Performances following the release of Time Out of Mind, the revival of Bob Dylan, have an urgency to them. It is not that prior tours lacked this energy, but they certainly felt a step below what was to come. Rock Im Park is a magnificent example of what Dylan was now providing audiences. What remains are the silk shirts, the covers of Grateful Dead, and a sense that the contemporary material, which at this point was just a year old, had served its purpose. This is a classic setlist, twelve songs from Dylan which defined him during his first peak. Rock Im Park gives audiences what they think they want. Rocked-out renditions of some of his most gorgeous and interesting ballads. It is a callback to those Hard Rain days on the Rolling Thunder Revue circuit. Dylan sounds excellent throughout this performance. Another performance for the backlog.
There are some great moments throughout Rock Im Park, not least the rocked-out opener, To Be Alone With You. The song can move an audience in any instrumental form, but here it takes on some swaggering guitar style. It transitions into Lay, Lady, Lay without so much as a thank you from the man on stage. No need for thanking the crowd, either. Their reward is in some magnificent overhauls of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, and Tangled Up in Blue. Two outstanding songs from Dylan’s discography, and with the laid-back style of guitar work on this tour, there is much to love about their reworkings. Joined by touring veterans Bucky Baxter and Tony Garnier, the steadiness of the set is as much thanks to the instrumental work from the band as it is from Dylan on vocal duties. He brings plenty of heart to Silvio and Friend of the Devil, two Robert Hunter songs, though the latter is a neat tribute to the Jerry Garcia-penned classic.
Those Grateful Dead nods mark the only covers of the set, and what follows is a hits-laden latter half. An encore with Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right and Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 is one hell of a show closer. Instrumental jams tie all these songs together wonderfully. Lay, Lady, Lay and Highway 61 Revisited are the best examples of this. For those who enjoy the easy-going but still incredibly well-improvised style of Time Out of Mind performances, this show from Nuremberg, Germany, is a delight. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight is another great spot of instrumental bliss, with percussion work from David Kemper standing out best of all. The Time Out of Mind touring selection is an all-time great series of shows from Dylan, and a gig like Rock Im Park proves the quality and versatility of the band. You can hear as much in those heavily revised performances of It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, and Tangled Up in Blue.
That is all part of the Dylan charm at this point in his career. An eventful and exciting period for listeners, who are thankfully in no short supply of bootlegged live shows. The show to follow at the Rock Am Ring festival is just as strong a showcase of Dylan as an instrumentalist unafraid of audience expectation. To change the form of a song live on stage is to find new meaning, a fresh perspective, and doing this opens the song up to a new generation. It would be all too easy for Dylan to play up to the hits. He does to a certain degree, but it is always saddled with the knowledge he will change this instrumental here, that vocal intonation there. Rock Im Park is an exceptional example of these fundamentals in motion.
