Tucked into a private club at Madison Square Garden was a small but chatty array of New York glitterati: the super model (Christy Turlington), the famous former athlete (John McEnroe) and a gaggle of singer-songwriters (Sheryl Crow, Joan Osborne, Suzanne Vega– accompanied by her husband, producer Mitchell Froom).
The occasion was a rare North American concert appearance by Van Morrison, who on Wednesday completed an even rarer five-night stand with Bob Dylan at the Garden’s relatively intimate theater. Dylan was a no-show at Morrison’s after-show bash, but the two punctuated their longtime mutual appreciation on stage by performing “Blue Suede Shoes” in honor of its author, Carl Perkins, who died this week.
Dylan strolled out midway through Morrison’s opening set, and the two singers shared a microphone, close enough to touch foreheads. The performance was ragged and rowdy, and the two greats were having a ball, smiling then laughing as they harmonized.
Their brief collaboration was emblematic of the night, in which both performers thumbed their noses at the rote arrangements and show-biz choreography of many high-profile rock concerts. When fans dish out $70 for a concert these days, it’s usually for a spectacle full of special effects and packed with well-worn hits. What they got from Dylan and Morrison was something else entirely: two masters interacting with their bands and the audience with a spontaneity, humor and recklessness that should be a lesson to many younger acts.
Morrison all but ignored his best-known songs, tossing out only a brisk “Domino,” instead digging deep into the well of his underrated recent recordings. Dylan sprinkled his set with new songs, and made them fit right in with refreshed classics like “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
In recent years, Dylan has reasserted himself as a major musical presence, in large measure because he has been touring virtually nonstop; even a potentially fatal heart infection last year barely slowed him down.
Morrison, on the other hand, barely tours at all, and his distaste for the music business merry-go-round is expressed in his sometimes cranky songs. “Won’t let the bastards grind me down,” he vowed on “Raincheck.” But the same song brought an affirmation as feisty as the singer’s still-potent voice: “No, I don’t fade away unless I choose.”
The crowd roared its approval, and Morrison–adopting the look of the great R&B singers he grew up admiring in Ireland with black fedora and shades–growled, scatted and testified. In occupying the volatile musical landscape between blues, jazz, country and early rock ‘n’ roll, Morrison tested the agility of his eight-piece band by directing them on the fly. He threw out call and response vocals, directed the start and duration of solos, and contracted and expanded songs as the mood suited him.
Since the ’60s, Morrison has been making a mystical brand of soul music without a hint of the arrested emotional development that has gripped some of his contemporaries. His music is honest about who he is, a singer in his 50s on the fringe of a culture he helped create. But even when he sings a line like, “Sometimes . . . you look in the mirror and you wanna give up,” he seems to be delighting in it. His robust demeanor suggested a performer who has renewed his commitment to his art.
The same was true of Dylan, who began his set in full cry, in contrast to his recent Chicago shows when his voice sounded a shade unsteady before hitting its stride. The bluegrass version of “Tangled Up in Blue” that has been a highlight of this tour brought his fans streaming down the aisles in appreciation, and Dylan broke into a huge smile. His Chaplin eyebrows arched and the words tumbled off his tongue with a vigor that made even his most modest assertions sound triumphant: “The only thing I knew was how to keep on keepin’ on.”
