“I stopped going”: Why Roger Waters started avoiding Bob Dylan’s live shows
Every musician’s calling card is whether they can dominate the live stage. It would be one thing to have a song that sounds gigantic when played out of car speakers, but if someone can’t deliver a good show, it’s hard to get that excited when all of the bells and whistles are being done in the studio. While Roger Waters is still one of the few rockstars creating lavish spectacles every time he plays, he knew that there was a point when some of his favourites needed to pack it in.
Granted, it’s not like Waters has kept up a spotless track record, either. He’s practically become worse in the studio if Dark Side of the Moon Redux is any indication, but listening to him play those Pink Floyd songs live, he can still deliver them in his husky voice and allows the backing singers to help carry him through some of the more difficult sections David Gilmour was known for.
It might not be the most musically accurate show in the world but Waters never saw it that way, either. He was interested in setting up a scene whenever he played and leaving the audience with visuals they would remember for the rest of their lives. If Waters was getting people to think through the theatricality, though, Bob Dylan was used to making an epiphany go off in someone’s head whenever he played his shows back in the day.
While his period of going electric may have been a shock to the system in the mid-1960s, Dylan was always one to let his music do the talking. The idea of him playing shows with LED lights and musical propaganda would look like the most ridiculous show in the world, and when he started The Neverending Tour back in the 1980s, Dylan made it a habit of stripping things back down and playing whatever suited him in the moment.
That did come at the expense of his voice in some areas, though. The folk-rock legend was never known to have the greatest voice, but by the time he hit upon records like Love and Theft, he was looking to interpret his songs in a much different way, which meant talking his way through some tunes and making tracks like ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’ and ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’ sound virtually unrecognisable in comparison to their recorded versions.
It may have been an acquired taste, but it wasn’t anything Waters was remotely interested in, saying, “I know as an audience I stopped going to see Bob Dylan because it became, like, guess the tune. You’d think, ‘What’s he playing?’, and then you’d suddenly realise, ‘Oh my word, it’s ‘Lay Lady Lay‘. I don’t see the point in that. I’ve learnt the value of the songs that I do best, and the lyric as well. The melody structure is a vehicle to carry the lyric, and the lyric is attached to an emotion, and the emotion resides in my heart.”
At the same time, it’s not like Waters hasn’t taken a few liberties every now and again, either. It makes no sense to expect him to sing like he did when he was in his younger years, and seeing him take certain notes out of the setlist or giving them to other members of his band is a much better way in his mind than watching Dylan croak out his tunes like he’s been doing.
But it all comes from how someone decides to approach their music in the first place. Whereas Waters wanted to give people their money’s worth and make them think, Dylan was always an artist in the truest sense of the word, so when he plays some of his classics now, you’re not only getting someone playing their greatest hits. This is Dylan taking those songs out of hiding and showing people what they mean to him today.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.