Bob Dylan keeps on going. Though there have been hints that he may announce a retirement, at least from touring, at the end of his 2021-2024 Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour, when he will be eighty-three, there is no certainty beyond life’s inevitability. So it is that, after the artistic triumph of hisRead More
It’s curious how we seem to value the recordings of songs over the songs themselves. That is, in times past it was the song itself that mattered and the song that has survived. There might be a known composer, there might be a singer’s name attached to it on sheet music (“as sung by”), orRead More
It’s curious how a fine work of art immediately catches the eye. You walk through a gallery, and there is that picture at the far end whose ideal resolution of form and feeling stops all else except its contemplation. You pick up a book at random and on opening at any page a phrase isRead More
Back in 2017 I produced a post, Covering Bob, on cover versions of Bob Dylan’s songs. It was accompanied by a Spotify list that brought together other people’s versions of Dylan’s songs in chronological order of composition, no song appearing more than once though artists could recur. I rather liked the conceit behind it andRead More
At the start of 2020 Bob Dylan might have been looking forward to a quiet year. He had a few new recordings lined up or completed. There would be around 100 concerts – par for the course. He might weld a few gates, sip a little more whiskey, and rest a while. He was goingRead More
Among the ugliest of words to have been created to fit the digital age is ‘webinar’ (the ugliest of all is, of course, ‘blog’). It’s a word that highlights the parodic nature of so much of online life. In the real world we had seminars; in the world that imitates it, there are webinars. ThatRead More
Among the many allusions, startling images and examples of mischievous wordplay that litter Bob Dylan’s new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, this gem from ‘My Own Version of You’ is a favourite: I pick a number between one and two And I ask myself, “What would Julius Caesar do?” What is Dylan asking the listenerRead More
Bob Dylan is the man for a global crisis. His album Love and Theft was unwittingly released on 11 September 2001, a cornerstone of culture at a time when the world seemed to be tumbling. Now, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic that has see a quarter of the world’s population retreat behind itsRead More
Among the notable people whose passing has been marked over the past couple of months, some may have missed the mention given to Dave Bartholomew, who died in June at the age of 100. He was one of the great behind-the-scenes figures of American popular music. A musician, songwriter, arranger and producer, he helped createRead More
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, newly released theatrically and on Netflix, opens with a film by Georges Méliès. Escamotage d’une dame chez Robert-Houdin (1896), known in English as The Vanishing Lady, features Méliès in his familiar role as a magician, placing a woman (Jehanne d’Alcy) under a cloth and, throughRead More