Gig review: Bob Dylan

Braehead Arena, Glasgow ****

COMING runner-up in the Nobel Prize for Literature last week brought Bob Dylan close to practically one the few remaining artistic accolades he’s yet to earn. But it’s the 70-year-old’s slavishly faithful fans who are probably more deserving of medals these days. His deathly voice – a grim croak gravelly enough to make Tom Waits sound like a choirboy – was nobody’s idea of enjoyable.

And yet, on the latest Glasgow leg of the Never Ending Tour, Dylan worked a certain magic over a generations-spanning crowd, even if their idol barely glanced at them. His mean-looking, air-tight five-piece band did the hard work, leaving the gnarled cat in the broad-rimmed black hat to bring the presence and peerless back catalogue. Dylan’s arthritic fingers mean he barely plays guitar any more, instead opting for a wheezy electric organ when not prowling the centre stage like a wizened shaman. That his first rasp of harmonica during Things Have Changed drew a bigger cheer than the arrival of the song itself, spoke volumes of the paucity of identifiable motifs in a set where no classic from Tangled Up in Blue to Highway 61 Revisited was immune from chopping and changing.

“Thank you friends” and an introduction for his band before the encore break was as conversational as Dylan got. Then he came back and played Like a Rolling Stone and All Along the Watchtower, and complaining about his standoffishness, wrecked vocal cords and increasingly eccentric approach to melody and phrasing all felt fussy.