‘We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.’ Bob Dylan took his leave of our shores last week at the Royal Albert Hall, with 5,000 people cheering him on a victory lap. Dylan is 83 and too frail to stand unsupported for long. He occasionally needs notes for his lyrics, but he will never surrender. I’m a performer, he seemed to say throughout every minute of the hour and 40 minutes he was on stage, and performers perform.
I’m a performer, he seemed to say throughout every minute of the hour and 40 minutes he was on stage, and performers perform
It’s fairly clear we won’t see him again. The three nights at the Kensington Bowl ended the British leg of his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, which seems to have been going on since the relief of Mafeking. This felt like a valediction. As he closed the set with ‘Every Grain of Sand’, the audience rose, block by block, and by the time the house lights went on he had left the building.
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