Bob Dylan
Waterfront Hall, Belfast
★★★★☆
It’s a little after 8pm when Bob Dylan follows his four band members on stage and steps nimbly towards his baby grand piano.
He takes a seat and immediately swings around to his right, picking up his electric guitar, so that his back is to the crowd, and with that starts jamming out loose chords as his band kick in. The sound is foot-stompingly loud from the off, and they promptly find their groove.
A minute or so later Dylan swings around again to face his piano, partly obscuring himself as he reaches for the keys and starts into the opening verse of I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight. At 84, the voice of a generation is straight away startling and clear.
It’s the first of his two sold-out nights at the Waterfront Hall, part of his five-night stop in Ireland. There’s no support act, no stage intro, certainly no “Good evening, Belfast”, but it’s a perfectly lively opener, as if Dylan is singing “Are you with me tonight?”
In these opening few minutes he has already played more guitar than on his last visit to Ireland, in November 2022. Dylan repeats the guitar-intro trick several times during the 17-song set. The songs and sequence seem carved into stone now: he hasn’t yet tinkered with them on this 26-date, nine-country European tour.
The band are whip-tight in parts but also well able to keep things loose. His Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, named after his 39th studio album, released in June 2020, has been going for four years; more than half the songs on Wednesday night – nine, to be exact – are off that album.
After a joyful It Ain’t Me, Babe, he continues with I Contain Multitudes and False Prophet, both suitably rough and rowdy in parts. Dylan repeatedly shifts between drawn-out expressions and rushed lines, as if he has no time to lose.
Over the hour and 45 minutes he never lets up, the singing bold again on When I Paint My Masterpiece, before two more tracks off Rough and Rowdy Ways: a haunting Black Rider, a powerful My Own Version of You.
There is less raspiness to his voice, and he holds the absolute attention of his audience, aided by all our mobile phones being locked away in fancy zip bags until after the show.
[ Bob Dylan’s special relationship with Ireland began in 1984Opens in new window ]
He drops in When I Paint My Masterpiece in another fresh arrangement, before Desolation Row comes mid-set and, soon after, a sweetly melodious It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, peppered with glorious harmonica.
The band – Tony Garnier on bass, Anton Fig on drums, and Bob Britt and Doug Lancio on guitar – appear to close in together at the end of each song and each time Dylan comes to his feet.
“Some of these songs aren’t easy to play,” he says in his only breakout line of the night. “But the band play them pretty good, don’t you think?”
Mother of Muses and Goodbye Jimmy Reed give way to Every Grain of Sand, one last harmonica blast, and with that they’re done. Dylan moves out from behind his piano to greet the standing ovation, then walks off, briefly returning for a second bow, the low lighting catching his face and the heartfelt smile written across it.
Bob Dylan plays Waterfront Hall again on Thursday, November 20th; Gleneagle Arena, Killarney, Co Kerry, on Sunday, November 23rd, and Monday, November 24th; and 3Arena, Dublin, on Tuesday, November 25th
