Bob Dylan plays East Lansing for first time in nearly 10 years

Bob Dylan, the Nobel Prize-winning musician who helped define the '60s and beyond, returns to East Lansing Tuesday for the first time since 2010.

It will be his fifth performance at Michigan State University since his legendary songwriting career began six decades ago. According to Dylan’s website, his Wharton performance will see him play songs written and recorded between 1964 and 2013.

Dylan fan and Riverwalk Theatre president Jeff Magnuson has seen Dylan six times since 2000.

“It’s too easy when he’s in town. I can’t not see him,” Magnuson said.

He was a late convert to Dylan, taking a deep dive into his tunes after picking up the 1989 album “Oh Mercy” at the former Wherehouse Records in East Lansing. He picked up tickets as soon as he could.

“Dylan’s music was always present, but it wasn’t on the big sort of pop or rock radio I was listening to as a kid,” Magnuson said. “He didn’t make a really big impression on me until the late ’90s.”

The album’s blues-rock sounded timeless, he added. Rolling Stone praised the album as “an atmospheric New Orleans odyssey,” marking it as a welcome departure from his “disastrous” other ’80s entries.

“A thing that is unique to my relationship with Dylan is once I started discovering his modern stuff, I went back in time.”

However, for Magnuson, Dylan’s live performances show the most of his genius on display.

“It doesn’t work for everybody, but it certainly captures my imagination,” Magnuson said.

“He’s never standing still. He is always looking or new ways to express what he wrote and created. I’ve seen Eric Clapton and heard his live songs, but it is not the same as an artist like Dylan who is looking to invent in the moment.”

Magnuson owns Dylan’s complete discography, which spans over 38 studio albums.

“Dylan is so unique in not just how much volume there is, but it is unique in how so much quality and exploration there is. He is not the only one exploring these ideas, but I think he is the only one for six decades who’s done it at such a high level of quality.”

Ozay Moore, president of the All of the Above Hip-Hop Academy, said that Dylan’s influence on music reverberates to the hip-hop industry.

“A lot of times people think hip-hop is its own thing, and it never mingled with other genres. But that’s not true. Studying records and where samples were coming from introduced me to Dylan’s body of work,” Moore said.

What gave Dylan meaning to Moore, aside from his musicianship, was what he did with his artistic platform.

“You start seeing a common thread with antiwar and civil-rights themes. He was a pop icon without a pop formula. He was willing to say and mean something with his platform, fighting the powers that be while beating them at their own game.”

Bob Dylan Live

$58.50

Wharton Center (Cobb Great Hall)

Tuesday, Nov. 5, at 8 p.m.

750 E. Shaw Ln., East Lansing

(517) 432-2000, whartoncenter.com