Bob Dylan Live by Aidan Connolly

OK, so let’s get all this out of the way at the start.

No, he didn’t talk to us. Why would he? For Bob, it’s a purely transactional thing... you pay, he plays. It’s simple economics, stupid. He didn’t even bother doing the ritualistic thing of name-checking each band member towards the end of the gig. He doesn’t do the schmooze-fest thing. He’s an American guy of 69 years of age. Why should he owe us such a burden of care, that he uniquely recognises that we are so screwed up nationally we believe every visitor to our shores will tell us we are wonderful. He doesn’t know that, so he doesn’t say it. He doesn’t know we are that screwed up. So... as they say, get over it. He’s only taking care of business.

But this was a great gig. Here’s the stats. He started at 8.15 and he closed at 10.15, hardly drawing breath for an eighteen piece set between an initial sham closing and the encore.

He opened with a rousing version of ‘Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat’, no doubt making the pale shade of Edie Sedgewick blanche once again, as she absorbed the opprobrium of the conspicuous consumption of the 1960s Greenwich Village set, long before such obscene excesses could have been countenanced in Dundrum.

Thereafter, Bob moved through a number of songs, before enthralling us with a beautiful and harmonious version of ‘Lay Lady Lay’, and an emphatic version of ‘Just Like a Woman’, featuring clipped articulation and an unexpected harmonica performance.

Bob remains an enigma. In our popular imagination, he seems to weave a circuitous route between 1960’s cult figure, and a much later “noughties” reinvented popular icon. The latter turns up as the mid-afternoon, mid-western, mid-week keyboard player plonking out repetitive melodies for the catatonic residents of an old folks home. Such is the mediocre tyranny of the electric keyboard.

Happily, last Sunday evening in Thomond Park, Bob turned up in rude good health and with a creative imagination that at least for two hours seemed unbounded. For a good third of the numbers played, he stepped out from behind the keyboard and fronted up playing guitar with his band. His recent re-acquaintance with front-man Charlie Sexton was obvious, and lent an immediate and edgy verve to the band.

As a consequence, there followed a resounding deliverance of Out there Lies Nothing, Tangled Up in Blue, Highway 61, Tryin’ to Get to Heaven, Thunder on the Mountain, and a particularly relaxed, sombre, and quiet version of Working Man’s Blues. Finally, to cap off a wonderful evening’s set, Bob wound up with a quite incredible and strong-voiced version of Ballad of a Thin Man, spitting out the bile, venom, and bitterness of a good 45 years earlier.

There followed a four song encore. Due homage was paid with a rattling and all-consuming version of Like a Rolling Stone, only to end the set with the most appallingly gnarled version of Blowing in the Wind. A deep conviction remains that Dylan believes these are his songs. He will re-arrange them if he wishes, and he retains the right to descend into a deep cacophony of self-loathing lyrical destruction.... if he so wishes. He did at the close of the evening, and you have to think there are some songs he just doesn’t care for any more.

Still, it was a great evening at Thomond Park. It was cold and chilly. And it was a magical encounter with the man described as “the greatest living creative artist on the planet”... if you like that kind of thing!