An 81-year-old Bob Dylan shuffles onto the stage of London Palladium— ensconced behind an upright piano, he says little, sings a lot, and thumps the black keys like Champion Jack Dupree for a bit of dirty boogie-woogie—in support of his latest studio album of original material, 2020’s Rough and Rowdy Ways; it’s a concert that doesn’t look back, let alone indulge in nostalgia, a far cry from 1966, and most certainly somewhat different from what Dylan is doing today, given that he is an artist of continual transformation. Therefore Chan Marshall, known by her stage name Cat Power, recreating Dylan’s infamous Manchester Free Trade Hall concert—originally mislabeled as the Royal Albert Hall Concert on bootlegs—which, in two years, will have taken place 60 years ago, is potentially asinine, uninteresting and, at worst, redundant.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby (1925), writes, “Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course, you can!’.” Cat Power is not under any illusions of recapturing the past; she isn’t Jay Gatsby, nor a ditzy Daisy Buchanan, for that matter. No musician can capture the intensity of Dylan’s 1966 tour: when a bleary-eyed, amphetamine-fuelled, about-to-turn 25-year-old Dylan, backed by the R&B Hawks (who later became the Band), masticated and spat out lyrics like darts; moreover, when every performance became a battle, won and loss as if he was on the edge of a precipice and about to take a leap of faith. Or crash—Woodstock, a mere and inevitable two months away. But all that is in the past, not in the here and now, not 2024.
Cat Power doesn’t try to present the past as the past—as the past is alive, something along the lines of what Faulker writes in his novel Requiem for a Nun (1951). That is partly because Cat Power does not follow everything to the tee, like on “Desolation Row” when she precedes “monk” with “drunk”. But the arrangements and sound are similar to the originals. If you want to get the sense of seeing Dylan and the Hawks live in 1966, then this is maybe the closest you will get. At least in person, that is. Yet Cat Power and her band are not a simulacrum of Dylan and the Hawks. Instead, they gracefully step into the songs, striking the right balance between honoring and making it anew.
Following the structure of the “Royal Albert Hall” concert—acoustic the first half, electric the second—it begins with a two-person band—a guitarist and a harmonicist—supporting Cat Power for what, initially, was a solo acoustic slot in 1966. Wearing a black blouse and high-heels, Cat Power exudes contentment borne out of despair and offers sage advice: do not be a slave to mobile phones. But, for the most part, she is reticent between songs, punctuated by a smoker’s cough.
With arpeggiated chords on an acoustic guitar, “She Belongs to Me”—the opening number—is about the marrying of artist and muse, as so often is in Dylan’s songs of this, or, perhaps, any other period. Interestingly, Cat Power sings the album version “Egyptian Ring”, not “Red Egyptian Ring”, as Dylan did on the 1966 tour. In any case, and leaving pedantry aside, this half of the concert accentuates the musicality—the intricate and circular guitar patterns, keening harmonica solos—of these acoustic numbers that sometimes get overlooked in favor of the poetic lyrics.
Also striking is Cat Power’s transformation from an indie singer-songwriter to a chanteuse. She is in full command of her diction and phrasing and, in tongue-in-cheek moments, imitates Dylan’s, including his use of the sibilant effect, that it is frighteningly close. Just as he purloined from Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, who, in turn, stole from Woody Guthrie, who, in turn, pinched from Jimmie Rodgers, etc. Or how her voice croaks with pain and sadness, with the words lingering, gargling, dying upon her tongue, before they are suddenly hurled out, or, conversely, trickled out in a drawling, sultry tone, with each syllable distinct and powerful.
Moreover, Cat Power captures Dylan’s melismatic singing, as if she is a gospel singer singing secular music or a secular singer singing gospel music—and turns “Just Like a Woman” into a hymn, a prayer, a supplication for transcendence. Yet, not before telling an anecdote about becoming ill while performing “Just Like a Woman” in a church, which, with an interpretation of the track being about the absolute, she took as a sign.
Like Valerie June, Cat Power is one of a few contemporary female artists able to do Dylan justice. Additionally, she perhaps brings out a tenderness so often hidden beneath the vitriol and put-downs of this period, like in “She Belongs to Me” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. After the first half of the concert, the rest of the band walk out and suddenly, there is a shift, a current of electricity running through the aisles and up the stalls and ascending to the circles, not stopping until reaching the firmament. Perhaps. Then, those first spikey, metallic notes of “Tell Me, Momma” ring out across the auditorium and reverberate against the chandeliers, pillars, and gilded boxes, and maybe into our collective memories.
As a result of Cat Power spontaneously walking off stage (briefly), the band tentatively begins playing the notes to “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, where the drummer keeps the beat with the palms of his hands; other times throughout the concert he is manically whacking his hi-hat like Mickey Jones. Afterward, they launch into the 12-bar-blues “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”, where, hidden beneath the jumpy groove, is Lightnin’ Hopkins’ 1961 “Automobile Blues,” the original template for the track.
Although the band does not capture the raucous and energetic “Royal Albert Hall” concert, the performance still swings and grabs the listener by the collar. While the reflective “One Too Many Mornings” offers a moment’s respite amid a cacophony of billowing sound. “Ballad of a Thin Man” opens with a giant, ravaged piano chord, as if making the instrument bleed, cry, or scream, like the subject of the song, Mr. Jones, complete with a swirling organ and jazz-inflected electric guitar. The concert ends with “Like a Rolling Stone”—perhaps leaving the audience going home with a feeling of having seen something integral and important. It’s not something on the scale of cultural significance as the original concert, but something intimate, nestled in their memories and histories.
What Cat Power displays is that even if one excavates the past, that does not necessarily make it nostalgic, mawkish, or a sentimental trip down memory lane—the opposite: it indicates how fresh and alive Dylan’s music is. In another context, as folkies did in the American folk music revival, she is preserving a tradition. Another point to consider is Dylan’s oeuvre—as with other musicians or other artists—lives beyond its auteur, even during their lifetime, especially a song-and-dance man whose modus operandi has been borrowing and building upon tradition—in other words, folk.
Of course, being closer to the source, in regards to time and location, is beneficial. A case Dylan has personally put forward as a difference between him and a later generation of musicians, as he had been in contact with the 1920s Appalachian thumb-led banjo pickers when they were rediscovered in the 1960s. But, when your legacy is as far-reaching as Dylan’s, perhaps it doesn’t make a difference if you have seen Dylan in the 1960s, a version or two of him in the 1970s, Cat Power singing Dylan at the London Palladium on 1 May 2024, or just heard the muffling of his voice drifting on late-night radio at the turn-of-the-century.
Put differently, his presence is ubiquitous, and thus, his influence becomes transferable, even without a tangible connection or entering his orbit. Therefore, lurking in the shadows of this concert may not just be ghosts and phantoms. Perhaps there is also an answer to Greil Marcus’s existential question at the end of his 2022 book Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs: “What will go out of the world with him?” Nothing.