Bob Dylan Played A Show For One Person
Yesterday, Bob Dylan played a show at Philadelphia’s Academy Of Music, and there was exactly one person in the audience: Fredrik Wikingsson, a 41-year-old Swedish superfan. Dylan and his band played four songs: Buddy Holly’s “Heartbeat,” Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill,” Chuck Wills’s “It’s Too Late (She’s Gone),” and an as-yet-unidentified blues song. Wikingsson liked it a lot.
As Rolling Stone reports, the show was recorded for Experiment Ensam, a Swedish film series in which people experience things alone that they’d normally experience with big crowds. Dylan was paid for the show, though Wikingsson doesn’t know how much. Technically, then, he wasn’t really playing a show for just Wikingsson. It was for Wikingsson, the camera crew, and whoever ends up watching the final document. Also, it sort of sounds like Wikingsson just got to watch a soundcheck, since Dylan played a public show later that night. Still, Wikingsson has nothing but effusive things to say about the experience: “I was smiling so much it was like I was on ecstasy. My jaw hurt for hours afterwards because I couldn’t stop smiling.”
The film from the show will be up on YouTube 12/15.