Bob Dylan at Farm Aid 2023, here with hearbreaker Mike Campbell
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Farm Aid, the annual benefit concert to support America’s agriculture, was held this year in Noblesville, Indiana. Visitors to the concert on Saturday evening (September 23rd) are likely to still be raving about it today, because Bob Dylan provided a real concert highlight with an unexpected surprise appearance.
The Nobel Prize winner for literature played guitar during his slot and was accompanied by three members of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers: Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench and Steve Ferrone. You could hear three Dylan songs from 1965: “Maggie’s Farm”, “Positively 4th Street” and “Ballad of a Thin Man”. One of the songwriter’s many productive years in the decade. Dylan hadn’t performed “Maggie’s Farm” in 14 years.
In addition to the 82-year-old’s gig, the prominent Farm Aid program also included performances by Neil Young, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Margo Price and Sturgill Simpson, among others. Young played a total of four songs, including “Comes A Time”, “Are There Any More Real Cowboys?”, “Love Earth” and his biggest hit “Heart Of Gold”.
While Dylan is still presenting the songs from “Rough And Rowdy Ways” on tour, “The Complete Budokan 1978” will soon be available to hear live songs from his first tour of Japan.
The singer is considered the main inspiration for the creation of Farm Aid. As legend would have it, he persuaded Willie Nelson to organize the benefit concert. Thoughts about this occurred to him at Live Aid in 1985. Nelson took on this task and eventually founded Farm Aid together with Neil Young and John Mellencamp. Dylan appeared on the first two editions in 1985 and 1986 alongside Young, Mellencamp, Johnny Cash, Tom Petty and many others.