Bob Dylan – At Budokan Review

A legendary performance from Bob Dylan should be no surprise. His appearances at The Budokan are monumental and the venue itself is coated in rightful accolades and praise. Any artist worth their weight in gold has performed there – or tried to. From Blur to The Beatles there has been a desire from the big players of the music game to perform there, and understandably so. It is a new challenge for artists on this particular stage, something captured well in live recordings of performances there. At Budokan, the live recording to precede the revamped release of this Dylan performance, is still an interesting listen. Even with the reworkings and additional context found in the lengthier, arguably better release, it is worth returning to At Budokan. Radical changes to the very fundamentals of these songs can be heard within, and what a treat they are – a neat pop of nostalgia for the original recordings and yet a sharpness to them which felt lacking in the bumper re-release.  

Opener Mr. Tambourine Man, flutes and altered instrumentals to boot, sounds tremendous. A thoroughly interesting year for Dylan flashes across the stage – the back end of his prolific years and a turn towards materials which would alienate a casual listener for years to come. At Budokan inspired some shocking hate in its day, primarily because of those major changes made to the instrumental flow. But now we know how Dylan operates on stage; it makes criticisms of the past seem a tad futile. Dylan is keen to adapt on the fly, to change and alter his sound with whichever theme he plans on taking to the stage. For Rough and Rowdy Ways it is the crooning charms of lounge-like, swinging performances. For At Budokan it is an instrumental reinvention which serves the lyrics a greater purpose, a chance to find new meaning in these songs in a natural, creative environment in front of a live audience. Immediate response, followed by a reaction on stage, is what guides At Budokan.  

The likes of Shelter from the Storm are nothing short of immaculate reimaginations. Most would kill for this sort of reinvention. Dylan does it with ease. What a crisp recording At Budokan makes for, too. Quality piece after quality piece, an incredible selection of his best efforts and a few left-field choices are given a booming reimagination just four years after Dylan and The Band rocked back into relevancy. Every song takes an unexpected turn, and each instrumental step is more a consolidation of writing talent than anything. The fact these songs can work irrespective of the instruments around them is a crucial detail Dylan still relies on in his modern workings. Flutes are once more used to provide variety on Love Minus Zero / No Limit, a pitch and range ditched in favour of bluesy guitar work on Ballad of a Thin Man.  

At Budokan does have some questionable choices to it, of course, it is not nearly as perfect as those four opening tracks would have you believe. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right feels dependent on the Steve Nieve-like piano work and the groove heard in its soft calypso style. What At Budokan was criticised for at the time is now its major selling point. Where does an artist go, how far do they push themselves, when the murmurs of reinvention pop into their mind? A daring collection of songs soon followed and for Dylan, his audience and the future of his sound, it was an overwhelming good in the long run. The likes of I Shall Be Released and Is Your Love in Vain offer a deeper cut of Dylan not expected of this time. But we are all the better for those moments of instrumental clarity, the daring expeditions made into new sounds are winners.  

And that is just the first half. At Budokan offers beautiful rearrangements of what were contemporary songs of the time. Simple Twist of Fate is expectedly intense, but in those subtle ways only Dylan could conjure so soon after release. It feels more and more like a farewell to a sound audiences were comfortable with. A surge of gospel rock, the backing vocalists a dead giveaway to the soul material Dylan would pursue with his religious trilogy later down the line, is the big difference maker here. With the benefit of hindsight, we can mark At Budokan as a sort of farewell record, a chance to say goodbye to a sound which had benefitted his career for almost two decades. But all great artists must evolve. At Budokan is a chance to do just that, and it takes no prisoners with even the precious likes of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door and The Times They Are A-Changin’ switched up and instrumentally advanced.