Bob Dylan Live: London Hammersmith Apollo 24th November 2003

This one is a write up of the third of three shows I saw Bob play back in 2003. Whilst the first two were run of the mill arena shows, one in Birmingham and one in Sheffield, this one was always going to be special – a return to the legendary Hammersmith Apollo in West London. Sure enough, Bob didn’t disappoint, pulling some stone cold nuggets from out the bag, including a song which he hadn’t played in 26 years. Nice one!

So it was now a case of two down one to go as far as my three Bob shows for 2003 were concerned. There was a whole two days in between the NEC show which I had taken Khangla Metok to on the Friday and the Hammersmith Apollo show on the Monday. That was a long weekend to get through in other words, a very long weekend indeed when I knew that Bob was in town and playing places like the Shepherds Bush Empire which would no doubt be packed to the rafters and full of adoring fans. This time I was going to see Bob with Dunc Hutson one of my partners in crime at Wisdom Books, the small distribution company specialising in books on Buddhism, which I helped run as well as being co-director of, not that such a thing added up to anything more than a hill of beans. Dunc had come to see Bob with me once before, the first of the two London Docklands Arena shows in May 2002, and at the time he had been suitably impressed with what he had witnessed. He must have because when I told him a couple of months ago that Bob would be back in London in November, he jumped at the chance to come along with me and see him again. Therefore on the Monday I finished early at Wisdom and arranged to meet Dunc at my place in the late afternoon in order for him to park his car before we took the tube down to Hammersmith from Woodford.

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Bob Dylan Live: Five Never Ending Tour Shows 2013 – 2019

Following on from my overview of Bob shows from the 1990s and also shows in the period 2005 – 2009, this post covers me seeing Bob Dylan live at the Tempodrom, Berlin on two dates in 2013, the Royal Albert Hall in London 2015, the Cardiff Interantional Arena 2017 and finally Hyde Park, London 2019.

It was to be just over two years later when I next saw Bob by way of going to two shows in Germany on October 24^th & October 26^th 2013 at the Tempodrom in Berlin. Just so happened that I was over there paying a visit to my old friend Thomas Deilecke. The tickets had been bought well in advance of my visit and I guess they were the main reason why was I was making the trip over there, not solely of course, because it was great meeting up once again with Thomas, but Bob was most definitely in my sights, no doubt about that. He was actually playing an unbroken three night stint at the Tempodrom, a concert hall in the middle of Berlin built in the fashion and shape of a circus tent, and we had tickets for the first night and the third.

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Bob Dylan Live: Ten Never Ending Tour Shows from the 1990s

Yes, that’s right, there were no less than 10 Bob shows in the 90s that I went to – 4 at the Hammersmith Apollo, London in 1993, 1 at The Fleadh, Finsbury Park, London in 1993, 2 at the Brixton Academy, London in 1995, 1 in Hyde Park, London in 1996, 1 at Wembley Arena in 1997 and last but not least 1 at the Cardiff International Arena which was also in 1997. What you can read below is a brief description of all of them, prefaced by an account of how Bob came into my life, or if we wanna go Biblical, how I found Bob.

Now I first got into Bob towards the end of 1992 thanks to Good As I’ve Been to You which I bought from a CD shop just off Walthamstow Market in North East London. Yes, Good As I’ve Been to You was my first ever Bob Dylan album, which in some way is kind of ironic since it is a work of traditional folk and blues covers with not a single original Bob Dylan song on it. Just saw it there in the CD racks of the shop and when I picked it up to take a closer look there was something about the photograph of Bob on the front cover which made me want to buy it there and then, immediately, on the spot. It is certainly the case that I hadn’t been intending to get it when I walked in but when I got to play it later that evening, after clocking off from another day of work, I was simply knocked out and from that point onwards have never looked back.

Bob’s voice was ragged and dirty from having been around the world a million times over and done pretty much everything you could hope to do as a top-tier 20^th century recording artist. When it came to popular music at that time, there were a handful of names which immediately came to mind for the majority of people and The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan would almost certainly have been among them. It was probably the case that in any given city throughout the Western world you would have been able to bet your bottom dollar that the vast majority of buskers out on the streets and in the parks would have been able to play at least one Bob Dylan song. Yet here he was on the cover of Good As I’ve Been to You looking pretty fed up, world weary and almost at the end of the line. Guess in some strange way it would be true to say my heart went out to him, it really did and pretty much from that moment onwards I was on his side, wanting to see him pick himself up again and get back to where he belonged.

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Bob Dylan Live: Docklands Arena London 12th May 2002

This show is from 2002 when I went down the road in my home town to see Bob Dylan play another show at the now long defunct London Docklands Arena on May 12th when he was touring the UK on another leg of his Never Ending Tour. It was around nine months after his Love & Theft album which was released on September 11th 2001, and the show features a number of songs from it which I was hearing him perform live for the very first time.

So the first night with Bob down at the London Docklands Arena had been a good one but what would the second one hold in store? When I woke up the following morning I was pretty tired from the night before. The excitement of seeing Bob again, along with the mild stress of taking along Duncan “Dunc” Hutson, where all the usual thoughts manifest of whether or not a first timer to Bob is going to enjoy themselves or simply think the whole thing is a load of old bollox had taken their toll. The consequence of this was that I felt every inch of my 40 years of age when I finally hauled myself out of bed. The late night walk back to Canary Wharf through the rain the night before had also put me through my paces, as well as the drinking both during and after the concert by way of three plastic bottles of Carlsberg followed by a late night pint of very tasty Grolsch. So all in all my energy levels were not at their greatest.

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Bob Dylan Live: Docklands Arena London 11th May 2002

This show is from 2002 when I went down the road in my home town to see Bob Dylan play a show at the now long defunct London Docklands Arena on May 11th when he was touring the UK on another leg of his Never Ending Tour. It was around nine months after his Love & Theft album which was released on September 11th 2001, and the show features a number of songs from it which I was hearing him perform live for the very first time.

It’s now well over a month since Bob Dylan’s two shows in Docklands, May 11^th & 12^th 2002. The time between seeing the man and writing my thoughts down is getting longer as the years go by, which makes me ask, are the fires still burning when it comes to Bob? Well yes, I have to say they are. After seeing the shows I had always intended to write something, and I guess it has just been laziness which has stopped me from doing so. The inspiration has been there though, make no mistake about that. Make no mistake partner or else we’ll just have to go round the back and settle this thing with a pair of shooters. All it has needed is the final push for me to sit for a few hours and set it all down.

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Bob Dylan Live: Stirling Castle Part Two 13th July 2001

This show is from July 2001 when I went on the road up to Scotland from London to attend a show by Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan given in the grounds of Stirling Castle and who by that point was over 12 years into his Never Ending Tour. This is the Part Two of the story.

By 7 or so the sound check was over, with Bob and the boys now probably back stage having a snack or even a light meal before the show, plates of Scottish smoked salmon, maybe haggis. Things were running late, it said on the tickets the gates to the castle would open at 6.30 but we were already way past that and they still remained firmly shut. No one seemed to mind however, the setting was great, the vibe nice and peaceful, so no one was getting unduly excited or agitated that still not much was happening. We began to move forwards at around 7.15 with people on high alert for any possible queue jumpers who might just try to barge in as we slowly made our way towards the castle gates. There was none of that thankfully, which meant that in a stop start kind of way we slowly got closer and closer to the inside of the castle, a steady but sure advance to get within those walls. Finally we reached the castle gates and it was with more than a degree of high excitement that we handed over our tickets to let the stewards tear off the stubs. We were in! Now it was simply a question of taking a brisk walk up the steep incline into the castle grounds before a mad dash in order to find the best place possible to see the show.

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Bob Dylan Live: Stirling Castle Part One 13th July 2001

Really hadn’t thought I would want to write about Bob’s Stirling Castle show in July 2001. After writing up the five September 2000 shows I hadn’t done anything since then with regard to words on Bob for months and I didn’t think in the build up to Stirling the fires would be re-ignited either. However after seeing him I realised I was wrong, way wrong, that the energy was there to make me want to sit and put down on paper my impressions of the whole damn trip.

September 2000 had been special for me after all. Five Bob Dylan shows in five different cities over a period of about a week or 10 days and getting into more than one or two scrapes into the bargain. That brilliant feeling of arriving in a new town or city with the knowledge I was there to see Bob Dylan play live that evening was simply unbeatable, unbelievable and unrepeatable!!! A privilege that can only happen if you are lucky enough to have the liberty, plus a little bit of cash. This time it was different. There was only one show I was going to for a start and it also happened to be a hell of a long way from London, up in the grounds of Stirling Castle and within spitting distance of the Highlands of Scotland.

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Bob Dylan Live: London Wembley Arena 6th October 2000

This show is from October 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.

Well I got see Bob at Wembley but it was a close run thing, really was a close run thing. I was due to meet Madeleine and Ngawang, a Swedish-Tibetan couple with whom I was going, outside Wembley Park tube station at 7pm in order to give them their tickets for the show on arrival, but massive problems on the tube meant that I didn’t get to Wembley Park until 7.15 because everything was running late. There was no sign of them but I wasn’t too worried about that because it was pretty clear everyone going to the show by tube was in the same boat as far as being delayed was concerned and that it would only be a matter of time before they appeared.

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Bob Dylan Live: Portsmouth Guildhall 25th September 2000

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.

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Bob Dylan Live: Cardiff International Arena 23rd September 2000

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.

After Sheffield I had to get down to South Wales the next day to see Bob Dylan at the Cardiff International Arena with my old friend Huw Jones who came from the same place as me, namely Penarth, a pleasant town on the western edge of Cardiff and overlooking the Bristol Channel. Unlike me Huw had never really left, apart from a few years down in Swansea doing an apprenticeship in stained glass window making. In fact it had been in Swansea when I had first got to know him, way back in the early 80s when I was studying at the University of Swansea and from where in 1983 I emerged with a 2:1 BA Hons degree in History, something which at the time I was quite rightly extremely proud of. Huw was not studying at the university of course, but had been doing his stained glass apprenticeship down in Swansea Bay and living in a cold bedsit located in an area of town called Morriston. He used to come to the Students Union coffee lounge and play the pinball machines there night after night, and where I have to say he got to be a bit of a wizard. Due to his almost continuous presence it was not long before I started to hang out with him, along with a guy called Rik Dixon who was from Norwich and a fellow student of mine in the university. Over the course of the next few years the three of us had more than one or two high old times together, when more often than not we were under the influence of weed, hash and other assorted psychedelic drugs. But all that I guess, is a different story!

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