Theories, rants, etc.
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IN JANUARY 1974, MELODY MAKER’S MICHAEL
Watts found himself in Chicago witnessing the start of the first Bob Dylan tour in eight years – a lucrative jaunt with The Band around North America’s bigger arenas. After such a long absence from the stage, Dylan’s motives were widely perceived as cynical, mercenary, but David Geffen, his new label boss, claimed otherwise. “Bob Dylan is a multi-multi-millionaire,” Geffen told Watts. “He doesn’t need the money.”
Fifty years on, Dylan has spent this past summer on tour with Willie Nelson and Plant & Krauss, clearly enjoying himself with a setlist capricious even by his own standards. At 83 – an age deemed unviable for US presidents – he will be back in the UK and Europe this autumn, just before a Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet hits cinemas. Why does he still do all this, given Geffen’s assertion he doesn’t need the money must be truer than ever? Speculating on Dylan’s motives is a mug’s game, but maybe there’s a clue in something else Geffen told Melody Maker back then: “Bob has been waiting so long for somebody else to pick up the ball he threw down, and now he’s had to do it himself.” Five decades later, has anyone managed to pick up that ball in quite the same way?