Hear Bob Dylan pay tribute to Van Morrison with cover at Belfast show
On his current tour, Bob Dylan is known for playing wacky setlists that follow unpredictable whims. In Belfast, the iconic singer-songwriter closed out an eighteen-song set with an obscure Van Morrison cover.
The pair have a long friendship characterised by an unwavering mutual respect as artists.
Plus, Morrison’s hometown is Belfast, and the venue Dylan played at on November 20th, Waterfront Hall, hosted Morrison’s 80th birthday celebration in September. Therefore, fans in attendance might have expected a Morrison cover, but certainly not the one Dylan chose.
“Well I’m going down to Bangor / I want you to bring me / bring me my bucket and spade,” Dylan sings, after a hearty instrumental warmed him up. Dylan had never played the obscure Morrison song, ‘Going Down to Bangor’, live before.
However, this is not the first time Dylan has included a Morrison song in his set. Throughout the late 1980s and early ’90s, Dylan would occasionally play Morrison’s ‘One Irish Rover’. He also briefly played ‘Carrying a Torch’ live in the early 2000s.
Additionally, he covered ‘Into the Mystic’ in 2023. Other Morrison songs that Dylan has previously performed include ‘Real Real Gone’ from 1990s Enlightenment and Moondance’s ‘And It Stoned Me’.
Dylan and Morrison have also shared the stage before. Most famously, the legendary pair played together at The Band’s farewell concert at the Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving 1976.
The rest of the Belfast set saw Dylan open with ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’, sliding into ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’. He performed hits such as ‘Desolation Row’ and ‘Every Grain of Sand’ before that unexpected finale.
‘Elsewhere in the Dylan universe, the ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ singer recently confirmed that his Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour will continue into 2026.
His last studio album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, was released in 2020. Dylan has been touring it across the world for the last four years since 2021.
Listen to his latest Morrison cover below.
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