A few weeks back, Barack Obama unveiled his yearly summer songs playlist, which mixed fresh hits like Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em,” and Charli XCX’s “365” with old favorites like the Miracles’ “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me,” the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go,” and the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”
However, Obama’s most surprising pick was Bob Dylan‘s “Silvio,” a 1988 song co-written by Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter that appeared on Down in the Groove, a strong candidate for the single worst album of Dylan’s 62-year recording career. To be fair, “Silvio” has the dubious distinction of being the best song on the terrible album, and it was a regular part of his live show from 1988 to 2004.
He hadn’t played it a single time in 20 years until it came back Friday night as the opening song of his set at an Outlaw Tour stop in Somerst, Wisconsin, in a new arrangement. The Outlaw Tour was off the road for the past month, meaning this was Dylan’s first gig since Obama released his song list. Did one cause the other? The odds seem fairly decent, but Dylan doesn’t exactly have a habit of sharing his motivations for things. We can only speculate.
Dylan rarely praises politicians of any party, but he made a rare exception November 4, 2008, minutes after Obama was declared the 44th President of the United States. “Me, I was born in 1941,” he told the crowd at the University of Minnesota, his alma mater. “That’s the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. I’ve been living in a world of darkness ever since. But it looks like things are going to change now.”
Two years later, Dylan came to Obama’s White House to perform “The Times They Are-A Changin’” at a special concert commemorating the civil rights movement. Unlike all the other performers at the show, he didn’t attend rehearsals, take a photo with Obama, or spend any time with him before or after the concert.
“[Dylan] finishes the song, steps off the stage — I’m sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves,” Obama told Rolling Stone in 2010. “And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat.” (They presumably had a little more time together in 2012 when Obama gave Dylan the Presidential Medal of Freedom in another White House ceremony.)
The return of “Silvio” to the set is reminiscent of Dylan’s decision to bring “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” back after a seven-year break last month, just 11 days after it appeared in the trailer for his upcoming biopic A Complete Unknown. It’s the only song Timothée Chalamet sings in the trailer. Was this just a coincidence? Once again, we simply can’t know for sure.
There were no other surprises during Dylan’s show in Wisconsin, though “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” did make a return appearance. The tour resumes tonight in Tinley Park, Illinois, and wraps up September 17 in Buffalo, New York. He heads to Europe in early October for a long run of shows that wrap up with a three-night stand at London’s Royal Albert Hall.