ABSTRACT
November 2008. The United Palace Theater in Washington Heights, New York, was the perfect venue for the first performance of “Gotta Serve Somebody” in four years. It was a lavish ex-theater turned into a church, with religious banners hanging from the walls of the foyer. Right after the introduction, with its meaningful nod to a Dylan who had “emerged to find Jesus” after “disappearing into a haze of substance abuse,” the band took the stage, and a familiar guitar riff, heavy with blues echoes, filled the theater. Then Dylan’s voice, so deep and gravelly it might have been Howlin’ Wolf’s, led the audience into a five-minute tour de force with the familiar words, “You might be an ambassador to England or France, you might like to gamble you might like to dance.” As he went on singing, the lyrics became less familiar. Dylan was ad-libbing, bringing to the stage words he had read in the entrance hall: “No matter where you are, or where you been, but you gotta serve Somebody.”
