Dylan



















I'd not been a fan of Bob Dylan, until a few years ago. When I was growing up I always gravitated towards groups rather than the bloke on his own with just a geetar for company. I've always liked his songs, but they tended to be cover versions by The Byrds, Manfred Mann, Jimi Hendrix. I mean how can you not like the Hendrix cover of All Along The Watchtower, what other recording includes a guitar solo played using a cigarette lighter? (that's a challenge for Shy if he's reading this!)

Having said that, you have to respect somebody who is so revered he is easily identifiable by one of his names, putting him in the company of Elvis, Lennon and McCartney, Marley, Bowie, Prince, Madonna, Kylie.

Kylie?

Anyway, about five years ago I bought the T.V advertised The Essential Bob Dylan, you know the one without Visions of Johanna, the song every Dylan fan puts in their personal Top Five Dylan songs - doh! Up to that point the only Dylan track I owned was the single Lay Lady Lay, which I'd bought as a teenager simply because it sounded rude. Up to buying this double CD I'd always put him down as a typical 'I've suffered for my music and now it's your turn' kind of guy, not as exciting as Neil Young but certainly not as dull as James Taylor or Jackson Browne.

This album changed things, not in some evangelical experience way, although I suspect that's what a lot of Dylan fans get from his music, but in the sense it opened the doors to his vast output. Our library, like most across the country I suspect, hires out CD's at £1.50 a week and within a fortnight I had borrowed and recorded to mp3 most of his 'classic' albums: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, Blood on The Tracks etc.

Eighteen months or so ago he published the first volume of his autobiography which is probably the best musical bio I have read and of course last year saw the simultaneous release of the DVD/CD/TV film by Martin Scorcese of No Direction Home. Even to somebody, like me, whose interest in Dylan had been third hand it was a fascinating piece of cinema, the reluctant star unwilling a lot of the time to give any of his real self to camera.

And then last month he released his latest album, Modern Times. It's his 44th official album, so that's just over one a year since his breakthrough in 1964. And do you know what, it's a bloody good album - I'm not familiar enough with his previous 43 to call it one of his best, but it sounds like somebody who is really enjoying his music and his life. Okay there are a few indulgences, at times he's the guy whose found a new riff and can't let go but overall it was worth the punt.

I'm not desperate to see him live, apparently his concerts are a bit like Bowie's these days in that when he starts the intro to one of his hits it's more a fingers crossed moment rather than a lighter in the air experience, such are his tendencies to 'mess around' with his classics much to the annoyance of his fans. Still, they're his songs and if the constant world touring produces albums like this let him carry on annoying those people who go to concerts wanting all the old hits as they originally sounded.