Chan Marshall says that, when they called her to offer to give a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London on November 5, 2022, it took a few minutes to decide that this performance would not be a traditional recital. Cat Power: I would perform only and exclusively Bob Dylan songs; and if the self-imposed challenge was already arduous, things would go further: he would play the same setlist that his Minnesota hero performed at the temple of London music in the mid-sixties, an evening that was immortalized in “Bob Dylan Live 1966, The Royal Albert Hall Concert” (The Bootleg Series Vol. 4). In reality, we know that that magical and electrifying recording (half of a solo acoustic set and second part with electric guitar and The Hawks (The Band) as traveling companions to the open grave, within Dylan’s tour throughout the United Kingdom United and which would be, after the fuse lit months before in Newport, a before and after in popular music), does not correspond to the Royal Albert Hall concert, but to the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Anecdotal fact that only breathes into the recording (where a kind of divine tension, devotion and passionate chaos rarely transmitted live reigns) one more iota of mystery and legend.
If someone asked me, of all the concerts in the history of music, which concert would you like to have attended? Without time to blink, I would say that Dylan at the “Royal Albert Hall”. That day in 1966 caught me badly and it couldn’t be (I was born sixteen years later), but I was able to be (eternally grateful and with the best of company) in what concerns us, the majestic tribute that was paid to him Cat Power to the teacher in London. We did not know that this unique performance was being recorded, but it was then, moment by moment, indelible, on the hard drives of everyone present.
Chan Marshall comes on stage, applause and “She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist. / Ella She ella don’t look back…”, a bewitching phrasing that in a few seconds reached the world and bristled with emotion even on the carpets of the Royal Albert Hall. Of the “She Belongs to Me” from the beginning, to the final ecstasy of “Like a Rolling Stone”, the 15 masterpieces in the same order, the first seven acoustic (accompanied by a guitarist and harmonica player), and the remaining eight with her particular The Band setting the theater on fire. As fragile and powerful as ever, possessed by an energy that envelops us and scratches us in every whisper, in every magnetic phrase, as if each of the words she pronounces came to life for the first time in her mouth, creating the world of song. to song. You have to be very brave and kamikaze to face this repertoire in this place with an open heart and survive the adventure… it squeezes our chests and gives extra lives at every step, with the blinding beauty of aa “Visions of Johanna” that today continues to delve into our insides, to an enormous “Desolation Row” which you enter, but, fortunately, you do not exit, passing through a “Just Like a Woman” which was created so that Cat Power would interpret it, or a “Mr. Tambourine Man” that closes the acoustic set and shakes even death, which teems with emotion, like us, tambourine in hand. “I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to, / Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, / In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you”.
We are miraculously alive and Chan ends up letting herself go and “breaking her shirt” in the electric part, surrounded by her usual stage companions and injecting us with glowing mercury into our veins, making a Royal Albert Hall vibrate that doesn’t stop rubbing its eyes. From one “Tell Me, Momma” that grows little by little and burns in its chorus, to some heartfelt and energetic “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Me)” y “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” in which he reaches new interpretative peaks… He never comes down from the heights or lets us touch the ground, each phrasing, breathing and intonation is perfect, following the original, but making them eternally his, eternally ours. They say that Dylan was not present, but I thought I saw him in the stalls and he kept smiling with happiness during each of the songs.
Enjoy like there is no tomorrow in the psychedelia of “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” and it wounds and heals us in each attack of “One Too Many Mornings”. And yes, someone gets ahead of us and shouts: “Judas!”, Chan answers “Jesus”, and they give us an anthology “Ballad of a Thin Man” where we would have stayed to live eternity and a day. Sensuality and fire in each phrasing, definitive empowerment that ends with that “Like a Rolling Stone” which is bitterness and overflowing happiness, a masterpiece that he savors (with the band burning the ships) throwing himself into the abyss in each verse. We are still there and now we can relive it again and again. A real marvel.