has ever done, and if it took him five years to regain the power he once had, then what matters is not how long it took, but that he has regained it. What began, some years ago, as a change in attitude, seems finally to have grown into a changed point of view, and an authentic, as opposed to a contrived, maturity.
His performance reveals nuances of emotion and commitment that do not even seem to be implied in the recording we know from Blonde on Blonde. What is absent from the song, now, is the sense of bitterness that emerged both as a complaint and contempt five years ago, and the performance here imposes an enormous agony on the simple matter of living through the day, until finally, in the
last verse, it increases in intensity and Dylan’s voice is acting out a resistance to the calamity of life that stops a long way short of forgiveness.
There are words in this song that Dylan sings with such an unholy intensity that they vibrate, like the arms of a tuning fork. There is that moment when he sings,
I just don’t fit
and the first word echoes off the rafters of the hall. The song has the impact that is really what’s been missing in Dylan’s work of the last few years, a force that makes you drop your jaw with amazement and recognition. He has reached it in moments, as with the first line of “All Along the Watchtower”—“There must be some way out of here”—and in the long, last choruses of “George Jackson,” but here it merges in a sustained performance: you can’t get out of the way.
Dylan’s impact is a simultaneous clarifying and deepening of our lives, never in a facile celebration of his life or ours, but a challenge to the very sensibility that looks for such a celebration. And it is not all that complicated to define it. When Dylan has this force, it is risky to listen.
As the last song of the set, there is “Bangla Desh,” which flopped when Harrison released it as a single. The performance here has such fire it might well hit now if released a second time. The lyrics still fall miles short of their subject (“It sure seems like a mess”) but Clapton especially reveals all the power that previously lay dormant in the song. The sound, inevitably calling up images of carnage and horror, is inspiring and scary. Harrison beats his fists against that veil of illusion as he sings, and his words are helpless to pierce the velvet curtain this concert has thrown over itself—in a sense, to protect the event from the terror of its own subject—but this time the music breaks through and you get some idea of
why it was Harrison called all these people together in the first place.
Still, that’s not much out of three LPs. I can’t honestly recommend that anyone buy it for musical reasons, but I can encourage you to keep the radio on and listen to some of it. The recorded concert is a ponderous document of some of the worst foibles of the counter culture, but buried within it is a hint of what power that culture still retains.
Finally, though, the most pathetic thing about the event is its almost total lack of risk, be it artistic or political. Bangla Desh was a safe issue. It’s always easier to turn to the troubles of a distant land than to enter into situations that directly threaten yourself, and, if you are a musician, your audience. The music, for the most part, could not have been less adventurous. Though many have implied that the soul of Woodstock, having been sold to the devil that day at Altamont, was bought back with this concert, they ought to know that not only can’t you buy it back, you have to recreate it, on terms that recognize the fall implicit in the original deal. You can’t redeem yourself by the spectacle of someone else’s suffering, you have to come to terms with your own. That’s why no matter what George thinks about my sweet Lord or Billy Preston about the way God planned it, Ringo deserves the last word. It don’t come easy.
The Concert for Bangla
His performance reveals nuances of emotion and commitment that do not even seem to be implied in the recording we know from Blonde on Blonde. What is absent from the song, now, is the sense of bitterness that emerged both as a complaint and contempt five years ago, and the performance here imposes an enormous agony on the simple matter of living through the day, until finally, in the
last verse, it increases in intensity and Dylan’s voice is acting out a resistance to the calamity of life that stops a long way short of forgiveness.
There are words in this song that Dylan sings with such an unholy intensity that they vibrate, like the arms of a tuning fork. There is that moment when he sings,
I just don’t fit
and the first word echoes off the rafters of the hall. The song has the impact that is really what’s been missing in Dylan’s work of the last few years, a force that makes you drop your jaw with amazement and recognition. He has reached it in moments, as with the first line of “All Along the Watchtower”—“There must be some way out of here”—and in the long, last choruses of “George Jackson,” but here it merges in a sustained performance: you can’t get out of the way.
Dylan’s impact is a simultaneous clarifying and deepening of our lives, never in a facile celebration of his life or ours, but a challenge to the very sensibility that looks for such a celebration. And it is not all that complicated to define it. When Dylan has this force, it is risky to listen.
As the last song of the set, there is “Bangla Desh,” which flopped when Harrison released it as a single. The performance here has such fire it might well hit now if released a second time. The lyrics still fall miles short of their subject (“It sure seems like a mess”) but Clapton especially reveals all the power that previously lay dormant in the song. The sound, inevitably calling up images of carnage and horror, is inspiring and scary. Harrison beats his fists against that veil of illusion as he sings, and his words are helpless to pierce the velvet curtain this concert has thrown over itself—in a sense, to protect the event from the terror of its own subject—but this time the music breaks through and you get some idea of
why it was Harrison called all these people together in the first place.
Still, that’s not much out of three LPs. I can’t honestly recommend that anyone buy it for musical reasons, but I can encourage you to keep the radio on and listen to some of it. The recorded concert is a ponderous document of some of the worst foibles of the counter culture, but buried within it is a hint of what power that culture still retains.
Finally, though, the most pathetic thing about the event is its almost total lack of risk, be it artistic or political. Bangla Desh was a safe issue. It’s always easier to turn to the troubles of a distant land than to enter into situations that directly threaten yourself, and, if you are a musician, your audience. The music, for the most part, could not have been less adventurous. Though many have implied that the soul of Woodstock, having been sold to the devil that day at Altamont, was bought back with this concert, they ought to know that not only can’t you buy it back, you have to recreate it, on terms that recognize the fall implicit in the original deal. You can’t redeem yourself by the spectacle of someone else’s suffering, you have to come to terms with your own. That’s why no matter what George thinks about my sweet Lord or Billy Preston about the way God planned it, Ringo deserves the last word. It don’t come easy.
The Concert for Bangla
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