Another surprise last night on Bob Dylan’s Lights of Autumn tour. Not a song debut this time. Instead, without any announcement, guitar whiz Julian Lage was back in the band! He replaced Mike Seal. Will he remain? Who knows?
Reporting in from the scene of Lage’s surprise return is Laura Tenschert, who, growing up in Switzerland, saw her first Dylan concert at this very same venue. If you don’t know, and I expect many of you already do, Tenschert is the host of the essential podcast Definitely Dylan. Her ongoing series “The Bob Dylan Hotline,” where she and Rebecca Slaman (another recent Last Night In contributor) answer fan questions is a delight, and if you subscribe to the Definitely Dylan Patreon you get regular other updates too.
Here’s Laura Tenschert (plus recordings of a few songs):
Bob Dylan in Zürich – The Return of Julian Lage
On a personal level, last night was always going to be a special one for me, since the Hallenstadion in Zurich was the venue where I saw my first Bob Dylan concert back in 2002 and, as cliché as it sounds, it kind of changed my life. That was my first big concert and I attended it with my mother, who was kindly indulging this latest hyperfixation of mine. If you had told me back then that I would one day be running a Bob Dylan podcast, I would have surely answered, “What’s a podcast?” Anyway, last night, my mother and I were back at the Hallenstadion in Zurich, joined by my brother.
As excited as I was, I was also a little nervous about attending a current-day Dylan show with people who aren’t die-hards. Even though they appreciate his music on albums, I wasn’t sure how accessible they would find the performance. I needn’t have worried: Bob Dylan in Zurich 2026 completely won them over!
But let’s start at the beginning. The moments before the show were surprisingly quiet. There was no pre-show playlist, no announcement that the show was about to start, no intro music, just the murmur of thousands of people in anticipation as the lights went down and four men dressed in black took their places on guitars, drums, and bass and started playing. I got immediately very excited because on the far left (stage right), I recognised Julian Lage, the jazz prodigy who had joined Dylan’s band at very short notice in the summer, but had to be replaced for the last few shows of that leg, and had also been absent from the European tour so far. From the recordings I’ve heard of those shows, Jad Tariq and Mike Seal were wonderful replacements and I would have been more than happy to see either of them play with Dylan, but I do admit feeling particularly thrilled to see Julian. Dylan clearly wants him in his band and it’s very obvious why, but we’ll get to that.
After the band established the groove of “Watching the River Flow”, Bob Dylan took the stage to great cheers, and fell right in with the song. Ahead of the show, the three of us had placed bets on the colour of Bob Dylan’s raincoat, and I won (it was black). I always like to think that the first song of the set gives everyone, both the audience and the players on stage, a moment to settle in. Dylan’s mic volume needed some adjusting after the first few lines, but unlike other performances I’ve seen in recent years, where it felt like Dylan sometimes needed upwards of two songs to really get into the swing of things, last night he was locked in from the start. Perhaps the big smile that he gave Lage (ironically during the line “I seen somebody too sad to cry”) was an indication why.
After that followed “Love Sick”, which sounded remarkably close to the arrangement on Time Out of Mind, although there were some neat little added dynamics, like when the band all dropped down for the last verse as Dylan sings “Sometimes the silence can be like”, before coming back in at full force on the word “thunder”.
The band is set up in a shallow semicircle—Lage to the far left, then Dylan on electric piano, then Tony Garnier on Bass, Anton Fig on the drums, and Joel Paterson on the far right. This makes for an interesting dynamic, because of course everyone has their eyes on Dylan, but Lage and Paterson, who are stood so far apart, also hold intense eye contact as they trade lines which not only beautifully complement one another, but I could swear I heard them play harmonising solos a few times, starting on “It Ain’t Me Babe”. I used to joke that Dylan liked to play with the greatest guitar players and never let them take a solo, his piano insistently, sometimes obnoxiously, high in the mix. But those days are over. Last night he clearly enjoyed giving Lage and Paterson free rein while his piano playing alternated between playing rhythm and occasionally weaving riffs and lines in between the guitars. Sometimes the piano and vocals even traded places, as Dylan replaced the line “I will only let you down” by playing the melody on piano, before adding the vocals after the beat.
The next song was “Trying to Get to Heaven”, one of my highlights of the concert. Others have already pointed out that the arrangement bears a resemblance to “One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)”, which on paper reads like a confusing crossover but it really works. When Dylan brought back “Trying to Get to Heaven” this summer, I was thinking about how different the song plays now that Dylan is in his 80s vs. when he was singing it in his 50s. (I put those thoughts into a Patreon episode). This is one of the heavier songs in the set and featured another beautiful solo from Lage.