This show is from September 2000 when I went on the road in the UK to attend 5 shows by Colombia recording artist Bob Dylan who by that point was over 10 years into his Never Ending Tour.
September finally came and with it, just a week before the shows were to begin, a full blown fuel crisis in the UK with protesting farmers and truckers blocking oil refineries and causing the whole fucking country to grind to a halt. Petrol stations completely ran out of fuel as the population indulged in scenes of panic buying, even to the point of clearing out the shelves of the supermarkets. Slam bangers baggin’ it. Pathetic wankers! Make no mistake, the situation had the potential to completely screw things up and for a few days I had visions of my shows going up in smoke with even Bob not being able to get about the country, let alone me in my Nissan Primera. For a while the situation seemed to be very bleak indeed but finally there was a breakthrough between the government and strikers for things to slowly get on the move again. Thanks to my dad and the fact that he was monitoring the news on an almost hourly basis, I had filled up my Nissan right before things had deteriorated and so had enough petrol to see me through, thus avoiding the horrendous queues which lined up outside the filing stations. By the end of the mini crisis I was able to top up my tank the day before my trip up to Birmingham with a minimum of fuss, feeling both relieved and excited, but also half looking over my shoulder just in case the whole thing erupted again.
After dropping my wife Khangla Metok off at the station in order for her to get the tube to Heathrow, from where she was flying to Copenhagen for a few days work as a practitioner of alternative therapies, I finished a couple of odd jobs I had to do such as pay a visit to my local Sainsbury’s, and then was on the road to Birmingham. Bob Dylan concert number one for the year 2000 was now firmly in my sights and it felt incredible! I took with me a flask of black coffee, some bananas, a bag of trail mix and a nice big Belgian bun because I didn’t want to go hungry after the show. The coffee in fact was especially important as I would be driving back from Birmingham late at night, so I wanted to avoid falling asleep at the wheel and go ploughing into the back of an articulated lorry on its way from Stafford to Dover. Smash bang wallop, end of the story for another stupid cunt. The route I fixed upon to get up to Birmingham was the M11, A14, then onto the M6 at the interchange with the M1. This all made sense as the M11 was just at the bottom of the road from where we lived in Woodford and going straight up would avoid any potentially nasty situations on the M25 which was dangerously unpredictable at the best of times and where a couple of accidents could screw the whole thing up for hours.
Within half an hour of setting off I was well on the way to Cambridge, bombing up the M11 corridor at 90 mph whilst catching quick furtive glances of the beautiful early autumn countryside. Naturally Bob was on the car stereo, Street Legal for some reason, despite the fact I knew the chances of him playing a song from that album were remote in the extreme, not unless he pulled a rare airing of Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) from out of the bag. Nevertheless it was one of my favourite Dylan minor works, even though it suffered from being extremely poorly produced when it was first released in the mid 70s. Things had recently been rectified in that department, or at least partly so, with the 1999 release of a remixed edition of the album which had gone some way to clearing up the muddiness of the sound, although it was still not perfect, but nevertheless pretty good. The whole trip up was quite painless and I made the right road connections as per the plan without any stress. Within a couple of hours I was taking the exit for the Birmingham NEC, a few miles east from the centre of the UK’s second largest city and a place which I had never really got to know. It was early when I got there, barely four o’clock in fact, and there were as yet hardly any other vehicles in its car parks. They all looked so empty that I was initially paranoid of parking my motor there in case it got nicked as it would have been sticking out like a sore thumb, but then again it was only a Nissan Primera we were talking about, albeit a relatively new one.
I drove around for a good ten minutes deciding what it was I should do and during that time I saw a bunch of what looked like Eastern Europeans who appeared as if they had recently been bundled off the back of a lorry. It would have kind of made sense as I had noticed there was a massive lorry park next to the NEC chock full of trucks that had clearly made their way there from mainland Europe, probably shipping across Spanish tomatoes, Polish sausages, Hungarian pickles, Lithuanian lilacs, Slovenian peaches and stuff like that. There were four men and a woman with a child in her arms who was struggling to keep up with them. They looked in a sorry state and they only had a few plastic bags between them, so all in all it seemed like a bleak situation. I felt like going up and giving them £20 before dropping them off at the nearest train station so they could get a ride into town and stand a better chance of sorting themselves out. However something stopped me just when I had nearly decided to approach them, a feeling of reticence that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but probably had something to do with the fact I couldn’t really be bothered. Guess it was always like that with me. A good thought or two for sure might pass through my mind from time to time, but I was often pretty far off the mark when it came to actually acting positively in order to help others, especially when I was on my way to see Bob.
When I had satisfied myself that I had found a secure parking space I went off to the entrance of the NEC to buy a £4 parking ticket which would have to be handed to an attendant on my way out later that evening. There were a good few people already waiting, although nothing like a proper queue had yet begun to take shape. It was just the wasters who were there at the moment and of course I would soon be about to join them! But before all that I went back to my car to eat that Belgian bun I’d brought up with me because I was now feeling a bit peckish, must have been the driving, however I soon managed to get it all over my shirt and jeans, something which really hacked me off. The sticky icing on top of the bun was a killer and when I tried to brush it off my clothes it only rubbed itself further in. “Fuckin’ stupid bun!” I moronically cursed to myself, feeling the anger rising. The last thing I wanted to happen was to be standing there in the crowd with the remnants of a Belgian bun I had just gobbled down still stuck to my jeans. One had to keep up appearances after all.
Once that little episode was dun an’ dusted, something which caused me to feel more than a little dumb, I was ready to go down and join the rest of those people already waiting, ready in other words to get into some serious hanging around for a couple of hours before the NEC opened its doors. After about 30 minutes or so standing there with the others we were told by staff from the NEC that the queue for the floor area of the arena was actually around the other side of the building and that we were queuing in completely the wrong place. Needless to say I ran along with everyone else to where we were supposed to be as fast as I possibly could, my head full of dreadful visions of thousands of people already being there in front of me, all of them with big smiles on their faces.
Somehow I knew it had seemed too good to be true, a bit too laid back, and now it was time to get a kick in the guts because of it. Things turned out not to be so bad however, sure there were a few folks in line but nothing too catastrophic, so my worst fears were not realised and I soon found myself queuing in a covered part of the building which was all done out in black, being the size of an aircraft hanger with a couple of empty hot dog stands parked to the side of it. The queue ran right down the middle and I took my place in it behind all the other fans who were already there, heads pointing in the same direction towards the entrance doors which of course at that point were still firmly shut.
It was odd standing there, thinking of those possibly soon to be asylum seekers who were no doubt still wandering around outside in the grounds of the NEC. Their reality was obviously so profoundly different from what it was for the majority of people in their immediate vicinity at that precise moment in time. There they were, surrounded by thousands of people whose only thought was not one of survival but of going to see a singer from the 60s play a bunch of songs, many of which were songs of rebellion, songs with visions of a better world where justice reigned for all. For us it was a time of pure pleasure, but how different it was for others who were not so far away. Things were strange, times were strange, yet how rare it was for such different worlds to collide together in any meaningful way, not unless you were prepared to make the kind of effort which seemed beyond the scope of the vast majority of us.
My one regret as I stood there in the queue waiting for the doors to open was not that I hadn’t helped the presumed to be Eastern Europeans, but that I didn’t have a nice bottle of mineral water with me and that there was no place near from where I could buy one. My mouth was pretty dry, probably because of the bun, but the reason why I didn’t risk losing my place by going out to find a bottle was that I knew if I drank too much liquid I would only end up wanting to go for a leak once I was inside the hall, thus negating all the effort I was putting into trying to get a decent standing position in order to see Bob. Out of the two it was far better for me to have a dry mouth and feel slightly dizzy rather than a bladder full to bursting which after a certain point would have to be emptied no matter what the situation, unless that is, I wanted to piss myself.
The doors finally opened at 6 pm, but all they led to was a carpeted area inside the arena with another set of doors at the end of it which were also firmly closed. We all rushed to the marked off area where we once again had to queue and since it was a question of speed I was able to overtake quite a few people who up until a few seconds ago had been further up the original queue than me! It brought an idiotic smile to my face and made me think that Bob would probably have had a good laugh about it as well if he could have seen us scrambling around trying to manoeuvre ourselves into position just so we could get as close as possible to him. Everyone now faced a further 20 minute wait until the second set of doors were opened and people were allowed to stream through and into the main concert hall of the NEC. We handed in our tickets which we were told would be returned to us when the show was over if we wanted them as souvenirs, and considering the kind of Dylan fan I was currently with, there were more than a few panic stricken requests for confirmation from the security people that this would indeed be the case.
After that was sorted it was now a simple sprint to the front of the arena to get the best possible standing position in front of the stage. Security people kept shouting at us not to run which meant it was a kind of stop start fast jog which we all had to make under their watchful eyes. It was difficult not to smile, not to feel exceedingly stupid at being told off in such an abrupt manner by a bunch of mean looking shaven headed guys in yellow high visibility jackets who were talking into their phones and throwing their weight around. All the same, everyone was now in final sight of that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and no one was going to stop us from reaching it, that coveted place right at the front of the crowd with a direct line of sight to Bob Dylan when he came on stage.
I was very glad I was wearing a recently acquired cushion soled pair of shoes because when I claimed my spot I knew I was in for another wait of well over an hour, with there being very little room for manoeuvre in a packed crowd where the temperature was going to be steadily rising. My heart was racing already, I was inside the NEC, pretty damn close to the front of the stage, just four or five rows back from the front barrier. That meant with my height I was on for an uninterrupted line of vision, so things were looking good, very good indeed! Now it was just a question of waiting all over again. The main discomfort was that I still felt incredibly thirsty and when a woman a few feet away from me starting drinking a small bottle of mineral water I was filled with an intense yearning to snatch it out of her hand and glug it down before handing it back to her completely empty. I could only partly offset such an insanely uncool desire by mustering all the saliva I could find in my mouth, having a few deep swallows and making do with that. Not really an adequate solution I know, pathetic really, but under the circumstances it was the best I could come up with. The physical penance I was experiencing was going to be worth it though I was sure, no pain no gain, or maybe just rank stupidity, I really didn’t know.
A couple of guys behind me were talking about all the times they had “seen Dylan” before, their trips to cities like Hannover and Dusseldorf and their drunken adventures on the coaches they travelled on. Pretty depressing stuff really, seemed to me they might just as well have been talking about seeing Whitesnake or Black Sabbath instead of Bob, so I had to distract my mind from them by way of doing a bit of breathing meditation. Observing the in breath, observing the out breath, counting the pull of the in and counting the push of the out. I decided to do a 108 cycle, treating each in breath and out breath as one and doing it 108 times. It would be a chance to take my mind away from my physical discomfort, the inane conversations of the people around me, and also to alleviate a strange mixture of excitement and panic which was flowing through me at the same time. Excitement over soon seeing Bob, but panic over the fact my mouth was so dry and that I could have killed for a nice big swig of water to stop me from possibly fainting. I was impressed with myself at how easily I was able to keep count, mentally I patted myself on the back because it seemed to me that my attention must have been pretty damn sharp considering the circumstances. The first 108 count cycle went by with no problem, taking I guess around 25 minutes to complete, so much so that I immediately decided to do another one. Well, this time I got up to 60 or so before totally and utterly losing the plot, getting seriously distracted because my mind wandered all over the place like a jack in the box. So that was the end of that!
There were a good number of women in the crowd, more so than when I last saw Bob three years ago and judging by the languages which were being spoken it seemed like they were from all over Europe. Italian, French, Spanish; dark eyed beautiful women. All of them lovely, all of them were there to see Bob, and just to think he could have had his pick of them made me realise how great it must have been to live the life of a rock god. I got into a conversation with a friendly Irish guy who had caught both of Bob’s concerts in Dublin before flying over and joining his UK tour in Newcastle, which was last night, and where he reckoned Bob had played a pretty good show. According to him the best of the three he had seen however, had been the second show in Dublin which he said was fantastic. A sell out at The Point, Bob knocking 8,000 Irish punters stone dead. Naturally it sounded magic and naturally I only wished I could have been there as well.
By now time was getting on, the NEC was feeling to me like it was pretty full and when I turned my head around all I could see was a sea of people right to the back and sides of the arena. The noise level had risen considerably, there was an excited buzz about the place, a sense of intense anticipation. Up on the stage the road crew were making the final checks to the equipment, to make sure all was as it should be. There was the young Oriental guy who always tuned the guitars and who then carefully placed them in the racks stacked up to the side of the stage. The huge guy with the beard and the pony tail, who got to make the announcement of introduction, hovered around the stage looking busy, going round lighting sticks of incense in big bunches with a blowtorch so that perfumed clouds of smoke wafted over the front rows of the crowd from the stage. It was that familiar smell again, Bob was still using the same incense which he had been into in 1995 and also in 1997 when I had last seem him, just after the release of Time Out of Mind, the album which had delivered the goods for him in spades.
At 7.40 the house lights were hit and a huge roar went up from the crowd. Everyone knew that it would not be long now before show time. The lights from the amps flickered in the darkness, clouds of incense smoke hung heavy in the air and my heart was racing fast. For me, these moments were some of the sweetest in life; standing in the middle of an excited mass of people, taking in the human electricity, drinking down the buzz of pure anticipation as everyone waited for the appearance right before their eyes of Bob Dylan, the greatest performing artist of the 20th century. Period. No question! All of a sudden I saw a bunch of figures appear from out of the shadows at the back of the stage; Larry Campbell, Charlie Sexton, Tony Garnier, Dave Kemper and last of all, Bob Dylan. The noise from the crowd was tremendous, the noise from my extremely dry throat was also tremendous as I stood there in the middle of the floor with my arms raised in the air as a form of welcome along with everyone else. While Bob and the boys strapped their guitars on, got settled, there was a simple announcement from the huge guy with the beard and the pony tail – “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan!”
Things started with I Am the Man Thomas one of a number of non-original Bob Dylan songs which always begun the sets at this point in the Never Ending Tour. Effectively it served as a warm up number, both for Bob, the boys, and the crowd. My first impression on seeing Bob again in the flesh after a gap of three years was that he looked pretty out of it, in fact both he and Larry appeared to have stepped on the stage from another planet. Did they know what city they were now in? Maybe, maybe not. All of the group apart from Dave Kemper the drummer were wearing suits, Bob looked like he was 19 years old one minute and 59,000 years old the next. It was weird! As usual with Bob it was nothing short of intense, I couldn’t help switching from looking at him and Larry for the whole of the first song as Larry stood there on the stage to the right, a tall figure with dark eyes staring out into the audience as he strummed his acoustic guitar.
All the physical discomfort I had been feeling during the wait had begun to ease and when Bob went into second song of the set, Times They Are a Changin’, I was feeling pretty good. It was a great version! The way Bob had been playing it over the last few years was miles better than the original and I loved how his voice sounded, sung with the authority of a priest within his own self made temple who knew exactly where the times were changin’ to. Third up was an It’s Alright Ma I’m Only Bleeding which might have fallen short of the awesome version found on 1974’s Down in the Flood, an album from the time when Bob’s popularity had never been greater, but was perfectly satisfactory nevertheless. More than satisfactory was what came next in the form of One Too Many Mornings, also all the way from 1963’s Times They Are a Changin’ album and on this occasion it was a version which boasted an absolutely dynamite harmonica solo that had Bob dancing and jigging across the stage, by the end of which he had simply brought the house down. The cheers were deafening but Bob barely deigned to look at us. It was business as usual as far as he was concerned.
Tangled up in Blue occupied the fifth slot in the set just like on every night I was to see Bob and the boys, as indeed it has done now for a good number of years on the Never Ending Tour. Seems that currently Bob really enjoys playing it, and I have to say the version he produced this time around was just about the best I had yet heard from him. It kicked in all the right places and also boasted some pretty cool lighting effects which I was to more fully appreciate in the shows to come when I wasn’t always so close to the front. The acoustic section of the set finished with Searching for a Soldiers Grave another non-original song, one which has also recently become a permanent feature at that point in the show. It had Bob and the boys lined up like a small company from out of the American Civil War, shadows in the time machine distance, hiking through the misty swamps of history to step once more into the present. There was an ominous ghost-like quality to the performance which had me mesmerized but saw some of the the audience get fidgety and caused the energy levels to drop a bit.
The sense of restlessness which rippled through the crowd during the unfamiliar Searching for a Soldiers Grave was immediately dissipated by a slice of Country Pie,opening song of the electric part of the set, a thoroughly excellent number for Bob and the boys to loosen up their fingers and begin to pick out some chops on their electric guitars. It was also a good example of a late 60s Bob song which had now gone through a fairly radical transformation, far edgier now, far more rock and roll, and I loved it. I had been reading reports of Pie all summer on the Internet reviews of the US shows and this was the first time I got to hear it in the flesh. The rumour was that it was being played as tribute to the recent passing away of his mother. Whether that was true or not I just didn’t know, however there was no doubt the atmosphere in the NEC immediately perked up, and the crowd responded when it was over with a tremendous cheer.
Ballad of a Thin Man came next, I have to admit to not remembering too much about this one, apart from the fact it was a good version of one of my least favourite well known Dylan songs from his mid 60s Golden Trilogy period comprising the albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. I most certainly remembered the next song he played though, an absolutely killer version of Crash on the Levee with Larry, Bob and Charlie all on duelling electric guitars. Quite simply, it rocked from out of that late 60s basement zone in which it was originally created, rocked like hell as a matter of fact. Crash on the Levee, the water’s gonna flow, Oh mama who’s gonna be your best friend now? It was a dark roaring stream, taking the timber from the old north woods and washing it away down the deep waters, all delivered in the style of a hooligan grandfather who was out on a hot night in Birmingham.
It was quite an experience being so close to the front. I think it is fair to say that if he had so wished Bob would have been able to completely intimidate everyone who was up there with me. We were encroaching on his territory after all, this was his space, he knew it so well, at times he looked at us as if to say “Well, what have you got to show me?” It was quite disconcerting, I couldn’t shake the feeling that as he looked us over he was very disappointed in what he saw because there was no trace of a smile on his face throughout the whole show. He wasn’t bothered with us, he had seen it all so many times before, we had nothing new to present to him, just more blind adoration which probably none of us would have been able to properly explain. It almost got to the point where I felt embarrassed as no doubt there were some faces in the crowd, those of the real fanatics, who Bob must have been sick of the sight of, seeing them again and again, show after show, as he made his way around the world on his Never Ending Tour.
So after an altogether incredible Crash on the Levee Bob goes into a slow burning bluesy take of Tryin’ to Get to Heaven from Time Out of Mind. It sounded like it was the first time he and boys had played it through in that particular version and it was a bit rough around the edges if truth be told. In retrospect what was interesting about this song was that I would hear Bob play it in two later shows, by then it had become much more fully rounded and developed, with all those rough spots on display at the NEC thoroughly ironed out. Talking of iron the next song was an absolutely brilliant version of Cold Irons Bound, again from Time Out of Mind. This song has really morphed in the space of three years into a number of genuine tension sounding as hard as nails, at times it gets really heavy, extremely loud, so much so that I thought a lot of people in the audience who might have come to see Bob just knock out the standards from the 60s must have been pretty damn shocked at what they were witnessing. From where I was standing it went down very well indeed because it simply took no prisoners and was forged from a template which allowed multiple forms of interpretation for both artist and band, including throwing in some chunky slices of metal.
The main set then finished off with Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat which just about trumped Cold Irons and smoked its way into being the best song of the night for me. I would never have imagined it was possible to get such a fantastic performance out of Pill-box, although the version found on the Bob Dylan Live At the “Royal Albert Hall” The Bootleg Series Vols 4 – 5 should have given me a hint that it could be done. When it finished the whole arena was on its feet. Bob and the boys then just stood in a row at the front of the stage, arms by their sides, staring into a sea of smiling faces in what was known as The Formation, something which had become a part of the Never Ending Tour at some point earlier in the year 2000. One by one the boys broke away from The Formation until only Bob was left on stage and then he was gone as well. The main set was done. It had all been over so quick! The tiredness which I had felt from the waiting and the standing to attention for the best part of five hours had completely left me. The only thing on my mind was to shout at the top of my voice with all the others in order to get Bob and the boys back on stage again as soon as possible.
The way the sets were currently worked out meant there was a main set of 12 with the first 6 acoustic, then the final 6 electric, followed by a straight encore of 7 mixed between acoustic and electric, so that in total it was 19 songs at a length of nearly 2 hours. Standing there in the darkness whilst being right in the middle of the crowd of a full arena, waiting for Bob and the boys to come back out and play the encore, filled me with a pleasure which was the purest of the pure. It was a good five minutes before those shadows appeared again at the back of the stage, then walked forward to pick up their instruments. The crowd naturally went wild and they had every right to because so far it had been a brilliant show.
The encore began with Things Have Changed the newest recorded song which Bob has written, a millennial update on our our current state, where women in wheelbarrows and Bibles set to explode are found within a work which has already won him a lot of praise from critics and fans alike. I had got into it big time during the course of the summer thanks to its inclusion on the Best of Bob Dylan Vol.2 and as if that wasn’t enough I had also splashed out on an import CD single of it at £6.99 courtesy of HMV Oxford Street. The CD came with a radio edit single version, Hurricane from Desire for some reason, plus a couple of live cuts in the form of Song To Woody and To Make You Feel My Love from recent shows on the Never Ending Tour, so all in all it was something which I thought was a tremendous bargain!
Things Have Changed was immediately followed by Like a Rolling Stone which was just awesome, it was hard to believe that this was a song which Bob has played thousands of times, because it sounded like he had only written it the week before, like he just wanted to share it with everyone because it was so damn good. This was also the best version I had yet heard him play, Larry was fantastic on rhythm guitar, then when Charlie Sexton came in hard at the end on his Fender as Bob stood between them delivering the words, I was in heaven. Might have even been tryin’ to open the door. Needless to say, with this one the crowd really did go wild, especially when the bright lights from the stage were turned on all of them, thus illuminating the whole of the arena for Bob and the boys to see just how many punters were packed inside the NEC screaming their adulation back in their direction.
An acoustic It Ain’t Me Babe after such a mighty version of Like a Rolling Stone was a bit of a come down, but nevertheless it was a very enjoyable version. After Babe it was onto Highway 61 Revisited which I hadn’t heard him do as well since Hammersmith 1993 when it had completely knocked me out. It is a great song for Bob and the boys to form that Fender guitar union in the middle of the stage and it is at moments like this in the set when you see that Bob is really doing all these shows year after year simply for the sheer love of the noise being created. He gets lost in the music, we all get lost in the music, adapted as it is from a template set down many years ago. It was loud, it was proud, and it sounded so good that it would have been great if it could have gone right on up the road and over the border. Forever Young was next, again it was time for the acoustic guitars, and on this one there were also strong backing vocals from Larry and Charlie. They had also sung backing vocals on I Am the Man Thomas and Searching for a Soldiers Grave earlier on in the set but possibly, because those two songs were non-original Bob numbers, they were not so noticeable. On Forever Young however they really stood out and I can see why it has become an almost permanent feature for this part of the encore for quite a while now on the Never Ending Tour because it really does sound so touchingly terrific as to almost touch the sky.
A completely unbreakable Everything Is Broken followed, a song from 1989s critically well received Oh Mercy album and a song which Bob has consistently played throughout the years of his Never Ending Tour during the course of the 90s. Despite the growing fatigue my body was feeling, I could have quite happily stood and listened to a 20 minute version of Broken because it sounded so razor sharp, so clear and unstoppable. Blowin’ In the Wind was the final song of the encore, as it was to be throughout all the September 2000 shows I witnessed, and again there were strong backing vocals from Larry and Charlie. It was just as good as the 7 + minute version found on an extra two track CD which came with those initial copies of that recent Best of Bob Dylan Vol.2 album and it seemed incredible to think that Bob had wrote this song in 1962, nearly forty years ago, because he was putting the same kind of energy into it as if he had just written it a month before.
Just like at the end of the main set Bob and boys stood there in The Formation, staring out into the cheering crowd, soaking up the appreciation until one by one they left the stage. A couple of minutes later the house lights came on and everyone knew show time was over. As I was near the front of the standing area, right by the stage, I was one of the last to get out because there were a considerable number of bodies between me and the exits. I was going to go straight to my car but on the way out I saw the merchandise stand and after initially passing it by, I backtracked on myself to join the queue. Five minutes or so later I had parted with 18 quid in exchange for a pretty cool extra large Bob Dylan t shirt. I was more than happy with my purchase, it felt like my tribal credentials were being bolstered up again, and that I might just get to wear it a couple of nights later when I was due to go up to Sheffield with my old friend Marc Murphy for the next Bob show on my list.
By the time I got to my car there was a very long queue of vehicles trying to get out of the car parks, which meant there was no point in rushing as there was simply nowhere to go, so I sat tight and cracked open my flask of coffee for the road. It wasn’t too hot but that didn’t stop me drinking the whole thing down in a matter of minutes, greedy for the caffeine. I didn’t want to fall asleep on the way back, although in reality I already knew there was little chance of that because I was buzzing like hell from the fabulous show Bob and the boys had just delivered. Eventually things started to crawl along as we all nudged our way towards the exit of the car park, but all the same it was pretty slow going and a little bit of a test of one’s patience. Just at the point where the attendants were taking the parking tickets a guy was lying face down flat on the grass in front of some bushes and I could only think that he must have been completely pissed. It was a cold night and it was not the kind of place you would want to stay out for very long, unless that is, you fancied a dose of pneumonia coming your way. God knows how he got there. Surely he hadn’t been to see Bob, but if he had it was a mystery to me how he’d so quickly ended up where he was, but he might left the show early of course, thinking it was shit. I slowly drove past him and twisted my neck to take a good look just like everyone else, before heading out of the NEC and leaving him to his fate.
The sight of the drunk reminded me of the people I had seen earlier on, the possible East Europeans who had looked like they had just jumped from out the back of a lorry. I briefly wondered where they might have been now, how far they’d got from the NEC, if in fact they’d gone at all. In Like a Rolling Stone Bob sings about having to scrounge around for your next meal and it had looked to me as if those people would have had to do exactly that by the time their day was through. We, the Bob show goers on the other hand, were purely interested in hearing his words as entertainment and miles away from actually confronting them as reality. Strange the way the lives of people could be so different and strange the way it was so difficult to connect, to break on through and forge any kind of resolution. Maybe at one time Bob would have exhorted us to do something about it, or maybe not, just don’t know, but the fact of the matter was that we were a long way down the line now from that sense of sacrifice, idealism, whatever else it was you might call it, which might or might not have been around in the hippy trippin’ 60s. The route I chose to go back was the M42 onto the M40, then round the M25 to Junction 26, and for many miles the show was still ringing in my ears. Whoever had been on the mixing desk at the NEC deserved a big pat on the back because the sound had been just excellent, in fact it was one of the loudest, hardest shows I had yet heard Bob play. It meant that I drove on into the night at close to 100 mph because I was still buzzing like a demon and now fuelled up from all that lukewarm coffee I’d downed. There was no need to stick Street Legal back on the CD player of the Nissan, it would only have taken away from the power of the show I had just witnessed. In just under two hours I had brought it all back home and was parked up back on my drive in Woodford. One show down and four to go. And that was what it was all about, on the road with the Mystery Tramp, Ragged Clown, Bread Crumb Sinner, the Original Song and Dance Man from the Land of the Star Spangled Banner!
Setlist Birmingham NEC 20th September 2000 –
I Am the Man Thomas
Times They Are a Changin’
It’s Alright Ma I’m Only Bleeding
One Too Many Mornings
Tangled up in Blue
Searching for a Soldiers Grave
Country Pie
Ballad of a Thin Man
Crash on the Levee
Tryin’ to Get to Heaven
Cold Irons Bound
Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat
Things Have Changed
Like a Rolling Stone
It Ain’t Me Babe
Highway 61 Revisited
Forever Young
Everything Is Broken
Blowin’ In the Wind
TracelessTrails 