhaps ‘knocking on heavens door‘!

I must admit that Watching The River Flow has always seemed to me to be, as most concert opening songs are, a throwaway song to get the band into the groove, and it’s kinda of amusing that he sings about not having much to say in the early 70’s (for from the release of New Morning in November 1971 to the release of Planet Waves in January 1974, there was almost no musical output, apart from the single George Jackson that was released the same time that Watching The River Flow was released on Greatest Hits Vol. 11  in November 1971), for obviously since then to now, Dylan has had plenty to say! When I saw him perform at Ramat Gan in Israel in 2011, he kicked off with real meaning with ‘Gonna Change My Way of Thinking‘, when afterwards Bob’s Doctor, who lives not far from me, called me as I had inadvertently snapped a photo of him sitting at the back of the stage when Dylan was performing, and I immediately removed it from Facebook!
Some of the songs chosen for this and many of the other concerts on this Rough And Rowdy Ways tour seemed to indicate a realization of his coming fate (as he told us in 1975, ‘It’s doom alone that counts’), and are these songs and also his never ending pounding of the boards and constant touring, his ‘Shelter from the storm‘, his way of staying alive, of keeping the Angel of Death away from his door? His songs also give acceptance of being in a world infused with God’s spirit such as Every Grain of Sand (read my article on Every Grain of Sand HERE). His playing in the intro to Every Grain of Sand the first bars of Jerry Garcia’s ‘Friend of the Devil‘ was no accident, for it was a tip of the hat to Jerry Garcia who in 1987 had revitalized Dylan as he was chugging on without direction, and who became like an older brother and mentor to Bob and guided him (read about Jerry Garcia and Bob HERE), as God too had guided Bob throughout the years.
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His songs for me on the night, were both sad, beautiful and poignant, and some with lines that also indicated that he had no intention of going down without a fight and that there were still those that he needed to settle the score with and wave his finger at, as in False Prophet! In My Own Version of You Bob is looking for someone to wear the badge and take over his mantle, but there is no-one around, all those ‘Dylan-like’ artists have fallen by the wayside and he amusingly thinks of creating a new Dylan from scratch, ‘Someone who feels the way that I feel’, and unless Bob’s got one stored in his Malibu garage, it’s too late and will there ever be another Dylan? In I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You, Bob could be addressing a physical lover, but due to his time in life it seems more likely to be an Angel of God or Mary, or he is promising to bind himself more to his religious belief(s)? Is Black Rider about the Angel of Death following Bob around, is it about Bob or his alter-ego? Goodbye Jimmy Reed brings light into the darkness of some of the bleaker songs but is the song really about a preacher named Jimmy Reed or is it more a reflection of Dylan during his Bible thumping period? Jimmy Reed was seemingly a 1950’s Blues player and I can find little information about his preaching, you can read about Jimmy Reed HERE!  Mother of Muses is an inscription on the back of the Nobel Prize that Dylan received in 2017 and perhaps Dylan feels he is unworthy of the hero worship that he perhaps feels should be directed at the hero’s that he mentions, ‘Sherman, Montgomery and Scott’ and more, as he told us that he is just ‘A song and dance man‘? He also tips his hat to those he feels built and fought for America and for American music. You can read the meaning of Mother of Muses HERE. 

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Look at the definition here of ‘Americana‘ and you immediately think of Bob Dylan, yes, for no matter what style of music he performs, it is infused with Americana as is most of Bob’s work! Apparently the meaning of Crossing The Rubicon means ‘a limit or point that is reached when the results of one’s actions cannot be changed and once you’ve crossed the Rubicon there’s no going back  – ‘(Can’t turn back, you can’t come back‘ – Sugar Baby). Key West seems to be Dylan’s ideal place to be, so how come he’s not there, because he could be if he wanted but he’s in Malibu, and he’s also not in The Highlands where his heart is either, and so maybe Key West seems like paradise to some or maybe it’s where rich old people go to live out their last days, but so far Bob hasn’t gone there! Interesting enough it’s only a couple of hundred miles away from where his old band member, Bucky Baxter saw out his last days in ‘paradise’ at Fresh Creek in the Bahama’s. I have always loved ‘Gotta Serve Somebody‘ and one presumes that Bob has always followed God and that he didn’t ‘sell his soul‘ to the devil, as Robert Johnson’s grandson told me that Robert also hadn’t sold his soul to the devil in his personal letter to me, that you can read HERE. 
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It is obvious from his physical appearance last night when he did come out from behind his piano, that things weren’t what they were, of course they can never be and you couldn’t help but notice the plastic strapping on Bob’s right hand and the fact that he was stooping over, most probably from stooping over the piano on each concert night to play, but what I heard last night was Bob putting everything into carefully making sure that we all heard clearly, and he did sing very clear last night, what he wanted to say, which was mostly an acceptance of his coming fate, his belief in God and that he is a man at peace with what will be. Our Hebrew blessing to someone is, ‘May you live to be 120‘ as Moses lived to 120, and if only Bob could too! 
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