2023-07-01 22:54:50
Montreux Jazz Festival
A Bob Dylan tuned like a Swiss cuckoo at Stravinsky
The American songwriter began and ended his concert to the nearest second, Saturday evening, in front of an audience conquered but deprived of screens and telephones. Narrative.
PostedJuly 2, 2023, 12:54 AM
Rare photo of Bob Dylan in concert, in 2012. As in all recent years, he did not accept photos on Saturday in Montreux.
AFP
The first exceptional evening of the 57th edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival took place on Saturday July 1, with Bob Dylan reserved for 1,500 people who had paid (quickly) 365 francs for a seat. A concert start at 8:30 p.m. very precisely and an end that did not exceed the scheduled time: 10:15 p.m. Not a minute more, not less either. Previously, viewers had to store their phones in a sealed pouch. Order from the American songwriter, 82, who also refused screens and photographers – too bad for the festival archives! The artist’s demands are so drastic that one of our seat neighbors has been asked to put away his pair of binoculars. This can supposedly bother Mr. Dylan.
Stravinsky’s lights go out. Bob Dylan arrives accompanied by his five musicians and sits behind a piano, a place he will not leave. At the back of the stage, the curtains are drawn, yellow spotlights just make the dark costume of the king of folk sparkle (without a hat). In 17 tracks, he will mainly play songs from the 70s and his latest album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways”.
«Well, oooh, thank you»
After a start with garish instruments (“Watching The River Flow” and “Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine)”), Bob Dylan gets up to read his scores, he declaims much more than he sings , sometimes mutters, and it is on “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, on the violin and the double bass, that we let ourselves be carried away by the blues. It’s almost a click for the songwriter who drops a “Well, oooh, thank you” that he will repeat a few times during the evening. About fifteen minutes later, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” will once once more give vigor to an audience that has been attentive until now but is starting to have ants in their legs, halfway through the concert. Alas, he lets go following a recent “Crossing the Rubicon” in incomprehensible English.
However, Bob Dylan begins to give voice, he now sings on most of the choruses, delights the spectators on “Not Fade Away”. Finally, on “Every Grain of Sand”, he takes the harmonica for the first time. Then, he comes to the front of the stage, his costume sparkles. But no last piece in front of the public. He pauses, one hand on his hip. As the audience rises to applaud him, the artist quickly leaves with his musicians. The lights in the room come on. Bob Dylan did Dylan, first passing for a grump. But, in the end, it was rather a good show.
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