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.
It was raining all day on Monday, which was the day I was due to go and see Bob Dylan in Portsmouth. I had to go to work at Wisdom Books in the morning, the small book distribution company I was co-director of, along with my colleagues Duncan “Dunc” Huston and Lee Richards. By two I was out of the office and on the road to get to my fourth Bob Dylan show within a week, after already having seen him at the Birmingham NEC, Sheffield Arena and Cardiff International Arena. I left with plenty of time to spare because I had no idea what to expect in terms of traffic on the way from London down to the south coast of England where Portsmouth was located. The M25 turned out to be pretty clear, a fluke no doubt, and within an hour I had reached the other side of Heathrow to take the junction for the A3 now heading due south. I had decided the A3 was a better way to get to Portsmouth rather than the M3 down to Southampton and then swinging across along the coast road. Dunno why, intuition I guess.
It turned out to be a pretty good decision because the A3 was virtually dual carriageway all the way and also not that busy, which meant that I made good time, far better than what I was expecting. I was bombing along in the fast lane, listening to Bob’s recently remixed Street Legal album which, just like when I made the journey up to the NEC in Birmingham, was on my car stereo at reasonably high volume and something which I was rather enjoying. If ever there was an album from Bob’s canon which needed a remix Street Legal was the one, because the production on the original version was murky to the point of being atrocious, all but ruining the enjoyment of listening to it. Thankfully things had been cleaned up this time round and the remix now brought a punchy sparkle to great minor Bob songs like New Pony, No Time to Think and True Love Tends to Forget even though the chances of any of them being played on his Never Ending Tour were zilch.
Naturally enough I was turning my mind towards the evening ahead and what might lie in store for me as far as the performance from Bob was concerned. A part of me kind of knew that it would not be as sensational as Cardiff a couple of nights before, because no one, not even Bob, could pull off one of those high intensity shows every night of the week. Cardiff had also been on a beautifully warm Saturday night but now it was Monday and tipping it down with rain. The show was also down in Portsmouth, where for whatever reason, Bob had decided to play a couple of nights at the Guildhall. Big differences in the external circumstances therefore pointed to the fact that things would also be different on stage. Guess I was also feeling a bit tired too from all the driving round the country I had done, heading out each time from London to Birmingham, Sheffield, Cardiff and now Portsmouth in quick succession. Attending all those shows had entailed clocking up the miles, keeping my eyes on the road and hands upon the wheel, juggling the responsibilities of work at Wisdom Books so as to keep both ends burning. There was no doubt my energy reserves were now running a bit low as it was bound to take it out of me after a certain point, and I felt I would have to make sure that I stayed on the right side of the road gods if I was to avoid getting into any sticky kind of situations. In my experience they tended to come along when my energy was in a dip, because that was when mistakes were made and a slap across the face from the hand of fate became far more likely.
When I had originally bought two tickets for Portsmouth the plan had been to go with Ronan Dale who was a long term customer of Wisdom Books and a self proclaimed tantric wizard living in a council house with his father in Hemel Hempstead. When he wasn’t occupying himself with the esoteric rituals and practices of tantric Buddhism, the Wizard also happened to be a heavy duty Bob Dylan fan with an extensive collection of Bob bootlegs stashed away in his bedroom. At the last minute however, the Wizard had pulled out of coming to the show with me down in Portsmouth, he was 52 years of age and he came up with the lame excuse that he had a short term teaching contract which he couldn’t jeopardise by way of taking a day off. It was the kind of decision which I simply could not understand because, whilst he was heavily into Bob, there was always some reason to prevent him going along to see him play live. In other words it was not the first time da rimpin’ pimpin’ Wizard had pulled of this kind of stunt and it left me feeling more than a little exasperated with him because it now meant I had to try and sell his ticket when I got down to the Portsmouth Guildhall.
It was hassle but then again if I failed to sell his ticket it didn’t matter that much to me because the Wizard had already paid me for it a month or so before, whilst if I played my cards right by way of getting a good price for it, I might even stand to make a healthy profit. As far as I could see my chances were pretty good for making a bit of a killing, after all the two Bob shows in Portsmouth had been the most over-subscribed of all the places he was playing in the UK on this leg of his Never Ending Tour. This was due to the small size of the venue, the Guildhall in out of the way Portsmouth, which made me think there would surely be hundreds of Bob fans down there looking to beg steal or borrow a ticket in order to get inside. Not that I was necessarily looking to make a fistful of bucks. If there was a genuine Bob fan in need, I would be more than happy to pass it on at face value and then reimburse the Wizard at a later date.
As I proceeded further down the A3 I noticed how different the countryside was in that part of England to how I had imagined it to be. Having never driven through it before, there seemed to be a hell of a lot of forest and the ground was higher too, as the road passed through what must have been the South Downs. In my head I had pictured flat fields, acres and acres of intense cultivation, but it was not like that at all and far more open, even in places a little wild. The whole scene also looked pretty sparsely populated which was a bit of a shock considering how close it was to London and it just went to show how wrong I could be when trying to picture the unknown, how far short my imagination could fall when stacked up against the reality of seeing it face to face.
The other major factor which came into play was that the further south I drove the worse the weather became so that by the time I hit the outskirts of Portsmouth it was raining very heavily with no sign of a break on the horizon. Nevertheless I was still excited to reach the town, there was always something quietly thrilling about arriving in a new place, somewhere I had never been to before, and in this instance it was a place with a deep, illustrious naval history. The cranes from the docks and the ferry port stood silhouetted against the skyline, whilst huge grey clouds were stacked up behind them, clouds which were no doubt full of rain. I always liked port towns, cities even, there was a sense of constant movement about them with thousands of people passing on through, ships arriving in the middle of the night from across the waters and sailing off again out into the big wide world. For the first half of the 70s I had lived in Plymouth when I was growing up, another big Royal Navy port further on down the South Coast heading west and where, along with a shed load of rock and prog, I had got into likes of groups such as the The Doobie Brothers for the first time in my life by way of The Captain and Me, What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits and Stampede; such great albums to listen to in your early teens!
The main task for me on hitting Portsmouth city centre was finding a place close to the Guildhall where I could park my car. I had downloaded a map from Multimap.com but trying to read and make any sense of it whilst at the same time driving down unfamiliar roads was next to impossible and more than a little dangerous. If I had persisted I could very well have caused a nasty accident, and mowing down a tattooed sailor from the navy would definitely have not been a good idea at all, so I pulled up outside a multi-story car park to ask the advice of a traffic warden. He was a young Asian guy and he was very helpful, guess he had yet to display those tell tale signs which would in time make him like all other traffic wardens, in other words a complete and utter weasel. He soon set me on my way and after a little bit more driving round with a couple of wrong turns thrown into the mix as well, I was eventually parked up in another multi-story car park within spitting distance of the Guildhall and right in the centre of town.
It was only just gone 4 in the afternoon, and I had made such excellent time getting down from London that I was very early for the show, almost ridiculously so, because I now had more than a couple of hours to kill. This would have been fine under normal circumstances because I would have been able to take a good walk around checking out the sights of Portsmouth, but due to the weather conditions I realised that would not be possible. Suddenly the hand of the clock was seemingly going nowhere, immovable with the minutes barely ticking by, really starting to crawl. The first thing I had to do was get out of the car in order to find somewhere to have a widdle but locating public conveniences in English towns you’ve never been to before can be a bit of a frustrating business. Luckily I was sensible enough to ask the car park attendant where the nearest public toilets were and after I concentrated hard whilst he gave me directions, I was able to find them in under five minutes. In fact the toilets were opposite the Guildhall and as I looked across the empty square there was already a small queue of people in front of the doors of the venue huddled beneath umbrellas, trying to find shelter from the storm.
No doubt they were the totally dedicated Bob Dylan fans determined to take their places right at the front of the standing area of the stalls when the doors finally opened. Come hell or high water they would be there for every show, no matter what the conditions and wherever the place. I guess Bob must have been sick of the sight of them night after night after night, all of them staring up at him with looks of complete and utter adoration to the point of it probably being more than a little threatening. After taking a very welcome leak in the bogs I sprinted across the square to join them and to let everyone know that I had a spare ticket which I was happy to sell on at the same price for what I paid for it. It was a bit of a surprise to hear that were no takers, they were all sorted, but a woman said there had been a bunch of Italians the night before who had been desperately looking for tickets and that they might be around again later on. That sounded like good news! They probably weren’t there just yet because of the rain which was really pissing down, but it sounded like they could be candidates, so I thought I might get a chance to sell the Wizard’s ticket to one of them.
After that I went back to my car in the multi-story and out of the torrential rain, where on the back seat I got changed into my concert shirt and jeans. A bit pathetic really, but up until then I had been wearing my office clothes from Wisdom Books, and the problem of where I was going to get changed for the show had been bugging me for quite a while. In the end I had decided to throw caution to the winds and do it in the back of my car in the multi-story. The windows got a bit steamed up as I huffed, puffed and underwent various bodily contortions but the bottom line was I did it without too much of a problem. Now that I was in my new clothes for the show, but feeling at a bit of a loss, I thought that I might as well check out the centre of town. There was no point in going back to the Guildhall just yet because people in any decent numbers weren’t going to turn up for a couple more hours because the rain was coming down like there was no tomorrow, which meant standing out in it for any length of time was simply not an option.
As a matter of fact by now it was so seriously pissing it down that I had to dash from shop to shop as fast as I could in order to avoid getting completely soaked. It sure was different to the relaxed warmth of the pre-show atmosphere I had experienced in both Sheffield and Cardiff where people had been able to stand around in the sun, take in the vibe as the crowds slowly began to build up. Different also to the NEC in Birmingham where, although the weather had not been as sunny as Sheffield and Cardiff, it was still pleasant enough to feel nicely relaxed and survey the scene at leisure. By contrast Portsmouth felt like it was right in the middle of monsoon country, now filling up with more of the wet stuff by the minute, seemingly almost being Biblical. All the same I had to smile when I saw a copy of the local paper which bore the simple headline “Rock Legend in Portsmouth” which of course could mean one thing and one thing only, that Bob had come to town!
In order to kill some time I checked out the local HMV Store but it was disappointing, no fans going to the show were in there as far as I could see, there was not even a decent selection of Bob CDs to have a browse through, not that it would have made much difference as I pretty much had all of them already. Next I went to the Virgin Megastore and there things were a bit more interesting with Blonde on Blonde being played and suddenly I came across a number of CDs which I wouldn’t have minded buying. Guess it went like that with me sometimes, making spur of the moment purchases for no particular reason, other than the fact I just wanted to spend some money, have something new to hold in my hands and look forward to listening to once I got back home. A mindless, pointless activity to some maybe, but not me.
Any guilt I might have felt over splashing out on a bunch of CDs was mitigated by the prospect of soon being able to sell my spare Bob ticket for what I hoped would be a very good price, enough to pay off the Wizard and leave more than a little bit left over for me. Riding this feeling of confidence I went ahead and pressed the button, buying The Wonder Boys soundtrack which had no less than four songs by Bob on it including Things Have Changed, and also CDs by Neil Young and Van Morrison to top up my already healthy collections of their music. Finally I also bought something called the Early Blues Roots of Bob Dylan, a recent compilation of original blues songs which Bob had done covers of at some point in his career, something which I thought might be quite interesting, or at least I hoped would be quite interesting once I got to stick it on my CD player at some point in the future.
After a good twenty minutes or more I emerged from the Virgin Megastore 45 quid poorer and feeling hungry since the CD splurge had given me a bit of an appetite. Back outside again in the pouring rain I quickly weighed up my options and realised there weren’t many, so I made a dash for a Kentucky Fried Chicken at the end of the street I was on and therefore not too far to walk to in the pouring rain. Now I have to say that eating at a KFC is not something I usually do, but the circumstances in Portsmouth were such that they left me with little choice, or at least that was how it seemed, because walking around at leisure until I chanced upon a place which served up some authentic south coast food was simply not an option, if that is, such a place even existed.
In some strange way it seemed rather fitting to find myself in a KFC in Portsmouth whilst trying to kill some time and escape the appalling weather. It was full of what I took to be students along with assorted other punters, all busily chomping away on pieces of plastic chemical chicken served up in cardboard boxes with the fizzin’ face of the Colonel on them. I ordered 3 chicken pieces and a can of Sprite, then sat down and joined in the guzzle fest. In fact the chicken tasted good, synthetic as hell and no doubt full of stuff which would make your head spin as far as preservatives were concerned, but for instant satisfaction it was pretty hard to beat. I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it, because I’m sure bad dreams would be sure to soon follow and I didn’t need any more of them, but at that precise moment in time it was just what I needed.
In the KFC a young woman sat in a booth by the window with who I presumed to be her son, both looking out onto the soaking wet streets of Portsmouth with the remains of a chicken bucket on the table between them. Wearing a full length leather coat she was picking at a piece of chicken whilst he ate a bunch of chips and slurped down a big carton of Coke. The woman’s chicken piece fell to the floor after she reached for her drink and then it just lay there abandoned, no doubt waiting to be kicked around because she didn’t bother to pick it up, didn’t even look at it, like it was simply not her problem. Soon after this they left, and the woman lit a cigarette in the entrance before bowing her head and stepping out into the pouring rain with her son holding onto her hand. Not much longer after that I got up from my seat, disposed of my plastic tray and various other pieces of garbage, whilst pretending not to see that piece of chicken on the floor, which somehow made me feel quite ashamed and embarrassed for the state of the human race, but not embarrassed enough to pick it up and put it in the bin.
It was now raining so heavily I realised that I would have to buy an umbrella, otherwise I was going to get completely and utterly soaked, especially if I was going to have to hang around outside the entrance to the Guildhall trying to flog that rimpa pimpa of a Wizard’s ticket. In a branch of C&A I bought a small umbrella for six quid and felt a bit more protected as I made my way through what now appeared to be a deserted Portsmouth town centre. Back outside the Guildhall there were still hardly any punters around because the weather was so appalling. Besides the small bunch of diehard fans by the entrance, the only other people in the Guildhall square were a few ticket touts huddled together beneath some trees close to the toilets. It was a pretty desolate scene, almost surreal, not that inviting at all, a hell of a lot different to how I imagined it would be, that was for sure. I had been thinking I would just roll along, sell the Wizard’s ticket in an instant and then step inside to enjoy the show with a nice big bunch of notes in my back pocket. It was now beginning to dawn on me how wrong I was and that I was having an altogether different kind of experience to what I’d expected.
Alongside the Guildhall was a big pub and I realised that a lot of people going to see Bob would probably be in there having a drink before the show. Sure enough it was pretty full when I walked in and went to the bar to order a sparkling mineral water. There was no point in drinking alcohol because I would only have to go for a leak during the show, also after it was over I would be facing a long drive home which I would certainly need to be awake for. It was clear from looking at the people in the pub that the two Portsmouth shows were for the hardcore Dylan fans, the ones who would be prepared to make every kind of effort to see the man, no matter what the cost was in terms of time, money and comfort. The venue in which they were seeing him that night was small, the tickets difficult to acquire due to the demand, only the most dedicated would have succeeded, and these were the ones who were now in the pub.
There were so many different Bob Dylan t shirts which people were wearing that I just stood there, not exactly intimidated but not exactly full of confidence either. It looked like everyone clearly took Bob and his music very seriously indeed and suddenly having my spare ticket felt like a bit of a drag. Everyone was looking pretty intense, so much so that it seemed to me that fools would not be suffered gladly at the tables where they were sat, making me feel somewhat reluctant to approach them. Shit! The whole goddamned situation over the Wizard’s ticket and the rain which was hammering down outside would not allow me to look forward to the show, especially now that I had just splashed out on a load of CDs and felt a bit guilty for having spent so much money on myself. It therefore seemed like I needed to recoup some of my expenses by way of successfully selling the ticket and so the pressure was beginning to get to me. Problem was I lost my nerve a bit, I would have to interrupt those no doubt very serious Bob conversations all these people were having, ask if anybody needed a ticket for the show, but I felt that asking would be more like an insult to them.
It was all too easy to picture contemptuous dismissal at their hands, that it was a given they all had tickets, otherwise why would they be there? “Why the hell would we be here if it wasn’t to see Bob you fucking idiot? And by the way, just so you know, we can recite and explain the lyrics to every single one of his songs!” These were the kind of thoughts which began to assail me. Still, I quietly began to ask around, but sure enough everyone I approached had a ticket for the show and were not interested in buying a spare. It was all a bit of a surprise to me because I would have thought there would have been at least a few people who would have made the journey to Portsmouth without a ticket, in the hope of getting one at the last minute from someone such as myself, but it simply did not seem to be the case. There was not even any sign of the woman with the placard who had been asking for tickets outside the shows in Sheffield and Cardiff. If she had been in the pub I would have handed the Wizard’s ticket over to her with pleasure, taking it as a good luck sign for the future, the blessings of a dark eyed enchantress and all that, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Slowly but surely I made my way to the entrance of the pub with my sparkling mineral water and where I hoped that some last minute ticket buyers might soon appear. On the steps and taking shelter from the torrential rain were a bunch of ticket touts who all had rather predatory looks on their faces and who could no doubt chew me up, spit me out and not even think about it. God knows what part of the country they came from but it didn’t seem as if they had Portsmouth accents to me, more like they were from Manchester or someplace else up north. The experiences of the wild side of life were written all over their faces and it was clear they would make mincemeat out of me if things were allowed to be on their own terms when I opened up ticket selling negotiations. It seemed to me they were on the road following Bob around, making money from the ticket scene, never getting to see any of his shows, never having the slightest interest in anything other than making a bit of cash, all of which went straight into the back pocket thank you very much.
They really were a rough looking bunch and most of them were not drinking beer but standing there swigging from bottles of Bacardi Breezer and Smirnoff Ice. Despite all these obvious signs, I let them know I had a spare ticket and was soon bombarded with offers, if that was what you could call them, but the fact of the matter was they sounded like a bit of a joke and a bad one at that. The touts assured me that it was going to be next to impossible to sell my spare ticket and therefore the most they could offer me for it was five quid. They told me this in such a way that made it sound like they were doing me a favour by taking it off my hands, which was more than a little irritating. In fact one of them put a fiver in the breast pocket of my shirt and told me to take it whilst I still had the chance. Somehow I managed to hold my ground despite their persistent attempts to steam roller me into submission but it wasn’t easy. I had been told at the bar that tickets for the night before had been going for a 100 quid so I was determined to stick it out, to see it through and come up trumps for both me and the Wizard.
One of the ticket touts did manage to persuade me to sell my umbrella to him, despite the fact I had bought it barely an hour before for six quid from that C&A and bought it of course for a very good reason. This guy was able to use his arts of persuasion on me in such a way that I would only have been left feeling like a complete and utter bastard if I had refused him. At first I was only going to get a fiver off him which would have been ridiculous, but eventually I managed to get back the six quid I had paid for it and felt pretty relieved I had at least got that. As soon as the tout got hold of the umbrella he went outside to stand in the square outside the Guildhall, at least enjoying some protection from the rain, more in fact than I would, which I soon now realised. The other touts ignored me after it became apparent I was not going to sell my ticket to them for a bargain price, or rather sell the Wizard’s ticket for a bargain price. After that initial encounter and a few more minutes standing there trying to look cool and in control of things, I retreated back to the bar feeling somewhat embarrassed, but nevertheless relieved that I had not been totally chopped and eaten alive, even though I had somehow managed to lose my umbrella.
Time was now pressing on, I began to notice more and more people sprinting through the pouring rain and going into the Guildhall entrance where the doors had now opened. There was still no sign of any possible buyers for the ticket, the intensely wet weather meant people were leaving things to the last minute before making a quick dash for the Guildhall, as there was simply no point in hanging around outside and getting a soaking. Standing there inside the pub I began to get seriously itchy feet, wanting to get things sorted as soon as possible but not seeing how I was going to solve my problem in a satisfactory manner. Soon my impatience got the better of me and I ran from the pub across the empty, soaking wet square to the Portsmouth Guildhall. Close to the entrance it was possible to shelter beneath some steps so I took refuge there hoping to attract the attention of people passing by. But it was not much good at all because everyone who walked past already had tickets for the show and clearly just wanted to get inside the Guildhall as quickly as possible because it was so unbelievably wet. It left me in what I now saw was a bloody tricky situation. Another tout came up to me thinking that I was looking to buy but when I told him that I had one to sell he told me the most he would be able to give me for it was a fiver. Again, just a lousy stinking fiver for a ticket to one of the most sought after shows that had ever come to Portsmouth, a fiver was nothing, sweet fuck all! If it was going to be like this all night I just wouldn’t sell it and simply explain everything to the Wizard when I next caught up with him, hoping that he would understand.
The ticket tout disappeared after I turned down his offer and then someone appeared out of nowhere and handed me what I took to be a Bob Dylan fanzine as it had a picture of Bob from around 1981 on the cover. I stuffed it in the back pocket of my jeans and thanked him, thinking it would be something for me to read later on. Turned out that when I did get to look at it later it was a newsletter from a bunch of Christian fanatics who were cynically using Bob’s religious phase from the late 70s and early 80s to draw people in and read their somewhat apocalyptic and completely nonsensical literature. Not long after this latest little encounter I decided to cut my loses and head inside, there was no point in hanging around any longer on what was essentially the Wizard’s behalf because I was going nowhere fast and getting more and more wound up about it. He had already paid me the money for the ticket so I was only looking to recoup his expenses and earn a little extra pocket money for myself from the inflated price I had been hoping to sell it for, but now I could see that it was not to be. Anyway there was something depressing about having to chase after money like that and I had now had more than enough of it. I would simply keep the unsold ticket and post it later to the Wizard as proof I hadn’t ripped him off.
The Wizard would be thoroughly pissed off that I hadn’t managed to sell his ticket, he wasn’t the richest man in the world or the nicest either, and the loss of the 25 quid would sting. However it should serve as a lesson to him that when it came to Bob it really was a take no prisoners situation, that you were either in or you were out. As I ran past the tout into the Guildhall he shouted after me that I must have had more money than sense, but I didn’t care because at the end of the day I was in Portsmouth to see Bob, not to get caught up in a desperate struggle in the pouring rain for a few lousy stinking quid. I had tried and I had failed, simple as that. Needless to say I would never have believed that would have been the case after all the difficulty I’d gone through in getting the tickets in the first place, but that was simply just the way it turned out to be. Life could sometimes be surprising and go off at tangents you don’t anticipate, the terrible weather in Portsmouth had played its part for sure, along with my chronic lack of self confidence, but now it was time to forget all that and get inside the Guildhall to see the show!!!
Portsmouth Guildhall really was quite a lot different from the other places I had so far seen Bob on my little tour, a long way from being an arena that was for sure. It was a pretty old looking building and of course the vital factor for the Bob fans who made the trip was that it was small, a perfect place in other words, to get close to greatness. I walked through the foyer in no time at all, the merchandise stand which at the other venues had been huge and sprawling now looked no bigger than a local market stall, with all the t-shirts and other stuff set out for sale on what were little more than a couple of wooden tables. The hall inside was tiny compared to the other places I had seen Bob that week, holding just over 2000 people, barely a quarter of the size of the Sheffield Arena for example, which could hold around 12,000 all of them seated. At the back of the standing area in the stalls were a couple of rows of seats on slightly raised platforms, above the stalls was a seated balcony which looked like being the best place to see the show, especially if you were in the front because you would be looking right down at Bob on the stage. The ceiling was very high and ornately decorated, but it had obviously not been possible to have Bob’s speaker stacks suspended from it, so they sat instead like two black mountains at either end of the stage ready to pump out the hopefully awe inspiring noise which was soon going to be made by Bob and the boys.
Due to the fact that I had waited for quite a while outside trying to sell the Wizard’s ticket, there were already a fair few people huddled around the area in front of the centre of the stage, which I guess was a bit of a bummer considering the fact I had arrived in town hours ago. Nevertheless I made straight for the centre of that floor space and secured myself a reasonable position about eight rows from the front which under the circumstances was not too bad at all. My first observation of the crowd was that there were considerably fewer women than at the other shows and that the vast majority of the people already there had obviously seen Bob many times before. There was no doubt about that and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe there was something desperate about us coming all the way down to Portsmouth to see him on a miserably wet Monday night. But I had been through those kind of thoughts before and it was doubtful they were ever going to stop me from doing it all again if similar opportunities arose in the future, so it was better just to can them.
Nevertheless my doubts continued because after all what were we really expecting to hear and see? Everyone knew full well it would be a 19 song set with certain numbers from the Bob canon guaranteed to get played; Tangled Up in Blue, Like a Rolling Stone, Highway 61 Revisited, Blowin’ in the Wind all of those for sure, guaranteed, a done deal. In that regard there must have been more than one or two of us quietly harbouring feelings of dread over their inevitable appearance at the same points in the show. Did we really need to be there to hear Bob play them yet again? Maybe Bob asked the same question of us as well, but if he did he was not providing anything in the way of solutions, then again he didn’t really have to. Maybe we were all just not confronting some unmistakable facts in our lives, were merely running away from them, filling up our own personal voids with Bob, ducking the hard questions whilst hiding in the safety of the crowd. Or maybe the simple fact of the matter was that I was just tired, that it was my fourth Bob show in under a week going to see him up and down the country, and that maybe things were beginning to catch up with me.
The hassle over the Wizard’s ticket, my failure to sell it, the constantly pissing down rain, had obviously taken more out of me than I had anticipated. As I stood there in the middle of the crowd with the temperature of the hall constantly rising as it began to fill up, I began to seriously ask myself why I wanted to put myself through such an experience. Suddenly I felt shattered and would have liked nothing more than to have just been able to sit down somewhere and take a rest, as it felt like I was all out of answers as to why I was doing what I was doing. To make matters worse there was a really irritating German guy standing right behind me who was complaining incessantly about the heat and discomfort which we were all experiencing as the place got more and more packed. Well, just what did he expect? We were in a goddamned flea pit of a place in Portsmouth on a Monday night miles away from anywhere. At least I knew suffering was indeed part of the deal when it came to seeing Bob in such situations, we had to pay our dues in one way or another, it was just the price the gods came up with. For the first time that week I was finding it hard to generate those feelings of intense anticipation from knowing that I would soon be seeing Bob step on the stage right there in front of me. There was a little while to go yet however, so maybe those feelings would just creep up and the magic would indeed begin all over again.
It was funny looking at the stage in the Portsmouth Guildhall. With all the equipment of Bob and boys up on it, under the current circumstances there barely seemed to be enough room for everything. A guitar rack had a red Bad Dog sticker on it which for some reason made me think how much Bob liked dogs, as I had read this fact in a recent book on him I had bought and he had also once written a song called If Dogs Run Free, a song which he’d stuck on his under the radar New Morning album which crept out in the very early 70s a few months after his extremely badly received and borderline abysmal Self Portrait. The irritating German behind me with the big mouth was still complaining about the temperature, but now there was no doubting about the fact it was now getting pretty damn hot inside the Guildhall and also extremely packed. The place had filled up very quickly and people were already shouting for Bob to come on stage, they were obviously hopeful, but it seemed a bit premature because judging from the state of the current pre-show rituals I knew there was some way to go yet before things would get started. The huge guy with the beard and the pony tail had only just lit the incense with his blow torch at the back of the stage and the joss was there to waft over the crowd for at least 20 minutes before each show. The young Oriental guy was also still tuning the guitars on the stage, so I knew we would all have to be patient for a little while longer as there were a certain number of things that still had to be performed before the real performance began. The incense soon made its presence felt, with clouds of what I now knew was Nagchampa floating over the packed crowd in front of the stage, raising the excitement levels of everyone a couple of notches higher.
As time went on however, it did indeed appear that this was the night on the tour that Bob was choosing to come on late, just when everyone needed him to appear sooner rather than later in order for him to relieve the discomfort being felt by the crowd which was packed into the Guildhall. For me there was now the distinct sensation of being little more than a sardine in a can and it was becoming more and more unpleasant by the second. Usually show time was 7.45 but by 8 pm there was still no sign of anything happening and I was beginning to quietly pray for things to get started. I was getting very uncomfortable, and others were really becoming quite agitated, shouting for Bob to come on with more than a hint of desperation in their voices. Plenty of people were unable to appreciate the fact that they had put themselves in that situation, that it was no use blaming Bob, especially since the chances were he wasn’t yet even inside the building. Finally however, after what seemed an age but which in reality was probably not that long at all, there was movement at the back of the stage. The roar from the crowd was as much from relief as anything else when the familiar announcement of “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan!” was sent out over the PA by the huge guy with the beard and the pony tail. The next thing we knew Bob and the boys were right there in front of us, right there on the stage in – of all places – Portsmouth Guildhall way down on the south coast of England.
Just as I had anticipated, Bob looked pretty disinterested right from the start. Actually he looked shattered. This was his fourth night in a row playing shows across the land, so I guess it was only natural that at the age of 59 it would take a bit out of him. It was taking enough out of me and I was a complete nobody who didn’t have to worry about the attentions of anyone else in the whole wide world, who could just slip in and out of situations like a ghost if he so chose. Bob on the other hand had to live and breathe whilst always being in the spotlight, well, at least for the two hours of the show, knowing that virtually everything he did would be subject to the myriad interpretations of people screaming their adulation at him from out of the dark. No wonder then, if he wasn’t feeling up to it on this occasion. He looked instead like he was blanking us and that if he could, he would have just gone to bed.
First song up was Hallelujah I’m Ready to Go, the same opener as at the Cardiff International Arena a couple of nights ago but not as punchy. The cards in the pack were immediately shuffled around with the next number however which was Mr Tambourine Man. Quite a surprise to hear this one so early on in the set, in Sheffield it had made an appearance but firmly in the middle of the encore where in my opinion it quite rightly belonged. Nevertheless I really enjoyed this particular take of Tambourine Man, it wasn’t remotely transcendent but it was satisfyingly mystical in an off-hand Monday night in rainy Portsmouth kind of way. To me it summed up the show, in that whilst Bob didn’t really look like he had much of an appetite for singing or being out front, the musicianship was just excellent, Bob’s guitar playing included, helping to slowly create a compelling scene before us. Bob would begin some lines of Tambourine Man standing well back from the microphone so that no one could hear them, then by the time he reached it the line was already halfway through, giving the impression that he was singing outside in a very strong breeze exposed to the elements, and I’ve got admit that I enjoyed the effect immensely, intended or not.
Equally enjoyable and wonderfully appropriate under the circumstances was song number three, taking us right back to the early 60s in the form of a prophetically doom laden A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall. This was one of Bob’s early songs that I had really got into over the summer, for some reason having overlooked it before in terms of giving it some serious attention and it quite simply staggered me to think that Bob wrote this song when he was not far past the age of 21. With the boys in Portsmouth he played it slow and lazy, with lots of musical richness between the verses which felt just perfect, like a conjurer climbing upon the tree of knowledge. It seemed to me that Bob was now tuned into the mood of the night on quite a deep level, so was adjusting the delivery of his work accordingly. He knew full well that it wasn’t going to be a powerful show with lots of interaction between him and the audience, not that there was ever too much of that if truth be told. After all it was a soaking wet Monday night in Portsmouth and it was difficult for anyone to channel that good time wild Saturday night vibration under such circumstances. No, the music instead reflected the murkiness of the atmosphere, the lashing rain outside whilst being stuck down on the south coast of England. The sound for a start was not as clear as it had been at the other shows, but it had a depth and seriousness about it that made it one for the connoisseur and I was slowly beginning to really enjoy it. Slowly but surely it felt like Bob was lifting me out of the doldrums.
What came next was another outing for Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest. Bob had only played this one on Saturday in Cardiff, and to hear him perform it again so soon was a real shock because this John Wesley Harding stormer had been treated to only a small handful of performances by Bob since he wrote it way back in 1968. For it to get two outings within a week must have been almost unprecedented, but all the same this Priest wasn’t half as good as Cardiff, mainly because the song relied heavily on crisp delivery of the narrative and Bob simply wasn’t in the mood when it came to clearly singing the words, adding the right inflexions which would have been needed to elevate it above the ordinary. In Cardiff the song had been so sharp and focused that Bob had looked like he was enjoying every second of it, whilst this Priest in Portsmouth was weary by comparison. But again there was something lurking just beneath the surface which made it strangely compulsive in an undefined hand of fate being dealt by the roadside kind of way, so much so that I almost loved it.
Tangled Up in Blue followed that rare collectors item Priest and I have to say on this one Bob’s singing was poor, the worst of the night, almost to the point of being completely unintelligible. He didn’t so much fluff his lines, which everyone expected him to do from time to time, as just leave whole chunks out of the song altogether, replacing verses with little more than mumbles. It was seeming pretty clear to me now that he really needed to give Tangled a good long rest, but it appeared he just hadn’t got around to coming up with a suitable replacement for it at that point in the set. It was tough going for me, standing there in the closely packed crowd of the Guildhall, hoping like hell he would quickly get to the end of it because it was a really poor effort from Bob this time around no two ways about it. The acoustic section of the set ended as usual with Searching for a Soldier’s Grave by way of a version which was perfunctory to the point of being distinctly unremarkable. So there we are, the first part of the set was over in what seemed like no time at all, with Tambourine Man and Hard Rain being the best of the bunch by some distance.
Bob was having very little to do with his audience but as far as I was concerned this was hardly unexpected. The response from the crowd as well had so far been very different from Cardiff, it was muted, as if the energy level which Bob was on had transferred itself to everyone else in the hall. There was also the fact that due to the tightly packed conditions everyone was feeling more than a little uncomfortable, possibly less vociferous as a consequence of being so close together instead of more. Bob was sweating buckets as usual, sweating like hell in fact and working hard, but it all seemed as if it was like a day down in the mine for him, where he was only finding bedrock and little in the way of gold. All the same I have to say that I really enjoyed it, just standing there observing the process, even if things were not quite at their best.
Country Pie kicked off the electric part of the set and as usual it was great, just as it had been on every night I had heard him perform it so far.
Oh me oh my
Love that country pie
Raspberry, strawberry, lemon and lime
What do I care ?
This one off Nashville Skyline was in honour of his mother who had recently passed away.
The highlight of the show for me came next with what was a collector’s edition of She Belongs to Me, all the way from the first album in his mid-60s Golden Trilogy, namely Bringing It All Back Home. Bob didn’t sing it particularly well but that didn’t stop it from being great to hear and the stage was bathed in a blue and red light which suited the mood of the song perfectly, Egyptian almost, with a little bit of trance acoustics thrown in for good measure. Somehow just to hear him perform She Belongs to Me was enough to banish all those troublesome thoughts and worries I’d been having over failing to sell the Wizard’s ticket, either to another fan or to one of those tout lizards. Suddenly all that crap really didn’t matter, I was back in the pleasure zone and thoroughly enjoying myself in the process, witness once more to another strangely compelling performance from what this time was a rainy day Bob doing his best up there on the stage in front of me. The lighting stayed that way for the next song too, which again was another repetition from Cardiff, this time in the form of Tombstone Blues. It was an excellent version which transported me back into the light of the radiance bursting out from what was Highway 61 Revisited the album to which it belongs.
As mentioned before, Bob’s singing was definitely not spot on, far from it, but the music from the boys was strong enough to carry him through, in fact it was a kind of laid back understated approach which more than suited the situation. The way Bob and the boys were playing was entirely in keeping with the surroundings, making it something to meditate upon at the beginning of another week, with the hard rain outside falling on down like it was never going to stop. Nothing was wildly fantastic, not even close, but everything was still quietly excellent. Maybe that was the difference compared to years gone by when a bad night with Bob really could be a bad night, bad to the point of terrible and tragic. Things have changed in that regard because it is now clear Bob has taken full responsibility for the path he is on, reconciled himself to his fate as the Song and Dance Man, Bread Crumb Sinner and Mystery Tramp who so many people turn to for some kind of solace come rain or shine.
Tryin’ to Get to Heaven in its new form was given an airing for the third time in under a week, however because it is a song which relies on a good vocal delivery it suffered somewhat because of Bob’s distinct lack of interest in bothering to clearly sing the words to his songs that night. But that was fine, by now I knew the territory we were in. The next number was Drifter’s Escape which was a truly scorching version and certainly blew away any cobwebs which might have slowly been beginning to form over the night’s proceedings. It really was wicked, great to hear it in such a radically transformed and hard as hell kinda way from its John Wesley Harding original template and needless to say it went down a storm. The main set then ended with another rock solid Everything Is Broken from the 1989’s Oh Mercy. It was watertight, played straight down the middle so that it gave us all a smack between the eyes to which we could only react by standing there and cheering wildly when it was over. That brought the electric part of the main set to a close, then it was time for another outing for The Formation, with Bob and the boys both expressionless and motionless, standing in a line at the front of the stage taking in the appreciation from the audience in the Guildhall before turning round one by one and walking off back into the shadows, with Bob of course the last to go.
So by way of a very wet, long and winding road, it was turning out to be quite an interesting show! Nothing like the others I had seen Bob perform so far on this little jaunt around the country, that was for sure. Outside it was a wet Monday night in Portsmouth, inside the venue was cramped, packed and pretty uncomfortable. The sound was muddy, Bob was not in the mood to really sing, he often did not make it to the microphone in time for the words to make that much sense, but nevertheless despite all this it was still at times extremely enjoyable. The audience which seemed to mainly comprise of serious Bob Dylan fans was a bit uptight compared to those at the other shows, but maybe that could be put down to some of the crowd having excessive expectations, hoping they were going to be treated to a show full of rarities and little played classics. But even after all these factors were taken into consideration it was all still immensely entertaining with plenty of things to contemplate and reflect upon in a more meditative kind of way, long after it was all over.
When Bob and the boys came back on the stage the encore began with Things Have Changed. This was now the fourth time I had heard it live, and whilst none of the takes had so far come up to par with the recorded version which is a bit of a latter day Bob classic, this Things Have Changed in Portsmouth was definitely the closest so far, to the point where I have to say it was very good indeed. Like a Rolling Stone kept its number two slot in the encore section, yet again Bob and the boys delivered a truly stunning version with Larry excelling on guitar as he took the lead that night by stepping forward from out of the Fender guitar union on the cramped stage and letting rip right in front of us. It certainly brought the house down, pretty much like it always did, and Bob then followed it with another deep 60s cut in the form of It Ain’t Me Babe. This was the second time for me to hear it during this particular cycle of shows and again, just like at the Birmingham NEC, it was a version which seemed to be lacking something compared to how he has done it in years gone by, although it was difficult for me to put my finger on exactly what was missing, its heart breaking evocation maybe, I just don’t know. Watching the River Flow was a another repetition from Cardiff, again it was different, not as powerful maybe, or as energised, but fascinating nonetheless. It is another great number when played in this way, in which Bob and the boys can stretch their legs on their electric guitars until there comes a point in the song where it all just effortlessly rolls along, making it top quality music to stand there and listen to whilst giving the illusion it was so damn easy to play, when of course it almost certainly wasn’t.
The final three songs of the encore followed the exact same format as Sheffield and Cardiff namely Forever Young, Highway 61 Revisited and Blowin’ In the Wind. It was towards the end of Forever Young that Bob looked up and seemed to notice the people sitting in the balcony for the first time, as it was one of shows where he had just not made eye contact with the crowd at all, hardly bothering to look at them all night. There had been no poses or comical postures, there had been hardly any hint of a smile throughout the whole of the proceedings so far. Now, however, he seemed to become transformed. He kept looking up at the front row of the balcony, like he seemed to have chosen one person up there who he was playing to and no one else. Maybe it was a stunningly beautiful woman who had caught his eye, there was just no way to tell from where I was standing whilst being down in the stalls and so close to the front. The point was that Bob didn’t stop looking up at the balcony for the remainder of Forever Young and then continued doing the same thing throughout the whole of Highway and Blowin’. It really was quite something. All of us in the crowd who were standing at his feet down in the stalls were craning our necks and looking upwards to see just who it was he was playing to. Bob really did become supremely animated, and in the space of those two and half songs he struck more poses and smiled on more occasions than what he had throughout the whole of the previous 16 ½ numbers of the set. It was both rather strange and yet quietly glorious at the same time due to the sheer scale of its incongruity.
Naturally when Blowin’ in the Wind was finished that was the end of the show, the energy level of audience had become unexpectedly raised because of the very last part of the proceedings, leaving everyone cheering wildly until Bob and the boys finally disappeared off the stage and into the wet Portsmouth night. There was a real buzz about the place when the lights came on as people slowly shook the sweat from their bodies and made for the exits. When I got to the door I took one last look at the stage where the roadies were already clearing away all the equipment, packing it up, their minds no doubt already thinking about how the next place down the road was going to be on this the Never Ending Tour. I walked back into the foyer, straight to the merchandise stall in fact, where I got myself a Bob Dylan Highway 61 coffee mug and a rather handsome A3 size Bob poster, blowing at least 20 quid in the process. Outside the Guildhall it was still raining, pissing down in fact, and I realised that I would now be very glad to now hit the road and get the hell out of Portsmouth. And who knows, maybe not so far away Bob was thinking exactly the same thing too.
Setlist Portsmouth Guildhall 25th September 2000 –
Hallelujah I’m Ready to Go
Mr Tambourine Man
A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall
Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
Tangled Up in Blue
Searching for a Soldier’s Grave
Country Pie
She Belongs to Me
Tombstone Blues
Tryin’ to Get to Heaven
Drifter’s Escape
Everything Is Broken
Things Have Changed
Like a Rolling Stone
It Ain’t Me Babe
Watching the River Flow
Forever Young
Highway 61 Revisited
Blowin’ In the Wind
TracelessTrails 