I'M ON ANOTHER PLANET WITH YOU.
It looks like a church, doesn't it? Or a spaceship.
I'm going to go with spiritual spaceship.
Come with me, Bob fans.
If you are kicking yourself that you didn’t get a ticket maybe you can daisy Malkovich with me.
For my American friends I'll say the Royal Albert Hall does look a a spaceship invented by Victorians.
We were going in through DOOR 3 where young people stood at a table and give you a padded sunglasses pouch. You put your phone in and they click it closed and give it back to you.
Lots of men with white hair and huge phones
One petite American man in a suit with a top hat finishing off a text in capital letters typed, IM GOING IN. Click.
Of course the place couldn't lift off. Not really. But it does have that tardis feel in that, inside, it feels bigger than it looks from the outside.
There are rings of marble corridors like a cake and when you look up way, way up high are these arches and tiny people standing, like a ceiling painting in Venice.
When you find your LOGGIA (box) number, on a door that looks like a fancy amoire, an attendant unlocks it for you and in you go. Ours had 8 velveteen red and gold painted chairs, and our seats were in the back row.
Gina pointed to the empty seats in front of us and said I hope we don’t get two big blokes who talk.
Enter: two big blokes with drinks in hand.
They sat down in front of us and before she could stop me:
Me: Good evening, I hope you aren’t the chatterbox type.
Oh no, says man on the right. No, no, no.
(It ain’t me)
He saw that I had the set list from last night on my lap and asked if I had been to any other shows.
Not since Dublin 22, I said. How about you?
He’d been to three others, including the Wolverhampton show that had fabulous feedback on facebook.
Then I said, what’s your name?
Kevin.
Are you from Manchester?
Yes, he says, photographer.
I said, Kevin Cummins.
Yes, he said.
How was your day? I asked.
Just been photographing Ian Brown today.
This is Gina Birch, I told him.
I photographed you, he said.
Did you?
Whalley Bridge, by a bus stop. What are you doing now?
Well, as it happens, Gina’s new record was out yesterday.
And I’m looking through the binoculars now. it's calm lighting on stage. Are those London streetlights. Hah, actually they’re rusty old movie lights.
But there’s no one here to say Action.
Oh, they’re dimming. A rumble of applause.
And I hear the piano. And Tony Garnier (bass) and I pan over to see Jim Keltner (in sunglasses) and back around to the two skinny guitarists, in their peaky blinder outfits - Bob Britt (from Nashville) and Doug Lacano.
But after a while they are not separate. You close your eyes and they are one.
It’s truly extraordinary how they blend together. They keep a close eye on him, arranged horseshoe shape around his black shiny Baby Grand, and when it comes to It Aint me, Babe, I swear you'll look for backing singers.
Bob sits, then stands up and plays standing up, or he’ll pick up a harmonica, and then sit, or he’ll stand up and come round the side of the piano, and lean on it, and sing, 80’s Elvis style (and I mean if Elvis were 80 years old) into a microphone, and then, wait a minute, he’ll go back and punctuate a tune with some solid chords, and then sit and finish with a flourish.
BUT THE WORDS.
He makes you want to turn round into the decades to everyone you’ve ever talked to about Dylan who has said, “Why do you go? I can’t understand a word he says.”
You want them to be here. Because he is annunciating.
Can you hear him NOW?
AND did you hear him sprinkle a bit of broadway into Paint My Masterpiece and switch to Putting on the Ritz? And did you hear him, from his lab late one night, start INVENTING a Version Of You?
I'll take the Scarface Pacino and The Godfather Brando
Mix it up in a tank and get a robot commando
If I do it upright and put the head on straight
I'll be saved by the creature that I create
I'll get blood from a cactus, gunpowder from ice
I don't gamble with cards and I don't shoot no dice
And
I'll bring someone to life, someone for real
Someone who feels the way that I feel
After Black Rider, Kevin Cummin turned back to me, I’d leaned forward, and he grabbed my hand. I swear we were electricity.
HOW can Bob Dylan do this at his age? Are these songs or pure poetry now. He’s comparing old and new. He’s singing young to old. He’s talking love. He’s not standing for fools. If you want to hear American landscapes, and galloping horses, his Desolation Row is really close to a Paul Revere movie theme. He’s opened the door to his hotel room. He’s really not a mystery. He’s going to go home and scrape the grease of his clothes and paint another masterpiece. He’s not going nowhere. Yet. Except. He is.
And so when he does sing Every Grain of Sand, and plays his soulful harmonica, and they turn off the lights, he has gone.
He’s got on the bus before any of us leave the building.
You’re not locked in to the box. You are free to come and go.
We say goodbye to Kevin.
I ask how is Ian Brown these days.
New album next year, he says. Are you here tomorrow?
I have to admit I have not got a ticket for tomorrow.
Kevin has.
He's going to be here.
Did I mention, if you want to park near the Albert Hall you can park on West Carriage Drive. It's free after 6:30pm and you'll benefit from the fresh air before you go home. if indeed you have to go home.
Gina got her phone. I had put mine in my boot. I could have taken more photos, but I'd been spellbound. And I knew someone down in the stalls had taken his out and was recording it. I hoped beyond hope that they'd got Black Rider.
Guess who we bumped into at the bus stop on the way back to the car? Allen Jones and Kathy Archbold. I could only really say "Black Rider" and he said something like extraordinary but we know he'll come up with something else. I love his reviews.
It's been a long time since I have woken up and can't remember how I got there, but that's what happened this morning.
I think I only became conscious on the heath with Bug the dog this morning at around 8:30am.
We sat on a bench that said Dorothy sat here. 1898 - 1968.
We saw a man in a hat standing very still.
It took us a while to notice that he was staring at his dog.
She had sat in a sunny spot, off in the distance.
Four minutes.
He saw me.
Meditation dog.
Dog dreams, he said. She's a dreamer.
Then I was hearing a voice saying everything is numbered, like the leaves on the trees and every blade of grass.
I don’t know where that came from.
They say it’s a good broadway show if you leave humming a tune.
didn’t quite expect to leave the Dylan gig and everyone starts speaking poetry to me.
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