TV REVIEW : Legacy Lost at Tribute to Dylan

They came to New York’s Madison Square Garden determined to salute Bob Dylan--more than two dozen musicians and an estimated 16,000 fans--but they failed to honor his legacy.

The biggest surprise, in retrospect, wasn’t that controversial Irish singer Sinead O’Connor was booed off the stage at the star-studded event, which was telecast live Friday around the country on a pay-per-view basis.

Numerous Catholic organizations and hundreds of individual viewers protested O’Connor’s actions Oct. 3 when she tore up a photo of the Pope during an appearance on “Saturday Night Live.”

The surprise--in the context of a night designed to pay tribute to the man who had made rock a forum for ideas and debate--is that the rest of the musicians in the show let the crowd get away with silencing her.

The 3 1/2-hour concert was only about half over when the O’Connor incident occurred, yet no one following her to the stage defended O’Connor’s right to be heard or chastised the audience for its bullying tactics.

Whatever her sociopolitical views, O’Connor is one of the most acclaimed young artists in rock. She received five Grammy nominations in 1991, including best record of the year. She wasn’t at Madison Square Garden to make a speech but to sing a Dylan song, “I Believe in You.”

It was an inspired choice because the song is a pledge to be strong in the face of attack, written during a period in the late ‘70s when Dylan himself was frequently booed by his own fans because of the born-again Christian tone in his work.

Sample lines:

And they, they look at me and frown

They’d like to drive me from this town

They don’t want me around

‘Cause I believe in you.

O’Connor--who has previously been involved in controversies ranging from refusing to allow the national anthem to be played at one of her concerts in New Jersey to attacking the record industry for promoting “false and materialistic values”--never got a chance to sing the song.

Introduced by Kris Kristofferson as someone whose name has become “synonymous with courage and integrity,” O’Connor was greeted with scattered cheers but mostly boos.

As the booing continued, O’Connor, 25, stood motionless on stage until Kristofferson tried to comfort her. “Don’t let the bastards get you down,” he said, his words picked up by the microphone.

“I’m not down,” she answered in a steady voice. But the hostility took its toll.

Apparently too shaken to attempt the Dylan song, O’Connor launched into a defiant, a cappella version of the song she had performed on “Saturday Night Live”: Bob Marley’s “War,” a battle cry for equality that was taken from a speech by Haile Selassie, the late Ethiopian emperor.

Afterward, Kristofferson again tried to comfort her as she walked off the stage in tears--to the sound of more mixed boos and cheers.

It was a galvanizing segment in an otherwise mostly predictable parade of performers, each doing one or two Dylan songs, and most seemingly so aware of time restrictions that they neither personalized the evening by saying anything about Dylan nor paused long enough to dig into the emotional fiber of the material.

The notable exception, artistically, was Neil Young, who followed O’Connor and gave the evening’s most spirited performance on guitar-dominated versions of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and “All Along the Watchtower.”

O’Connor did return at the end of the evening when the whole cast joined Dylan on “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” but she stood rather anonymously in a crowd of backing singers.

The Irish performer wasn’t available after the concert. However, Elaine Schock, her publicist, said Saturday that O’Connor had spent an hour earlier Friday doing a live radio broadcast with callers, defending her attacks on the Roman Catholic Church and its stance on such issues as divorce, abortion and birth control--a stance that she feels contributes to child abuse and other problems.

“The whole purpose of tearing the Pope’s picture was to provoke discussion and she has certainly succeeded in that,” Schock added. “She was in good spirits after the broadcast because she had gotten her point across. She was looking forward to the concert.”

During the concert, more than two dozen musicians sang 30 Dylan songs, most of them taken from his ‘60s catalogue. The lineup included John Mellencamp (“Like a Rolling Stone”), Stevie Wonder (“Blowin’ in the Wind”), Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder (“Masters of War”), Tracy Chapman (“The Times They Are A-Changin’ ”), Lou Reed (the little-known “Foot of Pride”), Johnny Cash and June Carter (“It Ain’t Me, Babe”), Chrissie Hynde (“I Shall Be Released”), Eric Clapton (“Love Minus Zero”), George Harrison (“If Not for You”), Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (“License to Kill”) and Roger McGuinn (“Mr. Tambourine Man”).

Dylan, looking as uncomfortable as usual on television, appeared at the end, singing “Song for Woody,” a song from his 1962 debut album, and “It’s All Right, Ma,” which elicited strong reaction during this election year when he got to the line: “Even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.”

The concert, designed by Columbia Records to mark the 30th anniversary of Dylan’s first album, was a marvel logistically and a grand gesture thematically--but perhaps too grand. By reducing the number of artists and having them interact more with Dylan on stage, the evening could have been more affecting.

As it is, the evening, ironically, may be remembered more as the night Dylan’s legacy was ignored than the night it was lived up to.