New live CD offers missing link in Dylan’s performance evolution

The official release of a live Bob Dylan performance from 1963, In Concert Brandeis University 1963, affords listeners the opportunity to better chart the singer’s evolution from talented yet tentative folksinger to seasoned concert performer in two years. That evolution, viewed in hindsight, would seem to be an important catalyst that drove his explosive move into electric music and beyond.

While dedicated Dylan-philes have been able to compare and contrast performances from various periods thanks to bootleg recordings, those unable or unwilling to track down these documents have been less able to do so. But with this new release, Dylan has now officially released live recordings from 1962, 1963 and 1964 (keeping in mind that collections like the Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3 have live tracks from this period as well), and this offer a chance to hear him grow as an artist and performer.

The main difference among these performances is Dylan’s confidence as a performer. On Live at the Gaslight 1962, he seems most intent on getting the songs across. He is seasoned enough not to stumble – though “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” is new enough that mumbles his way through a few lines – but this is a more workmanlike run through the songs. He is singing, not necessarily performing.

By 1963, on the new In Concert Brandeis University 1963, He is performing. There is a confidence. The songs stand on their own, and so Dylan is able augment them with some personality. There is a wink here, as he lets the audience know that a Dylan concert is about more than guitar picking and long strings of words. On Gaslight, the message is the message, so to speak. On Brandeis, the medium – in this case, the singer himself – is as much the message as the songs.

That brings us to The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964. There is no clean comparison among all of these releases, as there is no song common to all three. However, one can compare Dylan’s performance of “Don’t Think Twice” on Gaslight and 1964 and the performance of “Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues” on Brandeis and 1964 to get a sense of his evolution.

It’s no surprise that 1964 captures the most accomplished Dylan of the three sets. He’s older, wiser and has many more concerts and successes under his belt by this point. On Gaslight, “Don’t Think Twice” is slightly tentative. He’s a young performer trying to remember the words. On 1964, he’s singing a hit, bringing a keening quality to his vocal. His phrasing is pointed, and his harmonica gives the song a richness and depth missing from the earlier version. He is giving a concert, not tossing off a few songs in a club gig.

“Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues” is even more revelatory. Between May 10, 1963, and Oct. 31, 1964, the song has gone from a well-crafted batch of one-liners designed to garner laughs to a pointed critique that is introduced with more personality than on the earlier version. Dylan knows his laugh lines and delivers them like a pro. And while some of this can be chalked up to the improved fidelity on the 1964 performance, it seems clear that Dylan is simply better at putting his songs across. He enunciates more clearly, performs with more verve and variation.

This evolution from confidence to mastery in just two years likely is one factor in Dylan’s decision to embrace rock instrumentation on the album he was conceiving at the time, Bringing it all Back Home. In a way, Dylan had painted himself into a corner. People knew what to expect from him, and he had grown able to deliver it very, very well. In the first of what has become a career pattern, he tackled something new, forcing himself to grow and causing his audience to adapt or fall behind.