MUSICAL: MATTHEW MURPHY. POSNER: BRYAN GIARDINELLI. LABRINTH: JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC.INSIDE LOOKAustin Scott
and Kimber
Elayne Sprawl
in Girl From the
North Country.He’s Not There
Why Bob Dylan stayed hands-off for the production of his Broadway musical
BY REBECCA MILZOFFS
EVEN YEARS AGO, BOB DYLAN’S
longtime manager Jeff Rosen sat down
for a cup of tea in London with pro-
ducer Tristan Baker and Steven Lappin
(then creative director at Sony Music
Television) to discuss a nascent idea: a
Dylan musical. Rosen already had experience with
one — Twyla Tharp’s The Times They Are A-Chan-
gin’, which debuted on Broadway in 2006 and ran
for under a month. Still, a source close to Dylan’s
team says there was openness to try again.
The result is Girl From the North Country, cur-
rently in previews at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre
and opening March 5, following acclaimed runs in
London (the Old Vic and West End theaters) and
New York (the Public Theater). Award-winning
Irish playwright Conor McPherson, who wrote
the book, says he wasn’t immediately convinced
it would be “a slam-dunk.” McPherson had never
worked on a musical before — and wasn’t exactly
a Dylan obsessive. “I was a little bit mystified,”
he recalls. “[Dylan’s] music is so thoughtful and
wide-ranging, it felt like such vast territory. I just
thought, ‘I’m sure someone will do a good job on
that, but I’m not sure I know how to.’ ”
However, he submitted a treatment for the musi-
cal, and according to the Dylan team source, the
singer loved the premise: a group of down-on-their-
luck vagabonds who pass through a boarding house
in Depression-era Minnesota. Throughout the show,
the diverse cast performs over 20 of Dylan’s songs —
and while a few are recognizable hits (“Like a Roll-
ing Stone,” “The Hurricane,” “Forever Young”),
most are alluringly reinvented and lesser-known,
leaning on tracks from the artist’s late-1970s Chris-
tian conversion period. “What Conor had was a
fully imagined idea that didn’t have anything to do
with who Bob is,” says the source. “It was a natural
thing to say yes to.”
But the most surprising element of the produc-
tion may not even be the music itself: Dylan was
totally hands-off in the show’s creation. After
submitting the initial treatment, McPherson found
out Dylan had granted him free and full use of his
catalog — and shortly thereafter, received a care
package of nearly 50 Dylan albums delivered to his
door. “[Dylan] spends a lot of the year on the road,”
says the source. “He just trusts he found the right
person and doesn’t try to make them do something
else.” It was an unusual move for Broadway, where
musicals involving living artists’ catalogs typically
include some level of input from the artist, ranging
from attending rehearsals to coming onboard as
producers. (Sony Music Entertainment, Sony/ATV
and Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries — owner
of Warner Music Group — are among the new
show’s producers.)
Dylan hasn’t been entirely absent, though.
Around Christmas of 2018, he showed up to a
Public Theater production an hour before his own
headlining show uptown at the Beacon Theatre,
telling the cast how moved he was. McPherson
missed his visit. “I haven’t met him,” he says with
a laugh, “and I probably never will.”ARTIST APPROVEDMIKE POSNER ON
LABRINTH’S GIFTS
The “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” singer
writes why American audiences
should pay closer attention to his
longtime friend and collaboratorI first met Labs in 2009 when I arrived,
jet-lagged, to a run-down warehouse in
London, which housed his studio. He was
totally obsessed with his current project.
His laptop, keyboard, guitar and bass
were the only things he paid attention to.
When I walked in the room for our ses-
sion, which had been arranged through
managers and record labels, he had no
idea who I was. It didn’t result in anything
good because we had it backward: He was
producing music for my debut album, and
he was better than me. He’d sing a melodic
idea and I’d repeat it into the microphone,
only it sounded worse when I did it. With
the possible exception of Bruno Mars,
Labrinth (above, right) is the most talented
musical soul I’ve ever encountered.
Labrinth and I both released our debut
albums in 2010. We were both intrinsically
shy kids pretending not to be, and both re-
ally just wanted to stay in that studio. Since
then, I released three more studio albums,
a collaboration album with blackbear, two
poetry projects and walked across Amer-
ica. Labs, on the other hand, became
something of an enigma. Periodically, his
production would pop up on other artists’
albums. In 2014, he blessed the world
with what is maybe his best song to date,
“Jealous,” and also made a collaboration
album with Sia and Diplo as LSD last year.
But three months ago, after seven
years, Labrinth finally released a new solo
album, Imagination & The Misfit Kid. The
album twists and turns: Its chord changes
are that of a mastermind, and its songs
almost never repeat the chorus after a
bridge, instead mutating into different
songs. The snare selections are impec-
cable, the guitar tones are aural porn.
Listening to the album changed my mood
from tired to rapturous.
The title Imagination & The Misfit Kid
seems to describe Labs’ strange but pure
relationship with wherever his songs mate-
rialize from. Perhaps it’s as much a curse as
it is a blessing — it’s the imagination that
makes Labs a misfit. He certainly does not
fit in. He’s different. But he’s special.34 BILLBOARD • FEBRUARY 29, 2020