ABSTRACT
On November 19, 2001, Bob Dylan’s tour made its yearly stop in New York. He was playing the Madison Square Garden Arena, and his latest album, “Love and Theft,” had been released a little more than two months earlier, on 9/11—the day New York became a wounded city. Many reviewers found a prophetic tone in Dylan’s lyrics, which seemed to come from a timeless territory, where Dylan had met the ghosts of countless blues singers, with their references to a “sky full of fire, pain pourin’ down,” to “bags full of dead men’s bones,” and to “the shacks [that] are slidin’ down, Folks lose their possessions, folks are leaving town.” 1 In the audience, few noticed that the date was close to the fortieth anniversary of the recording of Dylan’s first album (on November 20, 1961), just a few blocks away from Madison Square Garden. It almost seemed that, at least temporarily, things had gone full circle and that Dylan was back where he belonged. He acknowledged it, overcoming his notorious reluctance to speak from the stage, in a heartfelt homage to New York, “Most of these songs were written here and the ones that weren’t were recorded here. You don’t have to ask me how I feel about this town.” 2
