Dylanesque Live: The London Sessions is a companion DVD to the recent album Dylanesque. Bryan Ferry has had some brilliant successes and some spectacular failures throughout his long and varied career, yet Dylanesque Live is not a success or failure, which means it’s not terribly interesting.
In his introduction to the DVD Brian Ferry said that he did not want to put a lot of time into the writing of songs and was looking for something quick. He had always admired the songs of Bob Dylan. That’s not a promising intro, as quick is not necessarily good and is not the best reason to produce an album.
Dylanesque Live is not a concert DVD but rather is Ferry and band in studio simply running through the songs on the CD.
Now, Bob Dylan’s material has been covered thousands of times, and three outcomes can occur: incompetence, unnecessary or a new interpretation (think Hendrix doing “All Along The Watchtower”). Dylanesque Live mostly falls into the second category.
This does contain a few good moments. “Baby Let Me Carry You Down” is given a good rocking treatment. Bonus material song “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” is simply Ferry’s voice, harmonica and a piano. It is the highlight of the DVD. The original 1973 video of “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” is included and shows a young Ferry at his best.
The real failures include “All I Really Wanna Do” and “The Times They Are A Changing,” which do not at all measure up to the originals. Meanwhile, “All Along The Watchtower” just never takes off, which admittedly is hard to do given the excellent versions put forth by Hendrix, U2 and Dave Matthews.
Bryan Ferry is now in his early 60’s. I don’t know how many more albums or musical projects he has left in him. He has shown many times that he can be one of the more interesting artists in rock music. I would hope that for his next production he will take the time to let his musical juices flow instead of bang out a half-hearted cover disc.
