Bob Dylan – Dancing in the Dark Review

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With the same formation of screeches and squeaks as a drunk insisting they know the words and yanking the karaoke microphone, Bob Dylan enjoys a barely registerable Dancing in the Dark display. It is the stuff dreams are made of. The very fabric which keeps the astral and the conscious separate is on full show with this staggering cover of a Bruce Springsteen classic. Delivered with the same conviction of a last-minute presentation revised in the room opposite, Dylan does not know nor care about the lyrical timing of one of the USA’s more pertinent, reflective songs. He cares for the conversation it causes. No doubt, Dylan finds a great love in this track from one of the contemporary greats and would even go on to perform with him, but Dancing in the Dark in this interpretation is fascinating. 

At the turn of the 1990s is the right time for Dylan to try his hand at the Springsteen classic. A song all about rediscovering yourself and seeking reinvention amid a tumultuous political time. His stride to new sounds and experiences following the charmless Empire Burlesque and a brief spot of revolutionary sound on Oh Mercy lends itself to this, Dancing in the Dark. Audience chatter and a garbled mess are both hilarious and heartwarming. Dylan loves to try his hand at oddities of the stage which do not suit his sound, fitting them to his desired tune, usually rather well. Not so here, but this New Haven-born cover of the Springsteen essential is fun. Dylan barely knows the words to a song which reflects his mood during this period; we know the lyrics and as such can feel what Dylan is going for here.  

And what he is going for is a reinvention. It would take him some time to grasp it and there would be lower points after this, but the heavy rock essentialism of this performance harbours a reservation over his sound. A sense of uncanny valley to it, a repetition to the guitar grooves which were, at the time, an inevitability of Dylan on the stage. He has reinvented his sound time and again, the lowest ebb coming from a desire to perform as a rocker. That was not Dylan though and no amount of pop rock covers can change this, though Dancing in the Dark does provide an overwhelming sense of freedom. About half the words of the Springsteen original make it through, the rest lost to a Stuttgart 1991-like experience of mismatched vocals and an out-of-time frontman.  

But this is what Dylan saw himself as, a man out of time, to borrow from the Elvis Costello song. Like Springsteen on Dancing in the Dark, Dylan wanted to change his clothes, and his hair, but not his face. His sound. His grasp at instrumental and musical reinvention was a constant drive during this period and it makes these covers, as clearly lacklustre and somewhat embarrassing as they are, feel earnest too. You cannot fault the man for trying to find a new avenue of sound. It was around this time Dylan felt lyrically spent, falling back on the covers of either contemporary or classic songs to cover his tracks and provide an adrenalin shot of interest into his setlist. Dancing in the Dark does just that, albeit with a rather untypical hilarity from Dylan.