Rough And Rowdy Travels

Reflections on a long weekend of pilgrimage and exhaustion through Manchester and Carcassonne

WRITER’S NOTE: I’ve been struggling with how to frame this piece over the last few days. It began life as a travelogue, but it became apparent almost immediately that my skillset for such a thing is less Jan Morris, and more a 2nd-rate Channel 4 documentary hosted by a mid-talent comedian. The alternative would be to simply write two reviews of two wildly different concerts, which would probably be best served by giving them two separate posts. This isn’t really a review blog and until MOJO pay to hear my opinion, I’m hoping to keep it that way. What follows is intended to simply document a mad and exhausting few days in the life of the author.

Impromptu, poorly organised, overly ambitious, and physically demanding expeditions are my forte. In May last year, what began as a five hour multi-train journey to Oxford expanded into a 2 week long solo trip that involved Dublin, Sligo, and Leeds, that did less to refresh my spirit than it did to sentence me to bed for several days. This past week I embarked on a journey with a much greater challenge and a much shorter turn around.

In 2022, Bob Dylan did a tour of the UK. That’s not particularly unusual, Bob Dylan has been touring the world practically non-stop for the last 40 years. However, something happened over the course of said tour that shook me with an inescapable dread. I had decided not to go, primarily due to the fact that the tour didn’t pass through anywhere reasonably local and, I figured that, given Bob’s insatiable appetite for touring, there would be another opportunity somewhere down the line. Then, on October 28th, the night Bob Dylan played in Nottingham, it was announced that rock and roll pioneer, Jerry Lee Lewis, had passed away at the age of 87. This affected me tremendously as it highlighted just how stupid my decision had been. How could I have so confidently assumed that I would ever have the opportunity to see a (then) 81 man perform another tour? It was a naive decision, and one which had the stink of a cosmic joke waiting to backfire in my face. I decided there and then that if Dylan announced any dates in Europe or the US, I would go. Japan dates had been announced, but I am far too much a coward to undergo such an excursion solo with such limited experience. I waited, and waited, and devoured every online rumour about where the next leg of the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Tour would stop. I listened to every bootleg that came out of Japan. I knew the set inside/out. I slowly morphed myself into Gene Hackman in The Conversation (1974) waiting for a crumb of news. It was, eventually, announced that the 6th leg of the tour (commencing on June 2nd 2023) would be coming to Southern Europe. The machinery was set in motion and I had begun formulating the perfect scheme. I had long since bought tickets to see Peter Gabriel in Manchester on the 23rd of June, and Bob was playing Carcassonne, France, on the 26th. Why, I thought to myself, don’t I just do it all as one round trip? Especially given that I could fly direct from Manchester to Carcassonne…

Manchester - rain - Do I have my raincoat? Do I ever? Mostly memories of sitting inside a Premier Inn waiting for the rain to stop. This is why we don’t ever cross the Pennines. Everything gets too dark and strange the further west you go.

- June 23rd marked the Manchester leg of Peter Gabriel’s I/O tour promoting his upcoming tenth studio album of the same name. Peter Gabriel has much greater ambitions as an entertainer beyond being a musical frontman, this much has been clear for the last 50 years. I/O isn’t so much a rock and roll show as it is a multimedia, multi-disciplinary extravaganza. The only thing missing was ballet collaboration with Michael Clarke, although one can be forgiven for not having yet caught up to The Fall in that regard. Regardless, everything else is here. The show is filled to the brim with all of the excesses that stadium rock promises. The band, Tony Levin (bass), Richard Evans (guitar), Manu Katché (drums), David Rhodes (guitar), Ayanna Witter-Johnson (cello, piano, vocals), Marina Moore (violin, viola, vocals), Don McLean - not that one - (keyboards), and Josh Shpak (trumpet, French horn, keys, vocals); are all beyond immaculate, with Witter-Johnson the obvious standout. Even from the distance of Manchester Arena’s cheapest of cheap seats, the talent and chemistry amongst everyone involved radiated from the stage. You could put this band behind a pub cabaret singer and they’d probably have you wondering why they aren’t headlining Glastonbury. I will admit to having my prejudices towards Progressive Rock as a genre. If you ever wanted to increase my blood pressure you would simply have to ask me my opinion of Pink Floyd or, god-forbid, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. I have received every type of lecture about music one can receive from men with beards over the age of 55 and I still sat through Yes with stony-faced indifference. And yet, there’s something I find compelling about Peter Gabriel’s solo material. I groaned as much as everyone else when he started to describe the outlandish plots of his new material, and I felt my spirit leave my body as he described his dream of some kind of AI driven artistic nirvana. But I like him, I like his ability to blend his loves of non-western music and operatic theatricality with his pristine pop sensibilities. And this show has plenty for those of us who remain mostly familiar with albums like: Melt, So, and Us. At the end of the day, Peter Gabriel is a crowd pleasing professional. The songs are catchy, the band is tight, and you get bang for your buck in the theatrical department. Your mileage may very, as mine did with the conceit of the whole production, and the quality of the new material, but I defy anyone to have a poor time. The stadium rock artists of yesterday exist in an eco-system of trust with their fanbases, agreeing, in the face of their own dwindling creative output and commercial caché, to perform a steady selection of classic tunes and deep cuts for the hardcore, in exchange for their audience’s continued financial support of the arena platform. It’s hard to see any stage other than the largest arenas being capable of containing Peter Gabriel’s imagination, and in return for that stage we get to hear a live version of Sledgehammer a handful of times a decade.

Carcassonne - 31 degrees - I think I damaged Anglo-French relations in a single phone call. Castle sitting on a hill. They keep giving me coffee and I keep drinking it. What’s more rock and roll than heart palpitations?

- June 26 and we are in Carcassonne, France. We’ve navigated early morning airports, miscommunications with taxi drivers, and walked up an absolutely monstrous hill, but we are in country, and we are ready to see Bob Dylan. The Theatre Jean Deschamps in Carcassonne is perhaps as perfect a music venue as can possibly be conceived. The gorgeous amphitheatre of a medieval castle sitting high atop a hill in the Occitanian countryside serving as the perfect site for pilgrimage for weary travelling Dylan-fans from all corners of the globe. To add to the show’s air of mystical reverence was the banning of phones. Orders from on high clearly stated that mobile phones would be locked into bags which would only be opened at the end of proceedings. In 2023, when every single element of our lives are documented, it’s hard to imagine how anyone would ever believe you were there if you couldn’t provide 5 photographs and video footage of your favourite song. Bob demands complete attention, and in a world where attention is constantly being torn between multiple objects, it’s refreshing to see someone insist that what they do is valuable in the experiential moment of its existence, more so than it would be obscured. Bob and his band take to the stage as the sun sets. Joining him on this tour is a small but mighty blues combo made up of: Bob Britt (guitar), Tony Garnier (bass), Donnie Heron (multi-instrumentalist), Doug Lancio (guitar), and Jerry Pentecost (drums). And they simply play. Bob sits down at his piano, occasionally plays the harmonica (to a strong reaction), offers a few thank yous, and leaves. Given that the purpose of the tour is to play the majority of the songs from 2019s Rough and Rowdy Ways and to present a small number of classic songs in the Rough and Rowdy Ways style, the length of the songs and the lack of breaks between them creates a hypnotic atmosphere. If you open yourself into it you can really lock yourself into the flow, especially between I Contain Multitudes (the evening’s 3rd song) and Crossing the Rubicon (the 9th). I’m familiar enough with the material from Rough and Rowdy Ways, and Bob was in strong enough voice, that I was able to distinguish and appreciate how the setlist was built. But this wasn’t the case for everyone. In fact, there were a number of instances where the crowd had growing hostilities towards what they were watching. There was a clear divide between the diehards fanbase and the locals who had gotten tickets to see the opening of their city’s cultural festival. As the show continued there were walkouts, escorted-outs, boos, one woman marched her way to the front of the stage and threw something at Bob. I had the misfortune of being sat next to an elderly couple who refused to cease verbalising their displeasure (although the woman to my left seemed to be having the time of her life).

Rule one of being a Bob Dylan fan: One must understand that Bob Dylan does not care about doing anything that would please you directly.

I’ve thought a lot over the last week about my feelings towards the negative elements in the crowd. I decided in the moment that no one else was going to effect my enjoyment of the show and nothing did. In fact, I was reminded of something Thelonius Monk once said along the lines of: ‘Whatever happens in the room IS the show’; and embraced it as all part of the Bob Dylan mythology. The individuals who didn’t like the show audibly were in the minority, the majority of those who weren’t enjoying themselves either left or sat politely. I have come to the conclusion that I understand their frustration, as this was a set without the most well known songs, performed in a style alien to those only familiar with the 1962-78 oeuvre, and sung by a man who no longer sounds the way he does in the popular imagination. It breaks the contract established by the arena nostalgia act artists, and, like any break with the familiar, this is too much to be overcome. What I don’t understand however, is what those people expect. I know, in a practical sense, what they’re expecting: a traditional show akin to those practiced by other ageing veterans. I guess what I mean is that I’m unsure as to why the show not corresponding to the audience’s fantasy version of the show, a fantasy so divorced from a reality that can be easily researched, is in any way Bob Dylan’s fault? The more I think on the reaction, the more I begin to wonder if there’s not some necessary duty on the listener to be willing to go beyond the customer - product relationship in favour. There is an argument of course that, if you pay the money, you should get what you want or expect. However, in the field of art the artist has as much of a right to present to the audience whatever expression is authentic to them in the current moment. Dylan is one of the great exemplars of this in western music, and the constant changes have received the ire of audiences since as early the electric tour with The Band throughout 1965 and 1966; in going to a Dylan show you are engaging with 60 years of artistic individuality. To many fans, this is the joy of the experience. Sitting in anticipation to see what new direction one of the 20th century’s foremost artistic voices is heading and how that direction connects with the career which precedes it. There’s more to be thought on this topic, and more to be written than can be said here, but in a summer with multiple strange and aggressive acts of audience behaviour, there is certainly room to re-examine our relationship to the performer. I feel a great sympathy for those who found themselves incapable of enjoying Bob Dylan’s concert in Carcassonne, and even greater sorrow that it made some of them so angry. As for me, I felt clearly that music is a miracle and that we should be grateful that there are those amongst us who can keep finding new ways to express such a miracle.

Addendum: This piece is not intended to pass a value judgement on whether or not one style of concert is better than another. Such a statement would be reductive to two great performers who simply happen to approach a same question in two different ways. I enjoyed my time with both concerts, and the only difference in my reverence for one over the other exists due to the personal significance they have in my life. I simply wanted to make my readership consider what they are viewing, beyond their initial expectations, when they engage with a work of art.

Ryan Sweeney (@TheCautiousCrip)