Bob Dylan and Paul Simon

Slip Slidin' Away

With the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, set to open in theaters on Christmas Day, I’m resurrecting a concert review I wrote in 1999 about Dylan and another folk rock icon, Paul Simon, at the Hollywood Bowl. I brazenly panned the show. My review says something universal about the connection between audience and performer, although my meloncholic musings that either personage — or the baby boomer generation — might be slip slidin’ away was decades premature. Simon released his esoteric Seven Psalms album in 2023, and at the improbable age of 83, Dylan recently finished his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour. With minor tweaks, here’s my review.

In the summer of 1999, two of the greatest folk rock singer/songwriters of the 1960s, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, teamed up for a concert tour. Attention must be paid. Both men’s early music was so intertwined with the social issues of the day — civil rights, Vietnam, and existential angst — that they hold special meaning for those who came of age during those times.

Thus I plunked down $70 for their June 22 concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, knowing neither would give me what they knew I wanted, which was for them to sing all their golden oldies just like they used to, forever young. Fat chance, when Dylan has spent most of his career trying to get away from the revolution, while Simon has spent his trying to prove his last name isn't Garfunkel.

Hey, I’m sorry, OK. I know they are sick of doing their old stuff. And I know they have “evolved” and created more stuff since 1969, even if I’m not nearly as fond of Simon’s 1998 Broadway musical The Capeman, or Dylan’s 1997 triple Grammy album, Time Out of Mind. But the immutable truth is that for people of a certain age, call us baby boomers or aging hippies, “the music we grew up with” — “Sounds of Silence,” “Mr. Tambourine Man” — remain powerful touchstones whether we, or the people who created those immortal tunes, like it or not.

In such situations, an uneasy truce tends to exist between audience and performer: The performer will sprinkle the concert with enough moldy stuff to bring a nostalgic tear to the eye, if the audience will be open to the newfangled stuff, or at least refrain from constantly yelling out requests for the old stuff. Somewhere in between, hopefully the performer takes an old song seriously enough to do it justice, and the audience gets turned on to something new.

The ultimate goal is one goose-pimply moment of transcendent clarity, call it sentiment, that makes the rest of the evening worthwhile. For me, the generally lackluster Dylan-Simon concert at the Hollywood Bowl did yield one such moment. It came near the end of Simon’s set, shortly before Dylan came out to collaborate on a stingy four duets, and Simon split, no doubt to tune up for his next night’s more intimate gig at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip. Stepping away from the multiethnic armada of three towering drum sets that made one wonder which inadequacy Simon might be compensating for, he sang an acoustic, soulful, haunting and, dare I say, straight version of “Slip Slidin’ Away” that seemed to sum up not just the concert, but a generation.

Folk rock’s father and prodigal son

Bob Dylan and Paul Simon were both born in 1941, although Dylan is the acknowledged father of folk rock music, while Simon is its prodigal son. By 1965, when Simon & Garfunkel had their first hit with “The Sounds of Silence,” Dylan had already popularized folk and protest music with such classics as “Blowin' in the Wind,” “Don't Think Twice, It's All Right” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” He then caused a schism in the folk-singing world by strapping on an electric guitar and fusing urban folk lyrics with pulsating rock ’n’ roll music, creating such mind-expanding melodies as “Maggie’s Farm,” “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Like a Rolling Stone.”

Then came Dylan’s fabled motorcycle crash, his discovery of religion, and Johnny Cash, and some 20 less memorable albums followed including Nashville Skyline, Planet Waves, Blood on the Tracks, and Self Portrait, in which he covered Simon's “The Boxer.” Like several of those albums, 1997’s Grammy album of the year, Time Out of Mind, was viewed as a major comeback.

With childhood friend Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon began his career in the same urban folk tradition as Dylan. Simon & Garfunkel’s first album, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, covered Dylan's "The Times They are a Changin’” along with such other staples of the folk and protest movements as “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and “Peggy-O.” While Simon & Garfunkel had a softer, sometimes saccharine sound, Simon’s lyrics were just as poignant as Dylan’s in such songs as “The Dangling Conversation,” “Homeward Bound,” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” And it was their music that accompanied the classic ’60s coming-of-age flick, The Graduate.

After splitting with Garfunkel in 1970, Simon went on to record more hits including “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” and “Still Crazy After All These Years.” Like Dylan, who made Don't Look Back, Simon made a movie about the music industry called One Trick Pony. He also appeared on numerous Saturday Night Live TV shows and gritted out a 1981 nostalgia reunion tour with Garfunkel.

In his late ’80s and early ’90s releases, Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints, he experimented with Latin rhythms, African beats and other indigenous music. However, in 1986 he was temporarily blacklisted by the African National Congress and United Nations for breaking the apartheid boycott of South Africa with Graceland, which was inspired by South Africa dance music and featured the South African group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. But the album was both a critical and popular success, and received the Grammy for 1988 record of the year. More controversy hovered over his short-lived 1998 Broadway musical Capeman, based on a '50s New York Puerto Rican gang member.

A huge quotient for goose pimples

The careers of Dylan and Simon had crisscrossed but never intersected until the current tour, which, along with the fact that neither man was getting any younger, had some calling the concerts historic. Especially with the duets, the shows would seem to have a huge quotient for goose pimples. Sadly, with the exception of “Slip Slidin’ Away,” the Hollywood Bowl concert provided few such eruptions.

They had been doing 75-minute sets with 15 minutes of duets in the middle, alternating who performed first, and it was Simon’s turn at the Bowl. Flanked by guitars, keyboards and the aforementioned arsenal of percussionists, he launched into an over-orchestrated and under-emotive “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” which counts as a medium moldy, as it was the title track of the last studio album he did with Garfunkel. Later he did another S&G standard, “Mrs. Robinson,” which got a rise out of the audience at the mention of Joe DiMaggio, who had recently died, but most of his set was devoted to his more recent music, including “Graceland” and a nice rendition of “Trailways Bus” from Capeman.

Dylan makes a different deal with his audiences -- he’ll sing oldies, just not the same way. Indeed, his playlist included many of his classics, and not only the super hits like “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Like a Rolling Stone,” but also “Masters Of War,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again” and “Highway 61 Revisited.” But as usual, he sang them in a herky-jerky way that, among other things, made it impossible to sing along. His harp playing also seemed off. But he played a surprising amount of lead guitar, which was the strongest part of his performance.

While many performers are energized by an audience, Dylan has been feuding with his since some booed him at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, and throughout a world tour the next year with a nascent The Band. As close as he came to acknowledging his fans in Los Angeles was to say “thank you ladies and gentlemen,” but I lost count after he said it five times. He seemed to have only two expressions, one being his patented scowl, and the other a scowling smile. He also displayed some doddering footwork that seemed inspired by Keith Richards, cough syrup, or both.

And then there were the duets that bridged their individual sets. Following an earnest rendition of “Still Crazy After All These Years,” Simon rather reverently told the audience he felt “honored” to be sharing the stage with Dylan, who came strolling out picking the opening notes to “Sounds of Silence.” Next came the highlight of the show, as Simon chimed in with his guitar and they both stepped up to mics and basically did Simon and Dylanfunkel. Dylan had a twinkle in his eye like he was enjoying the song, but also like he was enjoying watching Simon squirm through his half of it.

For me, the other duets were a letdown. First they did a medley of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk The Line” and Elvis Presley’s rockabilly version of Bill Monroe's “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” and then Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” hardly a fair trade for “Sounds of Silence.” If Dylan could join Simon in his signature song, then Simon should have joined Dylan in his own anthem of the ’60s, “The Times They are a Changin’.” Now that would have been sentiment.

Dylan did such a good job of imitating Garfunkel in “Sounds of Silence” that it made me wish he’d imitate himself once in a while. After all, he’s got one of the easiest voices in music to mimic. Even Simon did a great Dylan parody on Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme called “A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission),” which would have made a fun addition to the show, as would some of those precious S&G inside tracks like “America,” “Kathy’s Song” and “April She Will Come.”

But enough “thinking of things that might have been.” Bob Dylan and Paul Simon have already provided my generation with enough sentiment to last a lifetime, and if Simon thinks a wall of sound from five continents is better than a curly-haired kid from Queens, that’s his business, and if Dylan thinks he should end his set with a Bo Diddley number, that’s his business as well. Besides, any time I want to hear their old stuff I can go play their records. It was just really nice to see a couple of old friends again. Before we all slip slide away.

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