In Naples, Bob sings I Believe In You with extraordinary passion, and lets Mr Tambourine Man go dancing on for ages at the end, searching for its swirling essence in minor cadences, harmonica chiming amid magical guitar mayhem. Naples is a great show. One of the 10 best shows I've seen. Maybe one of the six best. Four best? Do you play this silly game too? Barcelona 1984 is elbowing Meadowlands '86 for the lead while one of the early 1988 Jones Beach shows tries to push its way through on the rails and here comes Paris 1990 with a late run . . . In Pisa, the following night, I'm running a little late, but not too late. I swerve sweetly into the historic Piazza dei Cavalieri, and there's that unmistakable figure, head tilted slightly skywards, shoulders slightly hunched, knees bent, perfectly defined muscles rippling in his bare arms and legs . . . The statue's been there for three hundred-odd years. There's no sign of Bob. That's probably because the show's been shifted to the Campo Sportivo, a couple of miles away. It's the local athletics track and it's a balmy Sunday evening out for the locals. The interviews have helped, perhaps, but there can't be more than 1,400 people here, if that. The promoter's looking ever more gloomy. Speaking of gloom, I find myself wondering if a potentially blubsome Bob might be moved to play some "thinking of Suze" songs - Tomorrow Is A Long Time, perhaps - for was it not the artistic promises of Pisa that Suze Rotolo preferred to being with Bob all those years ago? He doesn't, of course. He sings Lay Lady Lay, just like he did on Nashville Skyline. Lay Lady Lay, Bob. I remember you playing that song in Barcelona in 1984 . . . The next night, the crowd in Milan are just fantastic, wildly enthusiastic, 100 per cent committed, just great, and suddenly, there's Bob with the greatest opening sequence of songs I've probably ever seen - bam, bam, bam, bam, bam - Stuck Inside Of Mobile! Wow. Waaaooow!!! It's terrific, impassioned, spine-tingling. It's the archetypal version! He's feeding off the crowd's frenzy and in turn the crowd are going crazier and crazier. It's quite extraordinary, it's totally wild and then, after the fourth, or maybe the fifth, song, the magic suddenly, mysteriously dissolves, and the Milan show becomes like any other of these shows. Good. Really good. But, oh my, those first 20 minutes . . .