The 9 best moments from Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan at the Hollywood Bowl

For the 2nd clip successful little than a year, Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan played the Hollywood Bowl connected Friday night, bringing unneurotic 2 legends of American opus connected 1 stage. The performance — really Nelson’s 3rd caller sojourn to the Bowl aft his 90th-birthday bash successful 2023 — was portion of the yearly traveling Outlaw Music Festival, which volition support Nelson, present 92, and Dylan, who’ll crook 84 adjacent week, connected the roadworthy done mid-September. Here are 9 highlights from the show:

1. Last year’s Outlaw circuit stopped astatine the Bowl successful precocious July, which astatine that clip meant Nelson didn’t person to ward disconnected the chilly May grey that inevitably settles aft acheronian implicit the Cahuenga Pass. Here, a time aft reportedly suffering from a acold successful Chula Vista, Nelson kept lukewarm successful a stylish achromatic puffer overgarment to spell with his signature reddish bandanna.

2. John Stamos played percussion successful Nelson’s six-man set Friday — a somewhat lower-key relation than the salient guitar-and-vocals spot helium often holds down these days successful Mike Love’s touring Beach Boys. Yet the TV prima looked pleased arsenic punch to beryllium backmost there, shaking a shaker arsenic Nelson opened his set, arsenic always, with “Whiskey River.” Also connected hand, filling successful for Nelson’s lad Lukas was singer-guitarist Waylon Payne, who sang pb successful a moving mentation of Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night” — the folk-soul masterpiece made a deed successful 1970 by Payne’s mother, the precocious Sammi Smith.

3. My favourite of Nelson’s styles to perceive him bash astatine this constituent successful his career, with a dependable and a soloing manus arsenic escaped arsenic they’ve ever been, is the spectral country-jazz mode of “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” and “Always connected My Mind,” which gave him a brace of No. 1 state hits betwixt March 1981 and May 1982. On Friday, helium nailed precocious notes you mightiness not person expected him to successful the erstwhile and utilized the second to amusement disconnected the rhythmic daring of his enactment readings. Both were achingly beautiful.

4. Nelson didn’t execute thing from his latest album, “Oh What a Beautiful World,” which came retired past period and collects his interpretations of a twelve Rodney Crowell tunes. (By immoderate counts, it’s Nelson’s 77th solo workplace LP — and the 15th he’s dropped since 2015.) He did, however, bash a chopped from his second-most-recent effort: a stately rendition of Tom Waits’ “Last Leaf,” successful which helium rhymes “They accidental I got staying power” with “I’ve been present since Eisenhower.” In fact, Nelson’s been present since FDR.

5. The large lawsuit successful Dylanology betwixt past year’s Outlaw circuit and this year’s was, of course, James Mangold’s Oscar-nominated biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” which inspired a wide resurgence of involvement successful Dylan’s euphony — peculiarly the aboriginal worldly Timothée Chalamet performs successful the movie. Perhaps that’s wherefore Dylan is singing “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” connected the roadworthy again for the archetypal clip successful six years, including astatine the Bowl, wherever helium gave the opus a jaunty rockabilly vibe. (Anyone wondering wherefore Chalamet wasn’t astatine Friday’s gig intelligibly hasn’t seen the TikToks of him wilding retired aft his beloved Knicks defeated the Celtics astatine New York’s Madison Square Garden.)

6. A rare-ish spot of signifier banter from His Bobness, directed toward an assemblage subordinate adjacent the beforehand row: “What are you eating down there? What is it?”

7. The full constituent of going to spot Dylan play is to beryllium delighted — oregon to beryllium outraged, oregon baffled — by his determination to reinvent songs truthful profoundly etched into the past of stone music. Yet I was inactive thrilled by however radically helium made implicit immoderate of his classics here: “Desolation Row” was agleam and frisky, portion a sultry “All Along the Watchtower” sounded similar Dire Straits doing ’80s R&B.

8. In summation to Nelson and Dylan, Outlaw’s West Coast limb besides features 2 younger roots-music acts successful Billy Strings and Sierra Hull. (Later successful the summer, the circuit volition prime up the likes of Nathaniel Rateliff, Sheryl Crow, Waxahatchee and Wilco, depending connected the city.) Strings, who’s been bringing bluegrass to arenas lately — and whose tattooed arms meshed seamlessly with the sleeves of his tie-dyed T-shirt — sang “California Sober,” which helium recorded successful 2023 arsenic a duet with Nelson, and offered a haunting instrumentality connected “Summertime” from “Porgy and Bess.”

9. A erstwhile kid prodigy connected the mandolin, Hull opened the evening flexing her Berklee-trained chops successful a bid of lickety-split bluegrass numbers that got aboriginal arrivers whistling with approval. But she besides showed disconnected a winsome popular sensibility successful originals similar “Muddy Water” and “Spitfire” — astir “my spitfire granny backmost successful Tennessee,” she said — and successful a yearning screen of “Mad World” by Tears for Fears.