Last Night in Brighton (by Jack Walters)
2025-11-07, Brighton Centre, Brighton, UK
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Last night, Bob Dylan played Brighton for the first time since 2002 (with Nick Cave spotted in the audience!). Jack Walters reports in:
At 84, Bob Dylan has lived a thousand lives and has worn more masks than a Venetian masquerade ball, putting the lecherous Byron to shame. And yet he is still on the road; his Coyote spirit alive. One gets the impression that Dylan has, somehow, performed in Solomon’s Temple, aboard the Arbella, with Bob Wills at one of Burt “Foreman” Phillips’ County Barn Dances, and at the March on Washington—well he did. But you get the point: Dylan seems to contain all these references. Wherever and in whatever century, Dylan performs. And we, the audience, are a station to his Calvary or, prosaically, witnesses to his journey, meeting and leaving him in shadows, wondering if performing, at its most dignified, truthful, sublime, is, paradoxically, best rendered in distance—if possible, absence.
When Dylan last performed at the 4500-cap, Brutalist-designed Brighton Centre in 2002, he opened with “I Am the Man, Thomas,” a jaunty bluegrass number about Thomas the Apostle, bringing Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas to life with light, drama, beauty. Anyway, that was then (when Dylan was a cowpoke), this is now (when Dylan is half-hidden).
Dylan, along with the band, suited and booted, more elegant than ever, walks out to a recording of “La damoiselle élue (Hania Rani Rework (After Claude Debussy))” by Víkingur Ólafsson, which, due to some prior research, has a connection to Walt Whitman (do I need to say that he was the inspiration behind the song title, “I Contain Multitudes”?). In 1887/88, Debussy set British Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem “The Blessed Damozel”(1850) to music; the text was translated by the French writer Gabriel Sarrazin (1853–1935), who wrote an article on Walt Whitman, published in La Nouvelle Revue on 1 May 1888. In January 1889, Sarrazin sent a copy of the well-received article to Whitman who, after he got the piece translated by two people and read each translation, pronounced it to be among the “strongest pieces of work which Leaves of Grass has drawn out,” according to Horace Traubel, a biographer and friend of Whitman. Whitman wrote to Sarrazin, and the two continued to correspond until Whitman’s death. Whitman’s “I contain multitudes” is from Section 51 of the poem “Song of Myself” (1855), published in his collection Leaves of Grass. Most likely, Dylan likes the piece of music.
Anyway, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” starts out as an interminable jam—notes curling and twirling, dying in the ether, a cacophony of noise, like some Modernist prelude that nobody understands, but, surely, there must be a melody buried beneath the dissonant racket, right? —which reminds of the lengthy intros of “Watching the River Flow” in 2022 —except now Dylan, fancying his chances as some Elmore James without the flash or flair, sting or bite, is playing an electric guitar. Or, rather, producing some bum notes that suggests he doesn’t know what the hell he is holding, before proceeding to strangle the neck of the guitar like the serial killer in Hitchcock’s neo-noir thriller Frenzy; until, that is, bored of death, turns around and, instead, belabours the piano keys. As he starts singing about being your baby, the crowd cheer in recognition of hearing his voice, or in recognition that they might be in for a long night. And you’re thinking: Dylan can still confound you in 2025. Damn him.
Things start to improve with “It Ain’t Me Babe”, including Dylan finding passable phrasing on the guitar, while his vocals are remarkably strong, complete with an impassioned, if not withering, “no, no, no” in the chorus, implying that if, for some reason, you are expecting anything from him: forget it. He will only let you down. Take heed.
The concert really begins with the Rough and Rowdy Ways material— “I Contain Multitudes” and “False Prophet”; the latter finds him making a Shakespearean drama out of every lyric, a cool, deathly swagger and braggadocio—in fact, there is a venom in his diction; words like poison darts. Right on target.
It is the three-pack—“When I Paint My Masterpiece”, again to the tune of “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”, “Black Rider”, and “My Own Version of You”—that is the centrepiece of the concert. Moreover, there is a dramatic pause near to the end of “Masterpiece” as Dylan indicates to the band to stop with his right arm. “Black Rider”, the highlight of the night, is starkly stunning, with Doug Lancio providing arpeggiated chords on an acoustic guitar that seems to contain worlds-within-worlds, as if only he knows how to enter these other realms while offering the audience a mere glimpse of what he is seeing.
Also, vocal echo saturates the chorus of “Black Rider”, adding to the already spectral ambiance. Meanwhile, the piano-ballad “My Own Version” has the audience hanging on Dylan’s every word, bolstered by Anton Fig’s deft handling of percussion, whose sophisticated playing throughout the concert is a real highlight.
Other highlights come from the almost danceable “Desolation Row”, which includes two harmonica solos, and the minimalistic “Key West”, where time is not lost or regained but simply ceased.
Unlike Brussels night one, there is very little off-mic singing, except for “Watching the River Flow” and “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” (which included a guitar solo). In fact, Dylan’s vocals are vigorous and malleable, where, for one moment early on in the concert (“I Contain Multitudes”?), there is echoes of his Rolling Thunder voice. His strong vocals continued with “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You”, which was committed and as meaningful as ever.
Although disappointed with the jamming on “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”, it works well on “Watching the River Flow”, as the band finds the blues of the past to steer them towards tomorrow and yesterday. While the newish arrangement of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” has cemented the song into a valediction and a threnody.
As usual, the concert ends with “Every Grain of Sand”, complete with a mournful harmonica. After the concert, the house lights take a while to come on, making the audience think that the band are going to return for a second ovation—though, when people do return, it is the roadies.
Although Dylan was less visible compared to last year’s UK concerts—Dylan, for the most part, ensconced behind a baby grand piano, which is to say, you won’t be able to peer into his scintillating blue eyes; his untamed curls peaking above the piano, a profile as distinct as his voice—the distance between performer and audience makes sense, as, apart from the patent privacy aspect, the nearer you get to Dylan, the less you are seeing him. Dylan, metaphorically speaking, doesn’t exist—or, more accurately, is a creation, a phantom lingering between liminal spaces, an image superimposed upon an image upon an image; really, an idea, an invention, like the United States.
In the end, I can neither see any Brighton girls like the moon nor Nick Cave, however much joy he brings. All I am left with is a sense of wonder: how, at 84, Dylan is able to, paradoxically, express the ineffability of existence in concert.
Read more from Jack Walters at PopMatters including his Greil Marcus interview and review of Steven Rings’ new Dylan book or his Rough and Rowdy tour piece at The Dylan Review.
No tape yet, keep an eye on Discord