Comeback tours are all the rage. For Bob Dylan, it meant a lucrative opportunity to tour with The Band after a period in the studio. A rush to get tickets for any show on the schedule and the surprise of hearing old tracks broken down into rock-led grooves are all part of the charm for this Dylan tour. Oakland 1974 may just be a stop-off on the road through his live recordings but it is a chance nonetheless to experience a performance eight years on from his previous tour. Furious vocal moments throughout this gig are well worth a listen – even for those who have gorged on The Complete 1974 Recordings late last year. Drastic rearrangements heard throughout this are dependent on The Band, their ear for new musical routes is a masterful accompaniment to what Dylan does here. Reinvention is on the cards.
But when was it not? Paired with some grand piano slams and slick guitar solo work, barely audible under the crunch of a killer Dylan vocal performance, is the sort of depth expected from live performances. Listeners rightly demand more from the artist on stage than they do in the studio because there is always a chance of elongating or changing something on the fly. Plenty of that can be heard here as Dylan plays around with the tone of his songs, particularly the heavier, electrified presence of Most Likely You Go Your Way. Dylan as a recluse, the long-running mystery of the man on stage, developed in the lead-up of this tour. Adorned with aviator sunglasses and a desire to distance himself from the folk tunes of his past, Oakland 1974 and the wider tour is a chance to hear Dylan stretch and strain his vocal position. Lay, Lady, Lay, is a marvellous example of this and relies on some Garth Hudson-tipped synthesizer. The results are electric innovation tinged with the malaise that comes with fatigue.
This is a sleep-deprived Dylan trying to feel his way through a new dawn. It was not just about critical appeal and artistic revolution but the longevity of his songs, and the financial wellbeing of a person removed from his image as an artist. Oakland 1974, and the tour as a whole, sounds more like a punchy set of rhythmic improvisations from The Band; yet it sounds incredibly tight and hits those emotionally vulnerable moments, often opened up by Dylan’s lead vocal performance, time after time. Key to these performances is making sure the songs are elevated from their time. Anachronistic, these are not. All Along the Watchtower, It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding and Like a Rolling Stone are all 1960s classics but are brought into the modern day with these performance with a few flourishes from a sharper, harsher vocal performance.
Look a little closer and the fatigue, the passionless moments from time to time, come a little clearer. Energy can hide a lot of the shortcomings heard in Oakland 1974, from an inevitably slowed Forever Young to a Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door performance where Dylan’s microphone crumples under the Hudson synthesiser additions, but it cannot conjure an appreciation on stage. Whatever Dylan and The Band may feel about this is, objectively, irrelevant. They play their part and the part is what the audience wanted. Genuine or not they give the flavour and feel of an instrumentally well-tuned unit that burn the candle at both ends as they cram thirty dates into forty days. A rushed The Times They Are A-Changin’ should reveal those shortcomings, but Oakland 1974 is an overwhelmingly fun, instrumentally-led experience.
