The Never Ending Tour Extended: Lenny Bruce; and a staggering epilogue

 I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.


The Never Ending Tour Extended: This series primarily uses recordings selected by Mike Johnson in his inestimable masterpiece The Never Ending Tour, and looks at how those performances of individual songs change as time goes by.   The selection of songs from the series, and the commentary below, are by Tony Attwood.   A list of all the songs covered in the series is given at the end.   You may also be interested in Mike’s new series: “Mr Tambourine Man: – A History in Performance, Part 1: A masterpiece is born

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“Lenny Bruce” got 177 outings on the Tour between 1981 and 2019 having appeared in August 1981 on the Shot of Love album.   So it is interesting that it took Bob quite so long to perform it: our earliest recording in the Never Ending Tour series comes from 1994

1994: Dancing to the nightingale’s tune

This is a plaintive version indeed – just listen to how Bob sings “he was an outlaw”, and for me he really sings this version as he still means it – although Bob then insists on playing the same note over and over in the instrumental break – something he has often done on the harmonica, and which musically I never understand.  But that’s my problem not his.

This is a very unusual use of the voice by Bob in terms of the contrasts he puts into his own vocals – and the second instrumental break really does entangle the instrumental lines, once more in a way that is quite unusual on the Never Ending Tour.   Indeed the return to gentleness in the break after five minutes is also really is unusual for Bob.

Then we have a harmonica solo which is so plaintive and pleading it seems to take the entire performance to another level and provides a perfect postscript to a song that I still find a most wonderful piece of composing, even after so many listens.

2005: God knows you gotta weep

If you turned your volume up to hear the track above you might want to turn it down again before starting to listen to this version from 2005.   (You’ll understand we are just picking up the recordings that others have devoted hours and hours not just recording but also putting on the internet – so we joyfully take what is offered).

Bob is now, I feel, less concerned with the meaning of the lyrics and more with the sounds as he changes his articulation.   For me the added “chunkyness” of the accompaniment and the additional force of the lyrics remove a lot of the meaning, and indeed the sentiment, from the song.   So when Bob sings “Lenny Bruce is gone” with that extra accent on “gone” I’ve stopped believing he cares.

But the instrumental break around the four minute mark still works wonderfully, although then I find the spoken verse that follows isn’t really right.  The melody of the original is for me one of Bob’s great, simple melodies, and I don’t really want this old emotional friend changed in this way.

2019: We can either play or we can pose

And now if you want a surprise you are going to get one, with the way this version starts.  Indeed you might want to sit down if you are standing.  Or if you are sitting, just hold onto something.

The first 20 seconds give us a slight clue, but then as Bob starts to sing that opening line, well, I must admit I had forgotten what happened, but I should not have done.  For this is one of my utter highlights from the series – it would be on my CD of “The Never Ending Tour – the 20 greatest moments”.

Bob’s voice is faltering of course – he was 78 when he performed this and had had a life time of belting out vocals in huge stadia.   And now he can still take me apart by performing this wonderful song in this way.

The performance lasts getting on for six minutes and as you can hear Bob holds the audience totally in his spell.  And when he says “he was the brother that you never had,” I know exactly what he means.  (Or rather I know what he means – because since I first heard this recording, the actual real-life brother I never knew I had, found me, and transformed my life.  But that’s another story…)

Mike then kindly gave us a second version of the song – and as I am sure you will long ago have realised if you read any of the series, Mike was always totally the controller of the Never Ending Tour series, choosing exactly which performances he wanted to illustrate each part of the tour.

So all I can do is say a double set of extra thank yous that in his coverage of the 2019 tour (the final year of the tour in fact) he chose to give us this recording.

As by now you must have realised, although I’m the publisher of this site I don’t have any insights in what those who dedicate their time to providing the articles are going to say – they go their own way and what they send me is what is published.   But when I realised we had this version of this song in the review of this final collection from the tour, I just couldn’t believe it.

Mike did in fact give us one more episode after “We can either play…”  Virgil’s farewell: It’s not dark yet  which is a most wonderful postscript to the 144 episode series.  But more than that, it is a truly wonderful epilogue to this performance.  If you missed it when we first published it, it is of course still there.  I’d recommend trying it – but not before you have played “Lenny Bruce” at least once more.

And as a postscript (which I can do because there’s no one to tell me not to), here’s one more.   It is not from the tour, but if you love this song, then I suspect you’ll enjoy this.  It’s Bob with Tom Petty in 1986.  It’s not as extraordinary as that 2019 performance, but then, hardly anything is.

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