A belated "happy birthday" to the incomparable Bob Dylan - 70 yesterday, as I'm sure everyone is by now aware; I celebrated by listening to New Morning and Infidels while doing the ironing! Thanks for a lifetime of music Bob.
I was brought up on the Beatles so they were always with me - one of my earliest memories is watching Yellow Submarine at my granddad's house when I was about four - but it was Dylan that gave me my first real taste of how powerful music could be. I remember very clearly listening to 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' on my dad's vinyl copy of Bringing It All Back Home when I was nine years old: it was a good song and I liked it. But I left the record running and then on came 'She Belongs To Me' ... it was like a bomb going off in my head. "She's got everything she needs / She's an artist / She don't look back." That fluid Bruce Langhorne guitar line ... those laid-back drums ... that vocal delivery ... and those lyrics. I'd never heard anything like it in my life - so simple, pure and direct - and in that moment I knew I was going to spend my life searching for that kind of perfection in songwriting.
There was another such "eureka" moment - it came at thirteen when I first gave Blonde On Blonde a proper listen. Already knew and liked 'Rainy Day Women', tapped my foot appreciatively through 'Pledging My Time', then ... there it was. Those simple guitar chords, that groaning harmonica line, before the earth-shattering breakbeat drums and the first line of 'Visions Of Johanna': "Ain't it just like the night / To play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet ..." A single note on a distant organ flooding out the background of the song like sunlight busting through blinds. I was floored: I literally fell to the floor, just couldn't believe my ears. Springsteen has said that the snare hit that begins 'Like A Rolling Stone' was "like someone kicking open the door to your mind", and the wealth of tributes to Dylan this month testifies to the number of people that have had a similar Damascene experience with Bob's music.
Being one of those saddo list fanatics I can't resist the opportunity to add my voice to the hordes currently publishing their Top Ten Favourite Dylan Albums for posterity, so here are mine:
1. Highway 61 Revisited
2. Blood On The Tracks
3. Blonde On Blonde
4. New Morning
5. Bringing It All Back Home
6. Oh Mercy
7. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
8. Desire
9. Infidels
10. Nashville Syline
Here's to you Mr. Dylan - may you stay forever young!
Last changed: May 25 2011 at 9:41 AM
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