The whole Bangla Desh set was premiered over the radio a few nights ago, neatly coinciding with the Indian Army’s rout of the West Pakistani forces and the liberation of the East, thus putting the sweet seal of history on the cause that launched this record in the first place. Three of us sat listening for an hour or more, though admittedly we weren’t as polite as the audience at George Harrison’s Concert for Bangla Desh at Madison Square Garden last August: we turned off the first half-hour of Ravi Shankar. Then the Harrison-Leon Russell-Mad Dogs & So On part began.
I found most of it dull, and after a bit the whole show began to bother me immensely. Admittedly the huge band was tight and well-rehearsed. Harrison sang with conviction and Eric Clapton was spectacular. OK, it was well-produced. Well-produced oatmeal.
Every other song seemed to be about one of three things: 1) God saving us. 2) This is the way God planned it. 3) Chant the name of the Lord and you’ll be free. (Nick Tosches has suggested that this course of action did not seem to be getting the people of Bangla Desh very far; nasty of him to bring that up.)
All of the devout rockers on Harrison’s stage seemed to be missing their own point. If this gibberish had any relation to reality, or even any internal consistency—perils of pantheism—then the same god that allowed this wonderful concert to take place was also raining hot death on the other side of the globe. To achieve some kind of spiritual balance, perhaps.
Well, it reminded me of Joseph Heller’s God, the Vicious Practical Joker. The songs chosen made a mockery of what the event was supposedly about—raising funds and world awareness for the plight of refugees from the war in East Pakistan and the fight for Bangladeshi independence—and I imagine this comes across much more blatantly on record than it did at the concert itself, since the electric presence of the stars doesn’t blank out any doubts in a mindless glow of being there with George, Ringo, and Bob Dylan. Which is nothing to sneeze at: I’d have liked to have been there too. But I wasn’t, and I have to take what I can get, along with the rest of the audience that wasn’t there either, and what I get is a feeling of being sold down the river, smothered by some of the silliest ideals of western civilization, and flattered by a superstar glitter that fails to hide the almost total emptiness of the production.
There’s a line in Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness” where he warns, “Beware of maya,” maya being an Indian word for “veil of illusion”—and without even going into the fact that the avoidance of darkness is a perfect definition of illusion, it has to be said that a veil of illusion is precisely what this concert has to offer.
There are some exceptions to the bland sound, the horrible fake gospel shouts, and the silly songs. Leon Russell makes a valiant attempt to erase the pompous mood of the event, delivering a wild version of “Jumping Jack Flash,” braking into a long jive story that resolves itself into the Coasters’ “Youngblood” and finally edges out and roars back to where it began. That’s exciting, and as anomalous to the general drift of the concert as two other high points, Ringo’s “It Don’t Come Easy” and Dylan’s last number, “Just Like a Woman.” If the genius of this man seems occasional now, when it comes it is staggering, and nothing can touch it. Ah, Bob Dylan!
One of the best things about Dylan’s side of the set is that it can make you feel like a fan again. A Bob Dylan fan. It’s moving to hear George Harrison say, “I’d like to bring out a friend to us all, Mr. Bob Dylan,” and implicitly join in the cheers; to recognize, in yourself, the thrill the audience is experiencing; to delight in the applause that breaks in on the choruses they and you have publicly celebrated and privately cherished for years. In spite of the fact that the movie promises to be uniquely boring, I’ll be there to see how Ringo looks playing tambourine with Bob Dylan.
Dylan’s performance is steady, but most of his material seems just out of his reach, as if he couldn’t quite catch the emotional rhythm of the songs. But from the first notes of “Just Like a Woman,” it’s clear that something else is happening. Here he rises to one of the great performances of his career. He sings the song the way Hank Williams would sing it if he were still alive, with the ghostly chill of “Lost Highway.” It may well be the equal of anything he has ever done, and if it took him five years to regain the power he once had, then what matters is not how long it took, but that he has regained it. What began, some years ago, as a change in attitude, seems finally to have grown into a changed point of view, and an authentic, as opposed to a contrived, maturity.
His performance reveals nuances of emotion and commitment that do not even seem to be implied in the recording we know from Blonde on Blonde. What is absent from the song, now, is the sense of bitterness that emerged both as a complaint and contempt five years ago, and the performance here imposes an enormous agony on the simple matter of living through the day, until finally, in the last verse, it increases in intensity and Dylan’s voice is acting out a resistance to the calamity of life that stops a long way short of forgiveness.
~~Bob Dylan -by- Greil Marcus
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