Bob Dylan – Dylan and The Dead Review

Where it may not be often Bob Dylan puts out a bad record, his period in the 1980s and 1990s is littered with misfires. The times they were a-changin’, and though Dylan may have heralded the birth of electric turns, he could only kindle it for so long. The likes of Dylan and The Dead appear to be worse for wear due to where he found himself at the end of the 1980s. Empire Burlesque and Knocked Out Loaded are best forgotten – but a pop to Oh Mercy steadies a rough storm this period brought on. For those passive listeners it sounds rosy from there but dig a tad deeper and collaborations with the Grateful Dead, as beneficial as they were to each artist at the time, is a car crash of an experience.  

A fatigued frontman still reeling from a rough decade where he found himself collaborating with parts of Electric Light Orchestra and trying to peddle his post-born-again beliefs as janky pop numbers with a stylish turn like Duran Duran, Dylan and The Dead is a bad place for the right musicians. Slow Train begins well though the mood soon sours. Even in a period where the hits were still right there to rattle out, the drained perspectives of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door and All Along the Watchtower are jilted and follow some unbearable material. Muffled and slurred second piece I Want You is a massive shame – a country twang deflates this blurry mess from Dylan. Fair play to a reflective Dylan in Chronicles, though, who noted this fatigue on tour. He does not phone it in, but the muted tone stretches through all of Dylan and The Dead.  

The Grateful Dead are no better. Turn the sights on the backing band to this collection of sloppy Dylan performances and find little flavour or flourish to their style. Gotta Serve Somebody sounds drained of life and the energy is absent entirely. At least Queen Jane Approximately has a rising bit of piano work – it is a nice touch and flourish which adds to a track where Dylan continually repeats lines and metaphors of being tired. Listeners can probably tune into that and realise it for themselves. A near-ten-minute Joey rendition with all the charm and grace of nails on a chalkboard soon follows, the dullard barbarism of a tired voice is an excuse which cannot contain the lack of style and the flickers of useless instrumental interludes here. 

For those in attendance, there is surely some sense of disappointment. A live album where the crowd can rarely be heard, a collection of the great musicians of a generation shuffling themselves onto the stage out of contractual obligations rather than a desire to play. They were chewed up, spat out and burned beyond comparison to other eras in their career. A stage where Dylan could reject his glory years prior and look forward to the creative revival he would soon experience in the 1990s. Rock bottom had just occurred, and while Dylan and The Dead is a far better listen than some of his studio recordings from the previous years, it is a sharp indicator that even the best have their lull periods, sometimes for a decade.