Song of the Day 2/7: Bob Dylan and Friends, “My Back Pages”

Bob Dylan’s 30th anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden was 27 years ago now, but this video of the show’s climactic number has aged pretty well. Highlights include a typically understated but brilliant guitar solo verse by Clapton (the note he bends at 2:22 is chill-inducing) and the jubilant performance of Neil Young, whom I’ve rarely seen smile on any other stage.

“My Back Pages” was the last song written for 1964’s “Another Side” album, and it was impossible to miss the message — Dylan was turning his back on the folk/protest movement and condemning its moral certitude. That the message was meant for that particular time and place was made more obvious by the fact that Dylan never performed the song in concert until 1988.

Lots of other people did, though, including the Byrds, and it’s Roger McGuinn’s arrangement, which gave the Byrds their last Top 40 hit in 1967, performed here, so he gets the first verse. For me, Young is the star of the number. His whammy-bar guitar wailing through the first verse, his chorus harmonies with Tom Petty, his typically idiosyncratic closing solo verse — you can see G.E. Smith telling him to take the solo just before the montage of photos begins — demonstrate that even stars can get starstruck.