First Direct Arena, Leeds, 14 November 2025

by ANDREW DARLINGTON

It was howling freezing rain in Leeds the night we went to see Bob Dylan at the Leeds First Direct Arena. At least, I think we saw him! It’s a big arena – capacity 13,780, we were high in Row Q seats 17 & 18, he had no big screens… I think he was sitting at a piano – or was he?, it was difficult to tell, he had a band – because a guitarist kept drifting into sight to stage-left, but you couldn’t determine how many or who was playing what, Dylan’s voice was as raspy and croaky as we expect, but there was no communication with the audience, not even ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’. It was as though he and his band were enjoying an intense Basement Tapes campfire jam together, they are playing to each other, to the total exclusion of everyone else who happened to be there. It was a strangely unique experience.

There’s a long instrumental play-in with silver slivers of guitar that echo back to the Hawks, before he opens with ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’ then ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’. Although, naturally, they’re only recognisable from caught lyrics, the tunes are reconfigured out of all recognition. We know this. He’s no Song & Dance man. This is the way he keeps his repertoire fresh. I think briefly of Mark Volman, who took ‘It Ain’t Me Be’ into the chart with the Turtles. He died 5 September this year. It would have been nice if…? But no.

He dips into Rough & Rowdy Ways with a rougher and more rowdy ‘I Contain Multitudes’ than on the album itself – ‘I sing the songs of experience, like William Blake, I have no apologies to make’, and ‘False Prophet’ – ‘I opened my heart to the world, and the world came in.’ Perhaps those lines are all the apology and explanation we need? David Crosby called Dylan ‘crazy as a fruit fly’. It takes one to know one. Speaking to Stereogum, the Croz said, ‘he’s friendly, but he’s not out front. He doesn’t let you in. You’ll say, ‘Bob, where do you live?’ And he’ll say, ‘Well, you’re looking at a man that has no home.’ He’d be telling you about life instead of telling you he lived in Malibu.’ To Joan Baez in ‘Diamonds & Rust’ ‘you were so good with words, and at keeping things vague.’ Vagueness and concealment are his natural response. He’s hiding now.

From different motivations, curmudgeonly old Neil Young was victim of the same phenomena when he played the Isle of Wight Festival earlier this year, relying on the old-fashioned virtues of passionate spontaneity over twenty-first century technology, spurning backdrop screens in favour of a grungy soundmix. As though to say what worked in 1975 holds true for 2025, which is not quite so. In a small club setting where the audience are drawn into the experience, it can be electrifying. Maybe a stadium deserves more? Dylan has always been a contrarian of mixed-up confusion, he confounds expectations, that’s what he does. But if this is very much a case of taking legends on their own terms… or not at all, I take them.

‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’ comes in hard electric guise with tom-tom percussion. He croaks ‘Black Rider’ with a slight reverb echo on the title phrase. And jumpstarts the Frankensteinian word-dense ‘My Own Version Of You’ with its classical, Shakespearian, biblical and Rock ‘n’ Roll references, from Leon Russell all the way to Bo Diddley’s ‘bring it to Jerome’, all read as a poem recitation. How does he even memorise all these skipping reels or rhyme? Surely no teleprompter is involved? ‘To Be Alone With You’ is taken with jogging rhythms. Then a long instrumental interplay leads into ‘Desolation Row’ with deliberately discordant piano phrases to fracture its surface tension, and unmistakably Dylanesque blasts of harmonica that get eruptions of audience applause in their own right.

‘I was born on the wrong side of the railroad track, like Ginsberg, Corso and Kerouac.’ With ‘Key West’ Dylan writes himself into Beat Generation history, as if we’ve not already drawn that conclusion, as if we’ve not paused and rewound that clip of him and Ginsberg visiting Kerouac’s grave in Lowell in the Renaldo & Clara movie. Ginsberg smiles down beatifically on the Leeds Arena this stormy night. ‘Watching The River Flow’ is treated to rolling rhythms, while – to me, a slow and mesmerising ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ is a moving stand-out. They close with ‘Every Grain Of Sand’… after which they all quit the small stage abruptly, no band introductions, no ‘goodbye and thanks for coming,’ leaving only confusion in their wake. Some await an encore that doesn’t happen. Until the lights come up making it obvious. And it’s back out into the freezing rain of the Leeds night.

The massing audience is a broad cross-section, from relics of Dylan’s earliest fan following, through to young people who – I suppose, are curious. And they want to cross Bob Dylan off that list, The Legends You Need To See Before They Die. Along with Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones! What the hell they tell their friends about this night must remain another conundrum.

Set list:

(1) ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’ – Dylan plays guitar & baby grand piano
(2) ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ – Dylan plays guitar & baby grand piano
(3) ‘I Contain Multitudes’ – Dylan plays baby grand piano
(4) ‘False Prophet’ – Dylan plays baby grand piano
(5) ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’ – Dylan plays guitar & baby grand piano
(6) ‘Black Rider’ – Dylan plays baby grand piano
(7) ‘My Own Version Of You’ – Dylan plays baby grand piano
(8) ‘To Be Alone With You’ – Dylan plays guitar & baby grand piano
(9) ‘Crossing The Rubicon’ – Dylan plays baby grand piano
(10) ‘Desolation Row’ – Dylan plays guitar, baby grand piano & harmonica
(11) ‘Key West (Philosopher Pirate)’ – Dylan plays baby grand piano
(12) ‘Watching The River Flow’ – Dylan plays guitar, baby grand piano & harmonica
(13) ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ – Dylan plays baby grand piano & harmonica
(14) ‘I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You’ – Dylan plays guitar & baby grand piano
(15) ‘Mother Of Muses’ – Dylan plays baby grand piano
(16) ‘Goodbye Jimmy Reed’ – Dylan plays baby grand piano
(17) ‘Every Grain Of Sand’ – Dylan plays baby grand piano & harmonica

Bob Dylan: guitar, baby grand piano & harmonica
Tony Garnier: electric & standup bass (who plays on Rough & Rowdy Ways)
Anton Fig: drums
Bob Britt: acoustic & electric guitar, lap steel (who plays on Rough & Rowdy Ways)
Doug Lancio: acoustic & electric guitar