For everyone from business tycoons to athletes to performers, the question of when to leave the stage is fraught with complications. Do you go out on top and forgo further glory, or keep going and risk tarnishing your reputation? For the fans of Bob Dylan, it's a question asked with some urgency, says John Jurgensen in The Wall Street Journal, as the 69-year-old songwriting legend — never known for having a "conventionally pretty" voice — recently has been "sounding like a scatting Cookie Monster." Is Dylan a "hippie dinosaur" who should pack it in, or is he still capable of giving fans their money's worth?
Dylan should cut back his concert schedule: Bob Dylan is "a living legend and the greatest songwriter of our times," says Scott Mervis in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he "needs to realize that his 'concert voice' is brutal from doing 100 gigs a year and that his paying fans deserve better." He should "give it a rest," do at most 20 shows a year, and "drink some tea with honey" to "bring that dying instrument back to life."
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