The Vandals Took the Handles

Monday night, we saw Bob Dylan perform at the Crown Theatre in Fayetteville, N.C. – a two-hour drive from Myrtle Beach.

The Crown Theatre is part of an entity called the Crown Complex. A number of years ago, we saw Elton John at the larger Crown Coliseum on the property. The fact that we were 40 minutes late for Elton because of a traffic miscalculation because we decided to get something to eat is something that we now laugh about with the friends that went with us, especially our friend Tonya. But it wasn’t funny then.

While the coliseum seats ten thousand, the Crown Theatre seats just under 2,500. This was more like the Charleston Music Hall, where we saw Leon Russell and later Dylan’s son Jacob and The Wallflowers.

When it comes to Dylan, I am a late adopter. So is Brenda. We got started when we saw the Martin Scorsese documentary, “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story.”

But we figured we’d know enough songs to make things seem familiar – with Dylan up front with his acoustic and harmonica, mumbling through “Like A Rolling Stone,” “Hurricane,” “Highway 61 Revisited” or something about the vandals taking the handles in “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”

Nope.

In fact, the only song I knew was “Gotta Serve Somebody,” from his Christian-themed Slow Train Coming album. I was singing that song in the parking lot as we observed folks of all ages making their way into the venue – oldsters, youngsters, hipsters…

I showed an attendant our e-tickets, and she wrote the seat numbers on a slip of paper. Further down the line, I surrendered my phone and another attendant put it into something called a Yondr Bag – a locking canvas contraption that prevents phone use in the performance space.

This seems to be a trend. Other artists – Dave Chappelle and Jack White for example – employ this tactic as well, citing a more engaged audience experience.

We knew about the Yondr Bag beforehand. Brenda left her phone in the car.

What Dylan says, goes – right?

The only other time I saw Dylan was when he played with Tom Petty at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, California – “Alone and Together,” in 1986. That was before I had taken to Dylan, but he played most of the songs you would have expected. (I thought this was at Irvine Meadows but a glance online is inconclusive.)

The music was starting while Brenda was finishing up at the merch table, and they were about to close the doors until the first song was finished, but we rushed in. I saw two guitar players, a bass player, a pedal steel player – and a guy at a piano. I heard Dylan’s voice, but I was confused.

I saw the hair. Dylan was at the piano. And Dylan stayed at the piano the whole night.

During the course of the nearly two hours, there was the icon, delivering songs in his classic, indecipherable way. Sometimes he stood up while he performed at the piano, sometimes not. I wondered if there was a digital piano set inside the conventional piano body, but I wasn’t sure.  

A quick peek at the night’s setlist revealed songs like “I Contain Multitudes,” “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” “Crossing the Rubicon” and many more. Like i said, I’m relatively new to Dylan.

Dylan does what Dylan wants to do. And he wanted to stay at the piano.

And we got to take in the magic.

• Bob Dylan
• Crown Complex
• Crown Theatre
• Dave Chappelle
• Elton John
• Fayetteville
• Jack White
• Martin Scorsese
• Myrtle Beach
• Rolling Thunder Revue
• Tom Petty
• Willie Nelson
• Yondr Bag