The one band Pete Townshend called rock’s answer to Bob Dylan: “A band that could play fucking anything”
Seeing music live gives people a chance to connect with the person who has profoundly impacted their lives through sound. People can also meet others who are like-minded and sing along to their favourite songs. Bob Dylan‘s gigs were a bit different from standard musical outings you usually see, though, as he brought something completely unique to every show.
Leonard Cohen was always a big fan of Bob Dylan, and subsequently, when he was invited to watch him perform, he was quick to accept. What unfolded was a gig, unlike anything that Cohen had ever seen, as Dylan didn’t play song after song. Instead, his show merged into a feature-length sonic article, and the audience was taken on a ride that was equal parts familiar and unknown.
“He had his back to one half of the audience and was playing the organ, beautifully I might say, and just running through some songs,” recalled Cohen, “Some were hard to recognise. But nobody cared. That’s not what they were there for and not what I was there for.”
He continued, “Something else was going on, which was a celebration of some kind of genius that is so apparent and so clear and has touched people so deeply that all they need is some kind of symbolic unfolding of the event.”
Not only was Bob Dylan famous for his intricate and unique live shows, but he was also renowned for how much he used to tour. He completely eclipsed other acts when it came to hitting the road, as he seemed to be doing shows constantly, so Pete Townshend once asked him why he decided to perform so much.
“I remember Bob Dylan, you know, I said to him, ‘Why are you doing so many shows? Why are you constantly on the road?’ You know, ‘Don’t you have a fucking life?’ You know, just on the fucking road all the time,” recalled Townshend, “And he said, ‘Pete, I’m a folk singer’. And I said, ‘Yeah?’ And he said, ‘Well, what is a folk singer?’ And I said, ‘Tell me’, and he said, “It’s a guy with a good memory for music, for songs… I’ve got 650 songs, and I have to keep playing them, otherwise I’ll forget them’.”
Dylan remembered his songs, but he changed them every night depending on how he was feeling, the atmosphere in the room, and what was happening in the world that day. This meant that his gigs had the mysterious quality that Leonard Cohen discussed hanging around them.
A band who operated in a similar fashion were The Grateful Dead, who are famed much more for their live shows than for their studio recordings. They also used their songs as a backbone but allowed external factors to shape how they might improvise around and alter them.
Pete Townshend picked up on this similarity, saying, “It was a bit like the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead were a band that could play fucking anything that you came up with. So, somebody in the crowd would sort of say, ‘Play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony’, and they would have a go, you know.”
These similar musical mindsets are what made Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead so successful when they toured together. The shows varied every night, and music was presented in its rawest and most exciting form.
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