February 2002, Highway 61, by Eric Smith

At the Dylan concert I saw Sweet Marie’s tattoo for the first time. Given its anatomical location, propriety did not permit me to gawk—I averted my eyes and gazed deep into hers. Later, after making inquiries I learned it was a large, spidery, winged angel that crawled out and hovered above the considerable décolletage her costume that night presented. Some earth mother figure, she later confessed she’d left the concert early out of embarrassment—not for herself but for the poet laureate of rock and roll. “Why,” many people demanded to know, “did he continue to tour?”