Bob Dylan – Kansas City 2002 Review

Flash back two decades and you get a volatile stage presence from Bob Dylan. Love and Theft, overshadowed by the horrors of real-world events on its release date, gave way to a fascinating tour. Kansas City 2002 is just one of those dates, but it stands as a benchmark for the tour. Make note of this set. Not only is it a contemporary Dylan falling in favour with the wider public, but a chance to hear him cover some of the greatest songs of the 1960s, his own or otherwise. His “shift in gear” as the announcer suggests, can be heard from the very opening. To Be Alone With You marks that shift in gear, the desire to take what an audience knows and adapt them to a new sound, a fresh, lively force to be reckoned with. Just a few songs later and Dylan has his band work through Brown Sugar by The Rolling Stones. It is as wild a show as it gets, and for Dylan completionists, Kansas City 2002 is a must-listen. 

Covers of Warren Zevon and Neil Young can be heard throughout, as can a beautiful, acoustic rendition of Blowin’ in the Wind towards the end of the show. For those who want bingo for their checklist of live Dylan essentials, it does not get much better than Kansas City 2002. Pull it back to the opening song, though, where Dylan hammers away on piano for the Nashville Skyline rip. Even pieces from Shot of Love, overhauled with piano and acoustic glory in mind, sound tremendous. In the Summertime is a tremendous early offering from this show. Dramatic reimaginings of classic tracks is, to those who have seen the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, are no surprise. But for this performance there appears to be a reliance on reinvention, on bringing these tracks from the past, like Tombstone Blues or Simple Twist of Fate, somewhere new.  

From the bouncy piano work and big band appeal of Tombstone Blues to the surprise of Brown Sugar, Kansas City 2002 is about as complete it gets for Dylan’s live sound. The latter song, a cover of The Rolling Stones, is incredible. A phenomenal live performance which captures the up-tempo essence of Mick Jagger, just with a tone that reflects Dylan’s style at the time. This is about as different as it gets for him on stage, and it is a welcome change of pace. This is a wild, electrified tone which would appear throughout the set, wonderfully so on Summer Days. Those rocking moments are bookends to an acoustic-driven set, where Dylan revisits some of the finest folk songs of his career. He sounds spellbound by them, as does the crowd. The Times They Are A-Changin, It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), and a cover of Young’s Old Man are a triple bill of songs worth hearing.  

Where Dylan had plenty of contemporary thrills to offer around this time, the best moments come from trips through the past. Simple Twist of Fate sounds remarkable here, but so too do the Love and Theft releases, High Water (For Charley Patton) has an incredibly confident instrumental set, for instance. A tightly-knit set from Dylan and the group, which has some familiar faces, can be found on Kansas City 2002. Final song All Along the Watchtower is perhaps the best moment of all. A tremendously reflective piece of work which also underscores the rocking ways Dylan would feed back into his sets around this time. They do not go as far as his guitar-heavy days pre-Time Out of Mind, though this show does share an understanding for the darker edge, the cooler grooves of those classic songs. It is quite unlike any other Dylan show.