Dylan, Morrison have their mojos back — but not all old rockers do

The rehabilitation of Bob Dylan is complete.

With his latest album, "Modern Times," debuting at No. 1 in Billboard, the arc of his career has reached a new high. He's almost as big now as he was in the '60s and '70s.

The turning point was his near-death experience in 1997, when he was hospitalized for a heart condition. It was a wake-up call for him and for his fans, many of whom had lost interest in his music after a series of bad albums from the late '70s through the '80s. The low point was 1989's "Dylan & the Dead," probably his and the Grateful Dead's worst albums.

Even before the heart problem, Dylan had begun getting back into the groove by touring with young musicians who kicked some needed energy into his music, and encouraged and inspired him to embrace his classic songs again. He did an "MTV Unplugged" and performed for President Clinton and Pope John Paul II. In '97 he released the bluesy "Time Out of Mind," his best, and best-selling, album in 20 years. He toured extensively behind it, sometimes crossing paths with his son Jakob Dylan's band, the Wallflowers, which also had a hit album that year.

After the heart scare, Dylan became a new man. He followed "Time Out of Mind," which won a Grammy for album of the year, with another brilliant disc, "Love and Theft," which mostly dealt with aging and mortality.

He wrote a best-seller, "Chronicles," a lively and revealing (but not too revealing) biography that made shelvesful of books about him obsolete by setting the record straight. Martin Scorsese's film "No Direction Home," which documented Dylan's early career, reminded old fans, and taught new ones, about Dylan's young years as "the voice of a generation."

His current high profile includes an iPod commercial, in which he performs "Someday Baby" from "Modern Times." Bennett Miller, the Academy Award-nominated director of "Capote," shot a film about the early Dylan, starring Scarlett Johansson, set to another of the album's songs, "When the Deal Goes Down." It debuted on AOL and is now showing on music-video cable-TV channels and online. "The Times They Are A-Changin'," a new Broadway musical based on Dylan's songs, conceived, directed and choreographed by Twyla Tharp, opens Oct. 26. On Wednesday in Vancouver, B.C., Dylan begins a 24-city tour that plays Friday at KeyArena.

Dylan is at a high point in his creative and performing career, so it's not just nostalgia that's driving this new tour. Fans are coming to hear the new and the old songs.

That's not the case with other '60s rock stars coming our way soon, including The Who on Wednesday at KeyArena; Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, Thursday at the Key; and the Rolling Stones, Oct. 17 at Qwest Field.

The Who, which is now just the Two — surviving members Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey — is touring, with a backing band, to promote its first album of new material in 24 years, "Endless Wire," which comes out on Halloween.

Townshend and Daltrey performed a song from it, "Man in a Purple Dress," on Letterman recently, and it was disappointing, to say the least. An angry attack on an easy target, organized religion, it was petulant, bratty and crude — hard to believe it came from the pen of Townshend, who used to write such smart, pointed, powerful and witty lyrics.

Stuck in old grooves

Part of the album is a new "rock mini-opera" based on "The Boy Who Heard Music," Townshend's novella in blog form, available at www.petetownshend.co.uk. One-third of the new show is taken up with the "opera." The rest of it is made up of Who classics delivered with the clearest and most powerful sound modern digital equipment can deliver. It's high-concept nostalgia.

Waters' show will be based on Floyd's music of the '70s, including "Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Wall," delivered with whiz-bang sound and special effects.

The Stones have recorded new albums over the past few decades, but fans don't want to hear those songs — they want the classics performed as they remember them, and they get 'em.

Why do some artists continue to grow and be creative as they age, while others don't?

Rock is a special case. Those of us who were around for its birth considered rock as part of a "youth movement." We didn't think very much about it, or us, growing old.

Now we're learning that artists may age, but true artists never quit. Their creative powers diminish for some — like the Who and the Stones — who nevertheless remain musicians and performers. We go to see them to revisit our youth and hear great songs that are decades old. Like creative artists in other fields, some rock stars peak when they're young, and continue to draw on their work from those years all the rest of their lives.

But Dylan is different. He's showing how great rock stars should age — by reinventing the past and moving toward the future. Dylan performs his classics from the '60s and '70s, but he short-circuits your expectations by doing them differently every single time. I've seen him perform the same song two nights in a row in two entirely different ways. He doesn't give fans what they want but rather what he wants. He remains true to himself and in so doing remains a creative force that fans young and old can relate to.

Back in the swing

We shouldn't be surprised that Dylan is leading the way. Although he lost his muse for a long time — from his odd "Christian conversion" in 1979 through the 1980s — he kept at it, braving slumping sales and harsh reviews, until he regained his powers. It's easy to say now that we always knew he had it in him, because he is the greatest individual talent rock has ever produced. But he had to go through some trials before getting his creative juices to flow again — facing death can do that to you.

Another artist who has had his creative ups and downs but who is back in full command of his songwriting and performing abilities is Van Morrison, who plays Nov. 4 at the new WaMu Theater at Qwest Field Event Center. The formerly shy performer, who once played a show here at the Opera House with his back to the audience, now loves to perform and mixes old songs and new seamlessly, because the new ones are as good as those he wrote 30 to 40 years ago. And his voice sounds as youthful as it did when he recorded "Gloria" 40 years ago as lead singer of Them. (Dylan's voice has always been unique and sometimes problematic — but that's another story.)

Morrison's most recent albums, last year's "Magic Time" and the current "Pay the Devil," show him to be in top form at 61. At his concert, the new songs will be as welcome as the old.

Patrick MacDonald: 206-464-2312 or pmacdonald@seattletimes.com