Two Nights in Paris (by Matthew Ingate)

2025-10-30/31, Palais des Congres, Paris, France

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Photo by Mik Michailidis via @dailydylan

After a wild Outlaw summer, the Never Ending Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour™ has resumed in Europe. The setlist remains the same as last spring but, as always, the music remains in flux. Matthew Ingate, author of the great book Together Through Life: My Never Ending Tour With Bob Dylan and a Substack of the same name reports in from the last two nights in Paris:

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Night 1

The first night of this year’s tour in Tulsa was the most recent, and maybe the best, R&RW show I’ve seen, and I felt, for the first time in a long time, a sense of trepidation going into the show in Paris because of it. How was Bob going to be better than in Tulsa? Surely I wasn’t going to hear anything more impressive or more moving than I had on that night? If I’d seen the best the Rough and Rowdy Ways had to offer, why was I going again? What else was there to hear from these songs? For the first time in the entire tour, I was thinking I might have had my fill. I kept kicking a quote around in my head all week from a far younger, or maybe a far older, Bob Dylan, “OK, I’ve had enough. What else can you show me?”

But obviously, as soon as he walked out onto the stage I was glad to be there in the weird shopping centre turned music venue the Palais des Congres. As soon as he shuffled into view I forgot everything that had come before and focussed on this night, on this show. And any comparison wouldn’t have mattered much anyway. It might be the same band, playing the same songs, but it’s a whole new night of material. Non, je ne regrette rien.

It’s unbelievable, but even after all this time and after all these shows, I was still stopped in my tracks and blown away by the quality of his voice. Straight out the gate, he sounded fantastic and rarely and barely let up all night. Even though, owing to radically rewritten lyrics, I didn’t have a clue what he was singing through most of “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” just the tone and timbre and raw vitality of his voice was enough to carry the performance.

And on the topic of his voice, there’s still no shortage of Sprechstimme throughout the show but, so often, his voice was also much more malleable, more dynamic and far more agile than it has been in ages. In amongst all the talk-singing he was also just plain singing, too. Beautifully.

His powerful and hollering Rolling Thunder (which began 50 years ago today) voice made an appearance on “It Ain’t Me Babe,” but some of that gorgeous and tender singing from the Sinatra years was on show, too. So often tonight, and maybe more often than I’ve ever heard him do, he was gliding around notes and showing off more of a range than I expected him to have left anymore. His melodic experiments and emotional expression, his masterful phrasing, all came together through most of the night to really show off what a great singer he truly is. There were more melismas tonight in Paris than I’ve heard him hit in a lifetime of show-going. No one sings like him, but at some points he sounded like Albert King. At some points he sounded like Louie Prima. Like Louis Jordan whilst at others, maybe a little like Bing Crosby and Billie Holiday or even Caruso.