Is this it? Bob's in-concert finale?

Rough and Rowdy Tour concludes at the Royal Albert Hall

Some months ago, I noticed that Bob Dylan’s “Rough and Rowdy” tour was set to conclude at London’s Royal Albert Hall and wrote a post about how cool it was that Dylan would conclude this 2024 tour at the same Hall he played some 58 years earlier.

Thanks to help from my Norwegian friend Karl-Erik Anderson’s Expecting Rain, the post drew 1,026 views on July 16, which I think is my second-most read all-time post.

It was the leader for quite a while until a Dylan post I did six days earlier, suggesting that the “Oh Mercy” outtake “Series Of Dreams” was the greatest outtake that Bob didn’t include on an album — other than the legendary “Blind Willie McTell” cut that you have to think made Mark Knopfler pull out what was left of his hair, recording “Infidels.” That was the first song he recorded in that session, too. “Dreams” has since slipped past that Albert Hall post, drawing1,071 views. Wow.

What this tells me is that even at 83, when his last album of new material was released four long years ago (June 19, 2020), some folks still complaining that you can’t always tell what song he’s playing until you get to the chorus, fans still care about what Bob Dylan is up to.

And if this is indeed the end of the Dylan tours, to wind up at the Royal Albert Hall is just too perfect an ending, isn’t it? Closing out with the beautiful “Every Grain Of Sand.” I mean, if somebody was going to make a movie about Bob Dylan — hey, there’s an idea! — wouldn’t that be the perfect ending. And as we know, Bob doesn’t do perfect so why would he start now?

After all this time, even he must be constantly amazed by how many people have something to say about him, still. There always seems to be an endless array of podcasts, lengthy discussions of his in-concert performances, song selections (or song absences), what he’s put on Twitter (!), his occasional between-song comments, like him saying he wrote “Key West” at Ernest Hemingway’s house and on and on.

Truthfully, I had to laugh at the “revelation” that because Dylan used the phrase “six inches above my head,” in “High Water (for Charlie Patton) that relentless lyric detective Scott Warmuth shared with the world that Dylan “stole/borrowed” that phrase from Herman Melville’s “Bartleby The Scrivener.”

Well, I asked Dylan about that and he said that he thought about taking a whole chapter from “Moby Dick” but that since whaling has gone one of favor in New Bedford, which he feels is the center of his fan base, he felt that “Bartleby” was easier pickings.

(The previous paragraph, is, of course, NOT TRUE. But you get my point, I think.)

If this is the end of Dylan’s “Never-Ending” Tour (there are many other names) , the numbers are pretty amazing. Some experts (not Warmuth) suggest he might have played as many as 3,000 concerts since returning to the road 40 years ago and according to Setlist.FM, his most played songs are

• All Along The Watchtower (2255)

• Highway 61 Revisited (2051)

• Like A Rolling Stone (2011)

• Tangled Up In Blue (1711)

• Blowin’ In The Wind (1573)

A more interesting, and probably incalculable number would be how many times did the in-concert version RESEMBLE the recorded version? Hey, Scott, how about that one?

I know when I sat down to take a look at Martin Scorsese’s “Rolling Thunder Revue” I was pleasantly surprised to see Bob play an almost-letter perfect, completely recognizable “Mr. Tambourine Man” as the film opened. He’s kind of moved past that, hasn’t he?

I did get to see him on this tour in Jacksonville, had fairly good seats and with three books on Bob Dylan’s career for McFarland and Co. (available on Amazon) over the past 20-some years, I’m pretty familiar with his work. And there were quite a few songs that, well, it took more than a few bars to figure out what he was playing.

Listening back to the YouTube recording of the show, things seemed a bit clearer so maybe it was where we were sitting. Or maybe not.

Since I go all the way back to Bob’s “dry” period, trying to scrape together a handful of songs for the Billy The Kid soundtrack, he’s gone on to give us so much more music than we ever could have expected. And that’s not even counting The Bootleg Series.

At the moment, I’m about eight concerts into the 1974 Tour with The Band; it’s terrific, long overdue, of course, and you bet I started with the Boston show that I attended, my first concert experience with Uncle Bob. I’m curious to hear them all — and I will, and I’ll be comparing this giant box set to the giant box set from the 1966 World Tour. Lot of Bob to wade through.

And if this IS it for Dylan concerts — I find it hard to believe that he’ll settle for such a perfect coda — well, I feel lucky that I got to see him through all these wonderful twists and turns to his career; the 1974 Tour, the third show of Rolling Thunder Revue, three times with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and on and on.

He’s given me and so many other writers so much to write about, to think about, to argue about, to listen to. And there is no particular reason why I should be hopeful that he has one more album in him; can you think of any other writer being creative and productive at 83 (Bruce ain’t there yet!). But I don’t think I’m alone.

If I was able to reach out to all those thousands of readers who wandered to my Substack twice in a week, I’d bet they’d say the same thing.

Back when he returned to the stage in 1974, I remember there was an article in Fusion, I think it was, that sort of chided Dylan for playing his greatest hits and you know, taking a bow, of sorts, looking back at all he had done. I thought that was pretty crappy and have never forgotten it.

A few years ago, my wife got me seats really close to the stage in St. Augustine and at the close of the show (no, I didn’t film it, honoring Bob’s request), he stepped to the edge of the stage, hands on hips, not quite smiling but drinking in the adulation that poured forth (Especially from the third row.) Good. He deserved it.

He’s not somebody I ever really sought to interview. Everything I could have asked him to say to me, he already has, many times over. But, you know, I’m always open for one more album. Aren’t you?

John Nogowski is the author of Bob Dylan: A Descriptive, Critical Discography and Filmography 1961-2022, available now on Amazon. 352 pages, all three editions.