Poet's Return: "It's What I Do"

Behind the wooden stage, helicopters leaped like grasshoppers into the peach-colored haze of dusk. Beside the phalanxes of electronic equipment a sign warned: DO NOT APPROACH THE SPEAKER BANKS TOO CLOSELY WITHOUT PROTECTIVE EAR MUFFS. All around stretched an undulating, thick-pile carpet of humanity. Three of the Beatles were there, and three of the Rolling Stones, and celebrities like Actress Jane Fonda and her husband, Film Director Roger Vadim. So were bedraggled pilgrims from Sweden, Holland, Australia, the U.S. and every corner of Britain, many of whom had hitchhiked for days to get there with bedrolls and rucksacks on their backs. For a week, brightly colored tents had dotted the festival grounds. For the past twelve hours, the idolaters of rock had been staked out in choice positions on the grass or aboard knobby limbs of strategically located trees in the arena. They were young. They were more than 100,000 strong. They had come to the Isle of Wight off the English shore at Southampton to witness the first full-fledged public appearance by Singer-Composer-Poet Bob Dylan since he broke his neck in a motorcycle accident in 1966. In the cool evening air, as evident as the sweet odor of marijuana, hung an almost palpable yearning for some sort of transcendent experience.

Out he came in a white suit and a yellow open-necked shirt, altogether a more relaxed and assured-looking figure than the leather-jacketed, unkempt Dylan of old. The hair, once long and wild, was now relatively short. A wispy mustache and thin beard had been added. When he came on, he was greeted by applause that sounded like the roar of surf from the nearby Channel.

Without announcing the titles of his songs, acknowledging applause only with a quick smile or a murmured "thank you," he sang with the new voice and manner first heard on his most recent LP, Nashville Skyline (TIME, April 11). It is far less nasal and rasping than before, far less a mixture of drone and downward slur. The tone is softer, rounder; one note leads gracefully to the next, and the result is just as satisfying in its own way. Unexpectedly bending and holding notes like a crooner, Dylan gave a lyric, wistful quality to the traditional Irish ballad, Wild Mountain Thyme. He introduced no new songs, but older ones like It Ain't Me Babe, once intoned in harsh, jagged phrases, took on new colors and a smoother flow.

All told, he sang 17 songs, including two encores, and then hopped into a waiting car behind the stage and zoomed away into the darkness.

Musically, Dylan's performance was an impeccable job. But his departure left the faithful dissatisfied. Through no fault of Dylan's, he started hours late. The audience, moreover, had expected two or three hours of singing, and found Dylan's 70-minute stand inadequate. Long after there was any hope of recalling him, they moaned and yelled for more.

Performer Not Prophet. The real source of disappointment lay in a worshiping youthful expectation incapable of fulfillment. The prophet had brought no cataclysm, no revelation. That was hardly Dylan's fault. He has always been a performer who moved uneasily within his aura. He has never really courted audiences. That quality has helped him outgrow the limitations of his early successes. But it has also alienated some of his fans. There were early Dylan fanatics, for instance, who considered him guilty of betrayal when he first gave up the pure strains of folk music and adopted the electrified big beat of rock in 1965.

But, as Dylan has said more than once, it is all music to him. Why should he be impaled forever on the revolutionary edge of his early songs, even if his attacks on the "masters of war" and the "hard rain" of atomic fallout did help make him a myth in the first place? Now 28, happily married and the father of four, he seems to want to relax and write new songs about innocent pleasures and the delights of love.

Dylan himself was pleased by the concert. He came away from the concert feeling strong enough for a full-scale comeback in the U.S. Already he has announced a touring show with The Band, the superb Canadian country-rock group that backed him at Wight. "I want to try it again," he says. "It's what I do. It's my work." But clearly he will do it his way. Not playing up to the applause or offering flowery speeches about "how wonderful it is to be here." It is, in fact, not only Dylan's way but his ultimate message, the adamant and irreducible core that's left after all the protest and preaching, all the politics and poetry are stripped away. As he sings in his own Maggie's Farm: Well, I try my best to be just like I am, But everybody wants you to be just like them.

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