Bob Dylan – It’s Too Late Review

Bob Dylan listeners are in no short supply of extensive covers. His work on stage brings out the best in the instrumental portions of his band. They are put to the test with covers of artists who have clearly had a profound impact on Dylan. His mixture of live recordings offers up those frequent slices of Johnny Cash, the Grateful Dead and Johnny Mercer. Yet a Lefty Frizell cover from Dylan, forty years on from the release of It’s Too Late, will always remain a surprise. It is as great a shock to the system as hearing the best of his work, pulled to the stage in those rare moments when Dylan can stop himself from playing Under the Red Sky or songs from Tempest. These are the sounds we continually search for as he continues the tour. Who knows when it will end. Probably never.  

Hopefully not, anyway. The slim chance of hearing a sudden cover added to the set is a rare treat. Dylan performs now as he has done for the past forty years, with a disregard for the crowd and the knowledge of winning them over with whatever he plays. It is a smart way to work and It’s Too Late, in turn, sounds like a well-developed and inevitable part of the set. Even with the surprise and impossibility of knowing if or when it will drop, Dylan has a natural reflex to make these feel like welcome parts of his set. In doing so he not only provides the audience with a rarity, some little flicker of a unique role they can take home with them but gives himself a challenge. Touring for as long as Dylan has is taxing and the need to reinvent the formula comes to life on this performance.  

Daytona Beach is given a treat with this cover. No, it is not the Carole King track. If only. But this is just as fun. An efficient and wandering track which feels the fatigue of the road already settling in only a month after it started. A fascinating place to find himself but a remarkable and insightful experience all the same. Well played and a neatly stripped-back experience compared to the original. Swaying goodness finds a place in the consistencies of acoustic merit of It’s Too Late. For Dylan, it keeps the playing field fresh and for those in attendance, it is a rare spark of wonder.  

And yet it is not too late. It’s Too Late is a remarkable experience. It is easy to bash out and think little of these live covers. Just moments in time which are reflected on briefly as pretty good or of a usual standard. But think, for a moment, on the context of the performance and the time Dylan found himself in. Time Out of Mind was nearing its two-year mark. The light of goodwill for his bounce-back was fading. Ten out of twelve months spent on the road, much of it with Paul Simon. It’s Too Late serves more as a sanity check for a gruelling Never Ending Tour segment than anything else. Dylan was on stage for too long that year. Any musician can see that. But it is the likes of It’s Too Late which come out of a need to change up the songs of the day, and understandably so.