TWO years ago this month, Bob Dylan and his band rolled up at the SEC Armadillo in Glasgow, as part of his Rough And Rowdy Ways world wide tour, which had begun in 2021.

His two dates in Glasgow probably had, for many hardcore Dylan fans present, something of a sombre feel: would this be the last time, the very last time, we would be able to see him in concert in Scotland? He was, after all, 81 years of age. Surely someone even with Dylan’s ceaseless commitment to touring would not be hitting the road again? I've seen Dylan in concert more times than I care to remember, but a friend of mine was actually present at the show at the ABC cinema in Edinburgh in May 1966, which was part of the controversial world tour the singer was undertaking with his backing band, The Hawks. Scots' affinity with Dylan goes back a very long time.

But Dylan is anything but predictable. Two years on from those October 2022 concerts, he is still touring. The current, ninth, leg of the Rough And Rowdy tour is taking him across Europe: the UK dates include Bournemouth, Liverpool, two at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall (November 5 and 6), Nottingham, Wolverhampton and, finally, in mid-November, three dates at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

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Tickets were snapped up in a matter of moments for the British dates, and in Edinburgh even the expensive VIP ticket packages are all sold out. As of Saturday morning (Oct 26), however, a handful of Verified Resale Tickets are available via Ticketmaster for the shows at Bournemouth International Centre (Nov 1), Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena (November 3) and Nottingham’s Motorpoint Arena (November 8).

The most recent setlist detailed on Dylan’s website — for Stuttgart’s Porsche Arena, on October 21 — makes arresting reading for its combination of classics and newer songs: All Along The Watchtower, It Ain’t Me Babe, Desolation Row, It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, Every Grain Of Sand, and several songs from his excellent 2020 album, Rough And Rowdy Ways: Key West (Philospher Pirate), I Contain Multitudes, Goodbye Jimmy Reed, False Prophet, Mother of Muses, Crossing The Rubicon.

Reviewing Dylan’s recent concert in Prague, Abraham Armstrong at brnodaily.com noted that Dylan’s “notoriety as a discordant live performer” had faded and that it had been difficult to know what to expect from the show. 

But, regardless, "it is impossible not to feel a little excited, as a lifelong Dylan fan, when the lights go down and the four-piece backing band walk on stage. And there he is! Shuffling towards the grand piano in a dark-black suit, dotted, I think … with small, shimmering sequins. He gives a small nod of acknowledgment to the crowd’s ecstatic applause, and we’re away”.

He continued: “The first thing to say, and I wish I had something more sophisticated to offer, is that his voice is gone. It’s absolutely gone. This is nobody’s fault, certainly not his, and it feels unkind to mention, but it is true. Maybe some of the hardened regulars have grown inured, but for the average listener it is this inescapable truth that is most immediately apparent. You can feel a ripple pass through the room, a collective beat being taken for a moment of fortification, as people say to themselves ‘Oh s**t. There it is. Yeah. Okay’.”

But Armstrong also makes a wider point, in terms of what it is actually like to see someone as culturally influential as Dylan in the flesh. “Going to a Dylan concert, especially for a first-timer, can feel a bit like going to see the Parthenon or Stonehenge. 

“Even if there is technically not much going on, it’s still possible to just sit back and wonder at the cultural enormity of what is in front of you (in this case: the distant outline of a fuzz of grey hair bobbing behind a large grand piano), especially as the band launches into an uptempo Desolation Row. 

“Here, though, the faster rendition is only a distant cousin of the original, there is a unifying sense of gratitude at the privilege of listening to such a gorgeous, lucid piece of poetry, being performed nearly 60 years after it was first written”.

His reference to the singer’s cultural enormity echoes what so many others have said about Dylan. 

Twenty years ago, in June 2004, the singer accepted an honorary degree of Doctor of Music from the University of St Andrews. Giving the laureation, Professor Neil Corcoran of the School of English put it like this: “Bob Dylan’s life as writer and singer has the aspect of vocation, of calling, and his is an art of the most venturesome risk and the most patient endurance. 

“He’s spent a lifetime applying himself to such long-sanctioned forms of art as folk, blues, country, and rock music. And, partly by transfusing them with various kinds of poetic art, he’s reinvented them so radically that he’s moved everything on to a place it had never expected to go and left the deepest imprint on human consciousness. 

“Many members of my generation can’t separate a sense of our own identity from his music and lyrics. He’s been for us an extension of consciousness – a way of growing up, and a way of growing more alive … His magnificent songs will last as long as song itself does.”

In an Observer article last weekend, the author Geoff Dyer wrote about the recent release of a 1973 Dylan rarity, Nobody 'Cept You, which, Dyer notes, has echoes of the late work of D.H.Lawrence. The article broadens into a wider appreciation of Dylan's astonishing talent.

"In states of heightened emotion", Dyer wrote, "I find Dylan speaks more directly to me than any of the finest poets. Whether your heart is bursting with happiness or has been smashed into pieces by a break-up, no-one articulates that feeling better than Dylan".

A "habitual and sometimes careless reviser", he added, "'[Dylan's] approach to his craft seems characterised by a kind of obsessive indifference, leaving us to ask, over and over, how he has managed to do what he has done. It fills you with a sense - this is Lawrence again - of 'undimmed wonder'."

Public and critical interest in Dylan remains as energetic as ever. The Dylan expert Clinton Heylin has lately published two volumes of The Double Life Of Bob Dylan after mining the extensive Dylan archive in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The profusely illustrated Bob Dylan: Mixing Up The Medicine, which showcases treasures from the Archive, has sold well.

Actor Timothée Chalamet plays Dylan from his arrival in New York City in the winter of 1961 and culminates in his controversial decision to “go electric” at the Newport Folk Festival four years later.

In the meantime, fans flock to buy the latest boxsets based on his formidable archive of audio recordings, the latest being a 27-disc deluxe set from his epic 1974 arena tour with The Band. 
His Bootleg Series, which was launched with a three-disc set in 1991, has since yielded such treasures as his 1966 concert in Manchester at which a furious fan branded him as Judas; the Basement Tapes (which he made with The Band); a recording of a 1964 solo show at New York’s Philharmonic Hall; and a marvellous six-disc set exploring the making of his 1975 classic, Blood On The Tracks.

The prospect of seeing Bob Dylan in Scotland again, the week after next, is enough to get the heart beating faster. Might this really be the last time? Who can possibly say?