Bob Dylan explains why he’s still touring in his 80s
A few months ago, many of the Far Out team were lucky enough to catch Bob Dylan assert himself as one of the greatest artists in human history once more with his latest tour dates. The performances really did make age seem like just a number and an inconsequential one at that. However, when the dust settled on the brilliance that had graced the stage, the realities of being a touring musician at the age of 81 were chewed over in the surrounding bars.
After all, he’s seen more miles in his mystic time than an Amazon delivery outlet. Before any of this started – and by this, I mean publications lionising the great and good of the art world, pop culture painting our monochrome daily lives with the iridescence of colour, the voices of simple folks with dogeared guitars hitting headlines, the full shebang of modern times – there was one scruffy vagabond following in the footsteps of his heroes and capturing culture on the wing.
Eventually, Bob Dylan wandered into Greenwich Village, spread his ways like a wildflower that had found a favourable meadow, and soon the pastures of culture would never be the same again, destined to be prettier and more important. The great ecologist behind it all has never stopped since. Roving like a night worm from dive bars to marches, stadiums and crooked concert halls.
In the past, Dylan told Pete Townshend that it is the preordained fate of the folk musician. “I asked Bob Dylan why he does so many gigs,” Townshend recalled of their encounter at Desert Trip. “He told me, ‘I’m a folk singer. A folk singer is only as good as his memory, and my memory is going.’ He’s doing it to keep his memory alive.” Naturally, it’s a typically Dylanesque answer shrouded in a smokescreen of possible ambiguity, but as ever, it has poeticism and some sort of mystic design at its heart.
Many artists have taken inspiration from this constant act of creative invention. As Townshend said himself: “[I work] every day. I just don’t do what Dylan does. I don’t drag myself around the world, and I don’t put out an album every six weeks [laughs]. But I’ve got loads of songs. I’m working on a big project at the moment, which might be half rock opera, half art installation. I don’t know where it’s going to go. I’m going to start with a book. I don’t want to talk too much about that now.”
But even that conversation with Townshend was a long time ago, and he’s still squirrelling away, a prophet reclaiming his ‘Gates of Eden’ heights of spiritual dominion. And in a recent interview with Jeff Slate of the Wall Street Journal, he shed further light on his journey. “I keep touring because: it is a perfect way to stay anonymous and still be a member of the social order,” he said. “You’re the master of your fate. But it’s not an easy path to take, not fun and games.”
In essence, he can get out in the world without being hounded on the streets, and he can fulfil his purpose—one that brings untold joy and affirmation to fans who hold him dear. When you put it like that, while there is life left in his twinkling fingers, why wouldn’t he keep laying them down on his magical keys?
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