It is not a question of whether Dylan is a nice person or not. I have no idea. Certainly, people I know who have met him in person say he is polite and pleasant. I dare say others will say differently. The question is whether he has been disrespectful to Mark
Dylan was arranging a tour and invited Mark to support him on that tour. The period set aside for the tour would have been clear at the time the invitation was made. Mark was free to accept or not. There was no pressure on him to do so and certainly no obligation. The conditions relating to the tour (who played first and who played second, the rough time span for each performance, the money side and so on) would have been specified beforehand and, at some stage in the process, a formal contract would have been drawn up and signed by both of them or their authorised agents. There was likely to have been some (what we call in Britain) "to-ing and fro-ing" between both sides - a bit of negotiation and bargaining, before a deal was struck. A tour like this simply doesn't take place because two artists have a chat some time and think it would be a good idea. Whatever deal was struck, Dylan would have kept to his side (and Mark to his).
Whether Mark was preparing to record an album or to tour on his own account is irrelevant. He accepted the invitation and evevrything that goes with it.
In respect of Mark touring the USA on his own in support of PRIVATEERING, the album hasn't even been released there. Unlike Dylan, Mark generally tends not to tour other than when he has an album to promote, so I doubt he will go out on his own in the States until the record company problem is resolved. That's not a criticism and I would love to be proved wrong but it's just the way he does things. Dylan, on the other hand, by the end of this year, will have done something like 2600 concerts since 1986 and tours whether there's a new album out or not. Personally, I wish he had done fewer and had conserved his voice more but that's the way he does things. As I've said before, two performers, both good, who go about things in different ways.
So, Dylan hasn't acknowledged Mark during the concerts. Good grief, sometimes he doesn't even mention his band members by name. It may be a showbiz convention but it's not set in stone. Dylan just doesn't do that sort of stuff very often. He doesn't turn in a standard set of patter every time. He doesn't tell the same jokes every night. As I say, the two men are different - that's what makes it an interesting combination.
I don't read Guy's Q&A page very much at all (probably haven't looked at it in over 6 months) but I do look at the tour diaries every now and then. If you read the details, you will see that the timings of the two bands' travel arrangements are different.
