Recent Nobel Prize Winner Bob Dylan has announced he will tour the UK in 2017, as first reported in NME.
The stadium Tour will take in six dates in six different British cities between the 3rd and 9th May next year and will feature Dylan along with his band. Full details can be found at the bottom of this article; there is as yet no news on exact timings or prices – which is in-keeping with Dylan’s traditionally free-form live performances.
The news comes on top of a busy year for Dylan, in which he released a his 37th studio album Fallen Angels, and was also awarded The Nobel Prize for Literature. Fallen Angels featured covers from artists including Sammy Cahn, Carolyn Leigh and Johnny Mercer and all of the tracks on the album, with the exception of ‘Skylark’, had previously been recorded by Frank Sinatra. Jim Farber of Entertainment Weekly said the album was influenced by Dylan’s touring history, writing that ‘his voice may be husky and damaged from decades of performing, but there’s also a beauty to its character.’ Well, now UK fans will be able to listen to that ‘character’ in person, and it can only be hoped Dylan’s performances on this tour will not do too much more damage to his croon. The album actually performed better in the UK than in Dylan’s native America, peaking at no. 5 on the UK Albums chart while only managing no.7 on the Billboard 200.
Dylan’s work was recently recognised by the Nobel Committee who awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature, commending him ‘for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’, via The List. This has created a series of controversies which began with an initial heated discussion over whether Dylan deserved the prize at all – Dylan is the first musician to win the award and there were also critiques that focused on the lack of attention to diversity in this choice. This was then followed by speculation over whether Dylan would in fact accept the award after an acknowledgement of the Prize was removed from his website soon after it was posted. The Nobel Committee branded him ‘impolite and arrogant’ following both this incident and reports that Dylan was avoiding the Committee’s attempts to contact him. This controversy appeared to have been largely put to bed, after Dylan spoke to The Daily Telegraph and described winning the award as ‘amazing’ and ‘incredible’, adding, ‘Whoever dreams about something like that?’ It has since emerged, however, that Dylan will not attend the Ceremony itself, and Patti Smith will instead accept the award on his behalf. Whether any of these controversies will affect desire for tickets for Dylan’s Tour remains to be seen, but it seems likely, Dylan’s iconic status means this will still be one of the most anticipated and in-demand tours of 2017.
The full dates of the Tour are shown below:
3/5 – Motorpoint Arena – Cardiff
4/5 – BIC – Bournemouth
5/5 – Motorpoint Arena – Nottingham
7/5 – Clyde Auditorium – Glasgow
8/5 – Echo Arena – Liverpool
9/5 – SSE Arena Wembley – London
