Bob Dylan

Once upon a time, once upon a time. The wind in the willows, a sigh of love, a poet laureate. Once upon a time, and time never comes back. “Once upon a time/ Never comes again”, sang Tony Bennett. Bob Dylan's gravelly voice echoes him on the Arcimboldi stage. He tilts the mic stand, brushes back his tousled hair, stretches the syllables into a whisper: “Never comes again”.

It was June 1988 when Dylan kicked off his "Never Ending Tour". Today, thirty years on, that's still where you'll find him every night, performing in some corner of the world. But that doesn't mean he's stayed the same. "Things have changed": once again he reminds the crowd of it straight away, from the very first notes - dark and muddled - of his Milan show. Things change because we never stay the same, because time and life carve their marks into us. The map of our wrinkles tells the story of the road we've travelled, the path that brought us to where we are. All the way to a night lashed by April rain, in the half-light of the stage, with that retro Tin Pan Alley elegance: "I'm well dressed, waiting on the last train".

And here it is, the whistle of the last train. It's the train to Duquesne, or perhaps a train bound for somewhere far more distant. Tony Garnier's double bass drives the locomotive, Donnie Herron's pedal steel lightly traces the line of the tracks. The train whistles like the call announcing the final stop of the journey: "I can hear a sweet voice steadily calling/ Must be the mother of our Lord". Dylan climbs aboard that train, ready once again to recount everything he sees passing by the window: the shadows of the past, the madness of the world, the fleetingness of existence. This is precisely the deeper meaning running through the whole evening, from the autumn leaves borrowed from Prévert to the gates of heaven in a "Tryin' To Get To Heaven" never so tinged with hope.

First, though, comes a trio of old songs, offered up with loving reverence by the old minstrel. Having abandoned the guitar for good, Dylan now trades the keyboards of a few years back for an actual piano. And his playing seems to surprisingly take on a new musicality, from the tenderness of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" to the energy of "Highway 61 Revisited", slipping finally into the nostalgic caress of "Simple Twist Of Fate". At the side of the stage, next to the Oscar statuette, a marble bust of Poetry watches him with a condescending air, as he rasps out in his sandpaper voice the verses that led him to the Nobel.

You shouldn't expect revolutions from Dylan's setlists these days: craft has increasingly taken the place of invention. This time, though, the novelty lies in the ability of the host and his ever-reliable band to rework not so much the classics (all presented with great faithfulness, aside from the notable exception of a shaky "Tangled Up In Blue"), but rather the songs from his more recent repertoire. So "Honest With Me" finds an unexpected new liveliness thanks to Charlie Sexton's cutting attack, while "Tryin' To Get To Heaven" (despite the quirks of a temperamental sound system) sheds every last trace of bitterness.

Dylan spits out the verses of "Pay In Blood" with stubborn force, plays at dressing up as Muddy Waters on the textbook blues of "Early Roman Kings", mimics the romanticism of "Blue Moon" in "Soon After Midnight". "Love Sick" unleashes its usual vehemence, while the boogie of "Thunder On The Mountain" takes on a broken, restless rhythm. But the warmest ovation of the night goes to yet another rendition of the Dantean circle of "Desolation Row": after a muted start, Charlie Sexton and Donnie Herron launch into a gripping guitar/mandolin duet, and Dylan himself seems to get swept up in the dance, bending the lines to chase the melody.

Compared to his last stop at the Arcimboldi, back in 2015, covers of old standards are less pervasive this time (a sign that the notorious stretch devoted to the "Great American Songbook" is winding down?). Just three songs, one from each chapter of the "Shadows In The Night"/"Fallen Angels"/"Triplicate" trilogy, during which Dylan steps to the front of the stage to grip the microphone with the stance of a crooner. The only other moment he leaves the piano is to deliver, with real emphasis, the evening's final selection from "Tempest", the hymn to regret that is "Long And Wasted Years": regret, above all, for the truth of the heart, which time tirelessly fights to wear away.

The encore ritual, at that point, is nothing more than an obligatory step: Donnie Herron's violin lends a rustic scent to "Blowin' In The Wind", before giving way to the caustic unspooling of "Ballad Of A Thin Man" (though a far cry from the magnetic version unleashed on the 2011 tour). Not a word to the audience, not even a greeting. For Dylan, the only word that matters is the one that's sung. That's why he still hasn't left the stage. That's why, in the end, a concert will always be worth more than a Nobel.

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