Charles Brammall
Bob Dylan will imminently be an octoginta quinque annos natus.
One of the strangest and most delightful moments in his history with Australia happened late one night after a Never Ending Tour gig in the 90s. It had been one of those shows where the band rewrote the songs in real time, and the crowd spent half the night whispering to each other, “IS this Tangled Up in Blue?” After the show a few fans waited by the stage door in a quiet car park.
Eventually Bob stepped out with a couple of band members, looking less like a reluctant rock star and more like someone who’d just wandered out of the wrong pub. Someone nervously asked what he thought of Australia. Bob paused, looked into the quiet night, scratched his chin in his inscrutable way, and said something like, “Yeah… Australia. I always liked the birds here.”
Nobody quite knew what to make of that. Bob nodded, climbed into the car, and vanished into the night— leaving everyone wondering whether he was takin’ the Mick, being sincere, or just enjoying the absurdity of it.
The strange journey Bob has made in Australia involves folk prophecy, electric revolt, and teeming crowds. Gospel proclamations, bewildered journalists, and ecstatic fans; and seminar‑style conversations that left people wondering not just WHAT Bob was singing, but WHY.
65 Tour— Advent of the Folk Prophet
Bob first toured Oz in ’65, playing solo acoustic sets where he seemed more like a guitar slinging’ preacher than a rock muso. He performed classic folk songs in theatres filled with crowds divided between admiration and bewilderment.
Fans expecting gentle folk anthems got sharp, poetic songs like The Times They Are A‑Changin’, Gates of Eden, and If You Gotta Go, Go Now. Those early shows were targums of intense lyricism and earnest performance, leaving audiences unsure whether to applaud or sit in thoughtful silence. Bob was living breathing poesy, demanding, and full of youthful fire. He wasn’t yet the electric legend he would become— but a moment of artistic urgency in motion on Aussie soil.
78 Tour— Big Band Spectacle
When Bob returned in 78 it wasn’t just the music that had evolved— but his ENTIRE presentation. He traveled with a huge ensemble of musos and Gospel backup singers. They filled arenas and stadiums in Brisvegas, The Emerald City and the cafe, Wetback City. The sound blurred rock, blues, and jazz. Country, Americana, and Funk; Swing, theatrical spectacle and Great American Songbook.
Crowds sometimes reached 35,000 at venues like Sydney Sports Ground, making this era the largest Dylan audiences in Australia. The arrangements were rich, dramatic, and unpredictable, reshaping familiar songs into sprawling new forms.
Some critics loved the theatricality. Others sniffed that Dylan had traded depth for drama. But the undeniable truth was that audiences were audibly stunned, captivated, or wildly confused- sometimes all 3 at once.
Gospel Era— Bob Preaches Jesus
From 79 and 81 Bob underwent what he described as a genuine Christian conversion. He began performing sets almost exclusively composed of gospel‑themed songs like Gotta Serve Somebody, Solid Rock, and When You Gonna Wake Up? (which I want at my thanksgiving memorial service- cranked up to max😌).
Pressed journalists noted the shift. The LA Times wrote that Dylan had “abandoned ambiguity for proclamation.” Rolling Stone observed his work felt “more like sermons set to rhythm” than typical rock performances. NY Times critics described him as “a preacher in denim,” and other commentators conceded his performances resembled revival meetings.
Several backing vocalists and band members later said that rehearsals felt spiritually charged— more like preparation for worship than commercial touring. Many of these songs were played on subsequent Australian tours as traces of that era, especially in 86 with Tommy P’s The Heartbreakers.
Bobcat, Tomcat
86 saw Bob come back with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, blending his own deep catalogue with Tom’s rootsy rock chops. The band gave Robert’s songs a loose, gritty edge, and the shows in major cities like Sydney and Melbourne packed concerts of 10-18,000 people.
These performances mixed Dylan classics with spiritually tinged pieces like Gotta Serve Somebody and Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, giving Aussie audiences glimpses of both the poet and the prophet.
Never Ending Tour (‘92–2018)— Ceaseless Reinvention
The one and only time I have seen the man live (so far🙏), was in this tour, in about 2010. As Archbishop’s Chaplain to the Entertainment Industry, I was BOB’s Chaplain, so I ambled up to his trailer after the gig, hoping to say hi and have a cuppa. Alas, ‘twas not to be, as the only way through was decisively blocked by high cyclone wire, so my attempt was thwarted.
As you might have gathered from my portfolio of articles and posts, I’m the original tragic Bobcat. Little Johnny Howard, eat your heart out with your cricket! I have owned almost all of Bob’s 50+ albums at some stage in my life (except his frightful Christmas one!). I ADORE his recordings, especially live concert ones. “The Complete Budokan” is outrageously fine. But when I saw him live at the (now disappeared) Ent. Centre near Paddy’s Markets, he was WOEFUL. I was pretty cranky with him, to say the least. And I hadn’t even paid! It was a gift.
He didn’t even SPEAK his songs that night, instead of singing them, like he often does. I could have coped with THAT. But no- he just screamoed ALL the words, like a guttural grind core outfit with throat cancer: the lead-heaviest of all heavy metal. It was peculiar to say the least, and jolly disconcerting.
What’s worse, every single arrangement was radically altered from the original. Now I would say I’m fairly knowledgeable of and au fait with the Minnesotan’s back catalogue. No credit to me- just comes with the territory of evolving into a fanatic. But Bob’s arrangements were so weird and screamo that I quite literally couldn’t recognise a SINGLE ONE of the songs. I may as well have been at a Celine Dion outing.
But when I looked at the set list later, I’m I knew and loved every single one of the songs I’d heard that night, but just didn’t recognise it. I don’t know if he was drunk, or high, or just grumpy that night, but I sure lucked out! Word on the street is that you never know what you’ll get from Bob on any given night. It all depends on His substances and mood. The ONE time I get to see him in my life, and he takes a dive! Every day I yearn tragically (“Catch 22”), and pine for him to announce he’s coming back to Oz, but to no avail thus far. He’s nearly 85, so it’s probably a race against time these days.
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From the early 90s the “Never Ending Tour” brought him back to this wide brown land again and again, each time reinventing his songs. With a stable of musicians like Tony Garnier and Charlie Sexton, Bob transformed familiar tracks into blues laments, swampy rock, or swing. Into enigmatic piano ballads.
His Setlists frequently mutated, yet audiences still heard towering refrains from Highway 61 Revisited, Like a Rolling Stone, and Mr Tambourine Man, often in forms barely recognisable from their original recordings. Throughout these decades, the man performed well over 300 different songs on Aussie soil— a testament to his restless creativity and unwillingness to simply repeat past triumphs.
Jesus-Trust, Audiences, & Band Mates
Throughout his Oz touring history, Dylan has drawn crowds from a few 1000 in theatres to about 35,000 at outdoor stadiums in the late 70s and 80s. The Sydney Sports Ground concert remains a record for him in Australia.
Oz audience reactions vary widely— from confusion and boos during the early electric sets, to rapt silence in theatres, and ecstatic applause for gospel‑tinged songs. Some fans say the Christian era had a profound spiritual impact on them, even prompting them to explore Jesus or revisit their reliance on Him.
The Troubadour’s backing singers and band members have echoed similar themes: gospel collaborators describe shows that felt less like rock concerts and more like evangelistic meetings, while others remark on the seriousness and sincerity with which the Hibbertian approached his music and lyrics.
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Full Circle
TRUE Story: Years after the Sydney booing of the mid-60s, an older Aussie fan approached Bob after a gig. He confessed that he had been in that original audience – and was one of the ones who booed. He explained that a long time later, he surrendered to Jesus, after years of listening to Bob’s spiritually charged songs. Bob listened without expression for a long moment, then finally, laconic as is his wont, said, “Well… I guess it worked out.”
If there has been a scarlet thread in Dylan’s long journey— from folk prophet to electric agitator, gospel preacher to ever‑evolving shaman— it is that his music rarely lets anyone remain unchanged. Perhaps that is the most astonishing thing of all: that God used the man whose songs once divided crowds in Sydney, to go on to touch some of those same listeners in ways nobody expected.
And far from being a contradiction, perhaps that is exactly the kind of twist Bob would have scribbled down on a napkin in a Greenwich Village diner, turning it into a timeless lyric…
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Years later, something dawned on that older fan to whom Bob had given that peculiar answer – that he liked the birds in Australia. Possibly Dylan hadn’t been dodging the question after all. Because if you listen carefully to his lyrics – the folk songs, rock songs, gospel songs, late-career blues – you hear birds everywhere.
Mockingbirds. Ravens. Larks. Sparrow songs. Nightingales. Blackbirds. Owls, Eagles. Drifting through desolation rows and lonely highways. And if the old poets were right – if the Psalms were right- birds are the creatures that never stop singing about their Creator. Birds in God’s Word are often a sign of His loving, providential, protective presence;
Think Matthew 6:26- “Consider the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they?”, and
Matthew 10:29-31: “Aren’t 2 sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not 1 of them falls to the ground without your Father’s consent. But even the hairs of your head have all been counted. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
Isiah 40:31: “but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not become weary, they will walk and not faint”,
Psalm 91:4: “He will cover you with his feathers; you will take refuge under his wings. His faithfulness will be a protective shield”, and
Genesis 1:20- “Then God said, “Let the water swarm with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky”.
Psm 104:12– “The birds of the sky live beside the springs; they make their voices heard among the foliage”, and
Mat 23:37– “Jerusalem, who kills the prophets & stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”
Word Birds- God’s safety, refuge, protectiveness…. Which means that the strangest thing about Bob’s answer in that car park is not that it was mysterious. It is that it might have been the most straightforward theological statement he made all night…
Please pray with me for Bob, everyone he comes in contact with, and his gospel lyrics:
Gracious and just Lord Jesus,
thank you for the strange and beautiful gift of Bob Dylan—
his songs, his searching, his words about you.
Please draw him, his family, former wives and girlfriends, bandmates, singers, and fans into your eternal rescue.
That Jesus might be eternally esteemed, Amen.
Great Father of holiness,
please keep using the gospel songs from Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love to awaken hearts.
Let those lyrics keep travelling the world, quietly leading listeners toward repentance, faith, and joy in Christ.
For the sake of the glorious Name of the One,
Amen.
Dear Heavenly Father and Provider,
Please pursue everyone touched by Bob’s music— kids, parents, & musicians; roadies, critics, and caterers- admin, execs, and cleaners. Merch sellers, and audiences everywhere. Please Turn their curiosity into Jesus-dependence. Please let Bob’s songs keep bearing fruit until the day Messiah King Jesus Christ the Mighty One renews all things.
In His wonderful, holy, Gracious Name,
Amen. ✝️
Image: Bob Dylan 2019, Image Credit: Raph_PH/Wikimedia