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Bob Dylan brings his Rough And Rowdy Ways to Norway. The UK has a revelation in store, reckons John Harris.

AS DUSK falls on an otherwise sedate Sunday evening in Oslo, a huge crowd of people are waiting for Bob Dylan’s first European performance in over three years. A few weeks before a run of UK dates, he is about to appear at the Norwegian capi-tal’s Spektrum arena, a vast black box that he seems to be fond of: he first played here in 1995, and has been back 10 times since.

An hour of vox-popping brings forth such nouns as “genius”, “poet” and “legend”, and the sense of an audience that runs along a continuum of age and Dylan knowledge. At one end are a smattering of people under 25, a lot of whom seem to have come to see a kind of one-man Mount Rushmore, hoping that he will obligingly play the classics. “Even if you don’t know every song, you have to come and see him,” says 18-year-old Johannes Olstad. “It’s important.” At the mention of recent Dylan releases, he shrugs. “I like the old stuff,” he says. “Like A Rolling Stone. Blowin’ In The Wind. Mr Tambourine Man.”

Still painting his masterpiece: Bob Dylan and band in the Shadow Kingdom, 2021.

Making your writer feel almost as old as Dylan himself, he then explains his recent experience of seeing other “classic” artists. Like who? “Queen. And Green Day.”

At the other end of the Dylan spectrum are altogether older Bobheads, many of whom have perused online setlists from his recent(ish) US dates, and are enthusiastically up to speed with his new material – not least Rough And Rowdy Ways, the deep, declama-tory album that he is still officially promot-ing. “Why have I come? Because I love Bob Dylan,” says 58-year-old Dave King, a native of Battersea and MOJO reader who moved to Oslo just over a decade ago, and works here as an animation director. He is obviously well versed in Dylan’s music, but has seen him play live only once before – in 1986, backed by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. “He was as miserable as fuck,” he laughs. “Didn’t talk to the audience, and he seemed pretty… chal-lenging with the band. So I don’t really know what to expect from tonight.”