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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:
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.
Other times, though, his voice was coming through less clearly and on some of the drastic rewrites of “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” “To Be Alone With You,” and “Watching the River Flow,” there were plenty of times when I had no idea what he was singing, and could only catch snatches of phrases or words. Perhaps this is how most people who aren’t as obsessive as us here in Bob-world hear all of his shows.
It’s a nice novelty to see him play guitar, and strangely enough, my best view of him tonight came when he turned his back on the audience and stabbed away at the fretboard at the start of the opening two songs, as I could sneak a peek of that iconic side profile as he laughed along with Tony Garnier. In fairness to Bob, his guitar playing is pretty funny these days. For the best part of the rest of the night, most of us had to make do with watching his ashen mop poking out from above the piano. Whilst watching his guitar playing is something of a novelty now, his piano playing is far more novel itself and far more impressive than anything he plays on the instrument he’s still more closely associated with.
Another novelty came in the way we got our best view of Bob all night. Though the actual man remained largely invisible, he could be best viewed by the huge shadow he cast, which spent the entire night dancing around up along the back curtain of the stage. No other band member was casting such a spectre, just Bob. Now we’re really in the Shadow Kingdom; watching shadows in the night and singing “Shadows dance upon the wall, shadows that seem to know it all” and any other reference you care to remember here as well.
It felt like watching a ghost of Dylan, and was symbolic of the way that he looks large over all of us, and over all of music history. What’s crazy is that he is even so damn charismatic as just a shadow, as he pounded dramatically away at the piano or danced with just his shoulders or staggeringly and swaggeringly stuck his hand onto his hip.
It’s a perfect night for a horror show, it’s Halloween eve after all, and you’d think that “Black Rider” would provide all the scares you’d need, but the biggest fright of the night is a horrendous “My Own Version of You.” From the off, the band are playing against Dylan, rather than with him or for him. Everyone is way out on their own, doing their own thing, playing their own version of the song. Only Dylan came out with any credit as he swam against the current of noise and sludge that surrounded him thanks to his bandmates and as a solo performance it would have been fine, if not a little monotonous and dull. When the band works, it’s like listening to one consummate musician—as on “False Prophet,” when they somehow all lock in to the exact same stops and starts and drag you through worlds and realms and dimensions—but when it falls apart, which in fairness it very rarely does on the Never Ending Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour, well, you certainly notice it. Or maybe you don’t! I thought tonight’s “My Own Version of You” was the single worst performance I’ve seen on this four-year tour, but plenty of people around me gave it a standing ovation.
It wasn’t just the band that came unstuck tonight, as on “My Own Version,” but the whole crowd whenever they tried to clap along and couldn’t find the beat. Years ago, I saw Jeff Tweedy do a solo show at the Barbican where the audience clapped along so badly out of time that he stopped singing and said “Look, I know we’re all white here, but you’ve really got to get in time or stop clapping along.” I wish Jeff Tweedy was here now.
From the ridiculous to the truly sublime, “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” was given one of the most ambitious and audacious rearrangements I’ve heard in a long time. It was so unbelievably moving and powerful and transcendent and all the rest, so gorgeous with Dylan matching his vocal and piano melodies and hitting unexpected notes and highs and stopping time as only he can. Similarly, “Key West” was breathtaking, and I never wanted it to end. He could have only played these two songs tonight and I’d have been happy.
It’s been said elsewhere, probably plenty of times, that Anton Fig is bringing in the best elements of all the previous Rough and Rowdy Ways drummers, and my favourite of his contributions tonight came on “Mother of Muses,” when he kicked into a military parade-style drum pattern as Dylan reeled off the names of so many Civil War generals.
“Goodbye Jimmy Reed” took its musical lead from “Dirt Road Blues” tonight, with the band all picking out that insistent riff at various points and then somehow it was already time for the show to end on “Every Grain of Sand.” It wasn’t the best Rough and Rowdy Ways Show I’ve ever seen, by any stretch, and yet it’s exactly the kind of show that shows why we keep coming back. He can still surprise us, shock us and delight us, even after all this time.
“He wants everyone to really hear his heart,” I overheard a young woman say on the way out, in discussion about the reason for the Yondr pouches. Realistically, she probably actually said that he wants everyone to really “hear his art” but with such a heavy French accent, it’s hard to be sure. Either way, you couldn’t argue with the sentiment. Hey, maybe she did really say that, anyway. He’s opened his heart to the world, after all, and the world has come in.
Night 2
That was just about as good as it gets.
Here is a list of fragments, stolen moments, highlights and things I noticed.
Bob was less dynamic in his singing tonight, but every aspect of the show felt more locked in than last night. It all felt freer and more raucous. More rough and rowdy, really.
Bob looks amazing. He is in great shape and looking as cool as ever in midnight blue blazer and unruly salt and pepper hair.
The couple in front of me both turned to each other in unison as Bob sang “I said it ain’t me babe,” smiled and kissed and then didn’t seem to acknowledge each other again for a decent portion of the show.
“False Prophet” is a monster. The most musically intense, deranged, terrifying and show-stopping arrangement I can remember. I love it.
Bob picked up his guitar on “When I Paint My Masterpiece” and played his best solo of the night, but bettered it with a piano solo later in the song, which drew the only applause of the night from the man to my left, and a fun little awkward finger wiggling dance from the guy to my right.
Another massively endearing response I noticed from one of the older contingent in the crowd was the grey-haired lady who gently clapped along with every song, keeping her own time and holding her hands at different heights, seemingly in tandem with how much she was enjoying each moment.
“My Own Version of You” worked tonight in all the ways that it didn’t yesterday. Anton Fig is playing this like he’s possessed by Tom Waits’ “What’s He Building in There?” Bob has been deconstructing all of his songs his whole life and putting them back together in new ways, but this is just the deconstruction stage and taking stock of all the pieces. Last night it was a catastrophe, and tonight it was catastrophically good.
The couple in front of me finally remembered each other during “To Be Alone With You,” and embraced each time Bob got to the refrain, more appropriately than in the second song. Bob made himself laugh with his whispered “What happened to me, darling? What was it you saw? Did I kill somebody? (I hope not!)” ad lib.
He also made himself laugh with his preposterous delivery on “Desolation Row,” where he elongated every syllable of every word and seemed to get stuck in a loop for the first few verses. He looked up at Doug Lancio at one point as if to say “well, I can’t stop now!” but did eventually cut it out (for the most part) after an instrumental break. At the end of the song, Bob stood up, turned around to face Anton Fig and cracked up again.
Man, Anton Fig is just Bob’s best drummer since George Receli (sorry Charley Drayton). Listening to him play, I almost don’t miss George Receli anymore (sorry, George).
It felt like the entire room leaned forward and was drawn in by the spellbinding “Key West,” and likewise, the same went for the mesmerising “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” which was once again monumentally moving.
As always, “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You” was stunning, beautiful, gorgeous and all of that, but my favourite moment came not from when Bob was improbably extending each and every vowel and his vow, but when during the instrumental break he dramatically stuck his hand on his hip and looked out, surveying the crowd, whilst playing a one handed piano solo.
Thinking of cool moves Bob pulled tonight, well there was the way he stuck his arm out in time with the “put out your hand” line in “False Prophet,” or the deft way he dealt with his microphone in “To Be Alone With You.” Less cool for Bob Britt was the gesture Dylan gave him during “Mother of Muses” which clearly meant “don’t play that, play something different” and the look he gave his guitarist shortly afterwards to emphasise the point. Just as scary as The Look was The Shadow, which thanks to a light right under Bob’s keyboard cast that huge shadow on the back of the stage, and which looked down on the musicians like that glorious shot in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula where the titular vampire’s eyes cast in through the train window early in the film.
Another favourite moment was the smile Dylan gave, almost to himself, when the crowd roared in approval at the first refrain of “Every Grain of Sand,” and another favourite moment came at the end of the song with that ever powerful harmonica solo. Really though, my favourite thing about the night was being there to see it at all.
Thanks Matthew! Subscribe to his Together Through Life Substack here and pick up his book ‘Together Through Life: My Never Ending Tour With Bob Dylan’ wherever you get books.
2025-10-30, Palais des Congres, Paris, France
No full tape of night two yet beyond the two clips above, keep an eye on the Discord
Very nice writing. Thanks. I was at the Tulsa show too, and I’ll be in Dublin. And a few shows in between. Quite a year. Thanks again for your insights and articulation.