I saw Bob Dylan play in Brooklyn on August 12: a concert in Prospect Park. Tickets were $85 or $55, but crowds of people sat outside listening for free. (I’d estimate 6,000 were on the lawns, mostly between the ages of 25 and 64. I was one of them.)
This was the eighth time I’ve seen Dylan, so I’ve learned to intuit his moods. He was very happy in Brooklyn. The first two songs were "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35" (with the refrain "Everybody must get stoned!") and "Lay, Lady, Lay." Many of the songs, however, were from Modern Times, an album few of us had heard. The band resembled a Midwestern rockabilly combo from the early 1950s — the music Dylan himself knew as a boy (when his name was still Robert Zimmerman). Mostly, we couldn’t hear the words, and Dylan only played the harmonica twice. Both times, he sounded professional, which is unusual. Usually, Dylan sounds like someone who learned to play the harp four days ago.
He did an unrecognizable "It’s All Right, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)" — although an elderly Englishwoman near me caught it.
Through a pair of borrowed binoculars, I saw the troubadour for a moment. Dylan looked like a Hasidic Jew, in his black cowboy hat.
His last song was "Masters of War":
You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy;
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy…
(Since his born-again Christian phase, Dylan omits the verse with "Even Jesus would never forgive what you do.")
But after the last song were the encores: "Like A Rolling Stone," "Thunder On The Mountain" and "Blowin’ In The Wind." Dylan sang the latter as a gospel song, with lots of organ. (He played organ throughout the show.)
Both of the "last songs" of the concert were written when Dylan was young: 21. Presently he is 67. The last two concerts I saw, in 2004 in 2007, ended with electric, apocalyptic versions of "All Along the Watchtower."
Dylan was saying:
"When I came to this city in 1961, all my beliefs changed. I began to dream of a world without war — a world which transcended cruelty. In lower Manhattan, you feel the breeze blowing from the harbor. Pages of yesterday’s newspaper blow in the wind. Years ago, these winds powered mighty sailing ships. A wind is a promise of salvation.
"Walking through the streets, I began to write songs in my mind: valiant, youthful songs against the evils of apathy. Today I honor the young Jewish man I once was, before I took drugs and made millions of dollars."