I've seen Dylan twice -- in 1974 with the Band on his big "comeback" (to the concert stage) tour, and in 1975 with the Rolling Thunder Revue. Both were good shows, but some of the stuff I've seen on film from the 1990's was pretty awful.

It's been a while since I saw the film of the 30th Anniversary Concert. I don't tend to like these kind of things, where everyone gets up in a sort of feigned comaraderie to play someone's songs, and they all get together to join in on the last song (these "let's get everyone up to link arms and sing the last tune together" deals are always horrible, without exception). I remember that I kind of liked George Harrison's take on "Absolutely Sweet Marie," and I think Ron Wood did a decent job of "Seven Days," but aside from those and Clapton's performance, I thought it was pretty bad.

At that time Dylan was having real problems with his voice -- don't know what it was, but I also saw some other things from around the same time (an appearance on the Letterman show was one), and the poor guy sounded like he had a severe sinus infection. I was very affected by it, and wrote a song about it at the time, called "When the Wind Dies Down"; sort of an answer to "Blowing In The Wind," asking Bob what he would do with himself when it became obvious to everyone that he couldn't perform any more. It was all "assembled" from lyrics from his own songs, and I felt like it was a pretty fair piece of work. My wife thought it was too mean spirited, and even though I intended it to be more compassionate than anything, I thought there was a certain justice in turning the blade of sarcasm back on Dylan.

God save Bob Dylan -- still my hero, after all these years.