You’d always see eccentrics at Dylan gigs, like the man with the hat who shook his peacock feathers at the line “to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free”. There are many ordinary folk, too, in the audience at London’s Royal Albert Hall this November because everyone is wondering whether it could be the last time they see him.

Dylan, dressed in a sparkly jacket, and even sparklier shirt with his hair as black as a working men’s club comedian, is on stage early for Monday’s gig, which finished at 9pm (8am Tuesday AEDT). He stands at the piano for the whole show, reaching down at the keys, which can’t be comfortable, but his birdlike frame seems to have developed that way, like cartoon cowboys with their “horseman syndrome”.

New Statesman