Forty years ago, Bob Dylan’s impromptu comments at Live Aid inspired Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp to stage the original Farm Aid in Champaign, Illinois. And on Saturday night, Bob Dylan returned to the Farm Aid stage to celebrate the event’s 40th anniversary at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Dylan was added to the lineup just days before the event, and questions swirled about his appearance until the minute he took the stage. Was he going to perform with his regular road band or repeat his 2023 surprise Farm Aid set by playing with 3/5th of the Heartbreakers? Would he hide himself from the audience as he’s done at recent Outlaw Music Festival shows or actually take off his hoodie and reveal his face to the crowd? Would he let the screens project his set to the entire stadium or force everyone to squint or break out binoculars? And would he let the livestream share his performance with a global audience online?
He wound up wearing the hoodie, though not pulled as tightly around his face as it has been at recent shows, and he agreed to both the projection screens and the livestream. There weren’t closeups, the stage was pretty dark, and much of the stadium audience had a hard time seeing him clearly, but these were major concessions given his history. Very few Never Ending Tour shows have been professionally filmed like this, let alone broadcast on the Internet…