BOB DYLAN FEATURE
pop music in the 605 which concentrated on boy-girl relationships. He also wrote some of the best love songs we had heard. which were played and sung with real tenderness. But allied to these explorations of desire and loss. Dylan had a great sense of humour. 1 defy anyone not to laugh when they hear ‘Leopardskin Pill Box Hat’.
During my first year at Edinburgh University. Dylan played the (then) ABC cinema on Lothian Road. It was 20 May 1966. to be precise. That ABC audience knows now, if it didn’t then. that it had witnessed one of the defining moments in 20th century music.
Dylan’s appearance in 1966 was incredible. No longer a country boy in jeans and a peaked cap. he was a frail figure in a black suit. Cuban heel boots and a white face framed by a mass of curly hair that seemed as wide as his shoulders. Unsteady on his feet, he nevertheless remained totally focused on each song, becoming more animated as the concert progressed. On stage with him. Pennebaker filmed some electrifying moments. later edited into Eat The Document, which captured the delirious truth of the trip that took Dylan to the brink.
Whatever he was on at the time, Dylan managed to survive this gruelling tour and continue to write great poetry. He was a combination of the perfect rock ’n’ roll hero and Beat generation guru. We didn’t expect him to live long.
Although his words and music were an endless source of fascination. the changing appearance of Dylan was crucially part of his attraction. Consider the greatest album covers and several of the best images will be Dylan’s: Freewheelin ', Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 6/ Revisited and, the first gate fold double-album. Blonde on Blonde.
The androgynous appearance of Dylan in some photos is remarkable, but it was as the embodiment of cool that he exerted a powerful influence. The permanent shades and the chain smoking, the dark clothes with the occasional eruption of a striped or polka-dot shirt. and of course. the black leatherjacket. jeans and biker boots. It was the way he looked and the way he sounded.
What drives Dylan today is not the need for money but a genuine desire to play for audiences. At his best. he finds ways for the songs to retain their freshness when sung by a 53-year-old performer. and his phrasing and delivery reflect this. For proof. look no further than his recent Unplugged session for MTV. In some respects this performance is uncannin resonant of 1966. His version of ‘With God On Our Side’ is as good a rendition of the song as he has ever given.
As he breathes new life into his work in this way it is reason enough for anyone to see him, whether it be the first time or the 50th. Presented with the opportunity to watch Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, who wouldn’t want to see him? Hopefully Dylan will retain this compulsion to be on the road performing, maybe without a back-up band, playing piano, guitar and harmonica. Then the media can start calling him one of the great blues singers. And this time they’ll be right. 0
Jim Hickey is a former director of the Edinburgh Film/rouse and now an independent producer with Boxcar Productions. Bob Dylan plays the Edinburgh Playhouse on Thurs 6 and Fri 7, and Glasgow S. E. C. C. on Sun 9April. All dates sold out.
Electric, ma
hen Bob Dylan last rolled into Edinburgh he was halfway through the most infamous tour in rock history. At his most iconographic — wrapped in black leather and shades. all caustic wit and cigarettes — Dylan seemed to be burning up on a creative streak. The previous fifteen months of incessant writing. touring and recording had produced Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and the then unreleased Blonde on Blonde. Together. these three albums redefined songwriting and transformed Dylan from folk- darling into bona fide pop phenomenon. forming a 605 trinity with the Stones and the Beatles.
The tone for the tour had been set the previous July when Dylan stepped on stage for the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Dylan appeared. not as a work-shirted protest singer. but a pencil-thin. black-clad alien hipster who kick started
‘Maggie‘s Farm’ with a belting electric backing.
The audience was neatly ripped in two.
A tape of the concert at Edinburgh’s ABC cinema perfectly illustrates a typical 1966 show. Screams of recognition greet ‘She Belongs to Me’, the first song in a stoned acoustic set. Then unreleased. ‘Fourth Time Around’ and ‘Visions of Johanna’ are followed attentively. with the crowd laughing. obviously delighted at the wordplay. When Dylan discovers a broken reed in his harmonica. an audience member hands up his own. ‘Very kind. Scottish one. huh‘?’ So far. so good.
Disgruntled rumblings follow the intermission. An amphetamined demeanour has
appeared along with the backing band’s stack of
amps. ‘Tell Momma’ and a vehement ‘1 Don’t Believe You’ are well received. but by the close of ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’. the slow hand-clapping has begun. An immense ‘Leopardskin Pillbox Hat’ is greeted by boos and jeers. ‘What happened to poetry?’ ‘Fuckin’ traitor’ and ‘Ya fanny’ are some of the audience’s critical responses. Oblivious. Dylan and the band drown the protestors out. clearly revelling in the majesty of the sound they’re making. before finishing up with ‘Rolling Stone’.
Something happened in Edinburgh and the city didn’t realise it. Last thoughts to the Scottish Daily Express’s man at the cultural frontline. ‘I suspect him of being a big fake . . . but for heaven’s sake don’t ban this weasley little man.’ wrote journalist Gordon Reed on the day of the concert. ‘TIME WILL SHOW HIM FOR WHAT HE’S REALLY WORTH.’ (DL)
GLOBE PHOTOS
DYLAN: 30 YEARS
Damien Love charts the key albums in a long and lnturlatlng career.
The Freewheelln’ Bob Dylan (1963) Dylan’s second album (the first consisted largely of folk and blues standards). Dylan was soon unhappy with the lyrical content, wanting more ‘finger-pointin’ songs.
The Times They Are A-changln’ (1964) Evil judges, blind patriotism. racist murders, despair, regret, hunger, suicide -— not relentlessly grim but pretty close. Bringing It All Back Home (1965) Shaking off the finger-pointing with the previous year’s Another Side. Dylan went electric, delving into Kerouac, Chuck Berry and Rimbaud, and coming up with a series of visionary ghost-poems. ' Highway 61 Revisited (1965) Making the previous album sound like a blueprint. This was weary, vicious, hymnal, sneen’ng and bewitching - the pinnacle of amphetamined razor music. Until . . . Blonde on Blonde (l966) Regarded by Dylan as the only time he captured ‘that thin, wild mercury sound’ he was hearing in his head. Speeding and untouchable, something had to give.
John Wesley Harding (1968) Returning from the hiatus after the legendary motorcycle crash into a post Sgt Pepper world of psychedelics and studio trickery. Dylan boggles everyone’s mind with a sparse, near acoustic collection of Biblical parables. Dylan continued to plough the rural furrow for several more years.
Blood on the Tracks (1975) The divorce album. Mature and haunting, this is a beautiful sigh of a record by a world-weary Dylan, which freed him at last from the ‘60s artist’ pigeon-hole.
Slow Train Coming (1979) No one saw it coming, though Dylan’s conversion to Christianity upset as many people as his going electric, if not more. Fired by belief, Dylan took the heroically suicidal decision to drop all old material from his live sets. lnfidels ( 1983) Cited by some as a return to Judaism, Dylan rehashed the album shortly before its release, leaving several standout tracks on the studio shelf.
0h Mercy! (1989) A rumbling whisper from a world that Dylan reckoned was on the brink of collapse. Widely held to be his finest work since Blood on the Tracks. Good As 1 Been to You (1992) Thirty years on, Dylan goes acoustic and returns to the vibe of his first album; one man, a guitar and another fistful of standards.
GLOBE PHOTOS
The List 24 Mar-6 Apr 1995 13