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4. Sertab Erener: “One More Cup of Coffee”
On this 2000 cover that Dylan selected to appear in “Masked and Anonymous,” the Turkish singer-songwriter — and former Eurovision champion — Sertab Erener emphasizes the Middle Eastern undercurrent that courses through a hypnotic song from Dylan’s 1976 album “Desire.”
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5. Bob Dylan: “Mississippi”
Polito’s book has inspired me to spend some time revisiting Dylan’s 21st-century albums, and I’m currently tangled up in the great “‘Love and Theft.’” Though Dylan had this song ready to go for his triumphant 1997 comeback “Time Out of Mind,” he and that album’s producer, Daniel Lanois, had differing opinions on how it should be arranged. Dylan wisely saved it for the next LP which, like all his subsequent albums, he self-produced under the nom de plume Jack Frost.
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6. Francesco de Gregori: “Non dirle che non è così (If You See Her, Say Hello)”
Here’s one more of my favorite covers from the “Masked and Anonymous” soundtrack: The Italian crooner Francesco de Gregori’s emotive reading of what I believe to be the most tried and true tear-jerker on “Blood on the Tracks.”
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It’s a small miracle that the Dylan show at Forest Hills went on at all. The forecast on July 21 all but promised thunderstorms, but somehow the weather held out — and at least made the already iconic stage outfit Dylan has been sporting on this tour (a poncho-like hoodie pulled all the way up) seem extra appropriate.
There was such a relaxed virtuosity to the whole performance, from Dylan’s always-in-the-moment phrasing to the elegant fretwork of the touring band’s newest additions, the guitarists Jad Tariq and Joel Paterson. (Alas, I did not get to witness one of the shows on this tour where the jazz guitar wizard Julian Lage sat in.) At the best of Dylan’s late-period shows, all of his songs — or really all songs, by anybody from any time — exist in a kind of continuum of perpetual present, never tethered to a particular time period, genre or even individual author. That approach sometimes frustrates the people who buy tickets because they want to sing along to a faithful rendition of “Blowin’ in the Wind” (not that they’ve ever gotten that from him) but Dylan’s famously shape-shifting live arrangements also allow for unexpected connections and even phantom hints of other songs to emerge from the ether as he’s playing.
My favorite instance of this happened during his performance of “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You,” a bewitching slow dance from “Rough and Rowdy Ways.” I swore I could hear ghostly echoes of “Just Like a Woman,” that barbed song written more than half a century before the one he was actually playing. I listened to them as a pair a few times after the show — two songs I never would have connected to each other before — and found something deep and poignant in the relationship between them. Heard back-to-back, the cocky, chiding young lover gives way to the vulnerability and soft surrender of the older man. “Well my heart’s like a river — a river that sings,” octogenarian Dylan sings in a wizened croak. “Just takes me a while to realize things.”