Published at 11:22 am.
In October 2016, the day after Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Leonard Cohen stated that awarding this immense award was tantamount to “pinning a medal to Mount Everest because it is the highest mountain.” » The poet obviously had a knack for compliments.
On Sunday evening at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at the Place des Arts, Bob Dylan returned the favor to his late comrade by giving Montreal an inspired, not to say passionate, version of “Dance Me to the End of Love” at the end of the program.
“They are much more than just songs. They’re prayers,” Dylan once said of Cohen’s work. And rarely has this observation been confirmed as much as it was on Sunday. Although it was his first time performing it, his band seemed to have put in the necessary number of hours of rehearsals over the past few days.
However, you won’t see any images of this tribute to Cohen on social media, as audience members at a Bob Dylan concert will be forced to leave their phones in a small locked bag as soon as they walk through the door. Press photographers were also not allowed access to the event.
The invoice
Before they were moved by this surprising revival, the audience packed to the rafters at Wilfrid-Pelletier was already having a blessed time. Although he has often disappointed in recent years with makeovers that seemed more like dismemberment sessions than updates, Dylan seemed happy to be among us to the extent that he is capable of enthusiasm, even rewarding his audience with a “Thank you very much” in French .
After a few songs in which the icon’s voice took hold, the evening found its way to grace with “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, the fourth piece on the program, in a version that began alone on the piano, before his musicians joined him. in country blues mode. Almost all of the songs were coated with a layer of blues, a bit as if, as Mr. Zimmerman grew older, he was returning to the roots of the music he’s been working on for more than 60 years.
His extended reinterpretation of “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” followed a similar framework: after an almost soulful intro, the biting rock of Doug Lancio’s guitar took over and ended in the apotheosis of a great dirty blues. Sometimes you had to conclude that Dylan not only sang properly, but that he also had a voice.
Sitting behind his half grand piano, the octogenarian expanded his interpretations according to what his heart dictated, his five musicians positioned in a semicircle around him, rarely taking their eyes off his hands. The often hasty conclusions sometimes sounded like car accidents.
Then, for Black Rider, Dylan unfolded his body and put on his white hat, as if to better face the reaper who roams on this journey to the end of death, taken from his latest album Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). The songwriter selected nine of the ten tracks on Sunday, combining as many songs from almost all parts of his catalog (Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine), To Be Alone With You, Gotta Serve Somebody) . ), although only a few notable hits.
Unforgettable moment
Her heartfelt performance of “Dance Me to the End of Love” will still remain the most unforgettable moment of that great evening, a moment at the end of which the entire crowd of twenty-somethings and people of the same generation as the singer were on stage was on display, stood up.
A Bob Dylan show is the rare event where you can meet both 2021 Felix Country Album of the Year winner Alex Burger, Canada’s Minister of Transportation, the Honorable Pablo Rodriguez, and a certain La Presse columnist , who according to His Bobness is none other than God the Father.
However, this isn’t the first time Dylan has covered Cohen in Montreal: on July 8, 1988, he played Hallelujah at the Forum, long before John Cale and Jeff Buckley signed their respective historic versions and long before almost all of the singers on The Planet have joined dedicated to the mission of making the Montrealer’s masterpiece outrageous.
In addition, he and his five musicians on this tour have the habit of offering covers specifically for the cities in which they stop: in Saint-Louis it was Chuck Berry, in Chicago it was Muddy Watters, in Indianapolis, by John Mellencamp and in Cincinnati, South of Cincinnati (!) by Dwight Yoakam. At 82, the man clearly still enjoys showing up where he is least expected.
During the celebratory piece “Every Grain of Sand,” Bob Dylan briefly played his harmonica. It was already the end. As we applauded him, the living legend slowly walked to the edge of the stage to hold on for a few moments to a microphone stand that appeared to have been placed there solely to allow him to stand. Then all the lights went out. There would be no memory except in our memory.