3 Very Cool Pictures Of Bob Dylan At The Royal Albert Hall [Pictures]

It's been 46 years since Bob Dylan has played London's Royal Albert Hall and the legendary singer-songwriter set about making up for lost time during his show on Tuesday evening (November 26, 2013).

Promoting his critically acclaimed album Tempest, Dylan appears to have returned to form on his current UK tour. It's no secret that the 72-year-old has often been criticized for his live sets, rendering Like A Rolling Stone and others unrecognisable and raising eyebrows with a distinctly gravelly delivery.

There was no danger of the audience suffering bastardisations of Dylan's biggest hits, because, well, he didn't play many of them.

"...at just after half past nine he was gone," wrote The Independent's David Liser, "So ended performance 2,500-plus on the never-ending tour that began in 1988. It was in turns stunning, revelatory and downright perplexing. Like the man himself."

"...the Albert Hall was the perfect venue to witness this grumpy enigma and his musical longevity," said the Evening Standard.

On Thursday, Dylan will be honoured with a commemorative blue plaque at the venue of his first ever UK performance. The 72-year-old will reportedly attend the event to unveil the plaque at The Water Rats in King's Cross London, according to The Telegraph.

A statement from the venue said: "Bob Dylan & his publicist Tom Cording have been made aware of the ceremony as this coincides with Bob Dylan's last concert of his current run at the Royal Albert Hall."

"We are hoping that Mr Dylan will be arriving at 2:30pm after his sound check to unveil the Plaque and show his continued support for live music in the UK."

Dylan played his first UK gig at The Water Rats - which was then known as the Pindar of Wakefield - in December 1962.

Next page: Read our review of Bob Dylan's Tempest

Music Review: Tempest, Bob Dylan.
By Joe Wilde

What more can be said about Bob Dylan's signature voice that hasn't been said before? His nicotine-stained bark has practically become a clich' of itself and, after 34 albums, on Tempest - his 35th - that old husk still sounds as unsullied as it always has. 35 albums in a career that has exceeded its 50 year mark, for most people that would spell the end of creative output and either retirement or a string of cover albums, however Dylan isn't most people, he never has been and never will be.

Tempest is actually one of the man's most creative and musically varied albums, not to mention it shows us that after all these years Dylan is still a master craftsman of powerful, emotive song writing. Here, Dylan continues exploring the basic themes he has been doing over the last decade on 2001's Love and Theft, 2006's Modern Times and 2009's Together Through Life - love, life and death. Particularly that last theme, death, Dylan seems most pervasive of, making this one of darkest albums to date, lyrically at least. At 71, maybe this is Dylan telling us what is playing on his mind now more than anything else.

On 'Tin Angel' Dylan sings of a three-way murder/suicide and on 'Long and Wasted Years' he sings: "I ain't seen my family in twenty years/ that ain't easy to understand/ they may be dead by now/ I lost track of them after they lost their lives." A sad but true reflection that we all share one thing in common; the steady inevitable encroachment of death and for him, perhaps, that time may be closer than he'd like to think. Dylan is definitely acting his age (hang your head in shame Jagger) and however morbid it may sound, he is singing of the one thing that perhaps concerns the older generation the most.

The album isn't all doom and gloom of course; as already mentioned, this is one of Dylan's most varied albums to date. Take the album opener, the jazzy, pre-rock and roll 'Duquesne Whistle' - a song about a steam-train whistle "blowing like she's never blowed before." He sums up so very eloquently how one simple sound - that of a steam whistle - can evoke so many images in a way that only he can do.

Listen to Bob Dylan's 'Motherless Children':

But back to the death, in particular the epic titular track about the sinking of the Titanic. Not since James Cameron turned it into a love story has one of the most catastrophic human disasters been treated so staggeringly. As well as mentioning Leonardo DiCaprio, he sings of passengers falling to their deaths into the deep icy waters, ("Dead bodies already floating/In the double-bottomed hull") and of men turning murderous in the face of disaster. Dylan has crafted one epic after another throughout his career, but none have conjured up such images of affliction and anguish.

Ending the album with an ode to his old friend John Lennon, on 'Roll On John' Dylan recalls the passing of his once close friend rather than singing the joys of the life he lived. His use of the 'Day In The Life' lyric "I heard the news today, oh, boy," may be a little late, but it still holds all the significance as it would have done had this song appeared on 1981's Shot of Love. A sad end to an overall sad album - sad, but very good.