Discovering Bob Dylan

I intended to write a piece on the song “Desolation Row” by Bob Dylan, a gorgeously epic surreal story set in some Western town at an unspecified time period, and then I started thinking of all the other songs and lyrics that are now permanently etched into my memory, so I changed my perspective and decided to tell you how I came to absolutely love Dylan’s work and how he has influenced a lot of my thinking.

He has started to allow his music on YouTube so I have put together a playlist here, but be warned there are some very long songs on there , although to me every line in every song is worth your attention.

My first exposure to a Bob Dylan song was watching The Byrds play “Mr Tambourine Man” on Thank Your Lucky Stars around 1964/5 , the sound was gorgeous and the words just captured me. Sometime after I heard Bob Dylan singing either “Mr Tambourine Man” or “Blowin’ In The Wind” and I was certainly not impressed.

With The Byrds I had been listening to silk ,with Dylan it was sandpaper.

But the words intrigued me, and I started to listen to Dylan’s words and bought a book of all his lyrics in a pink hardback from Sweetens in Preston and I read and read

“A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall” was written at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis and was Dylan just listing every image that came into his head before the potential end of the world.

Born Robert Zimmerman and a follower of Woody Guthrie , he also was a fan of the great Welsh tone poet Dylan Thomas and took his forename as his recording surname.

I can’t remember the first Bob Dylan album I bought, it was either “Desire” or “Blood on the Tracks” both crammed with epic songs such as “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” , “Isis” , “Joey” and “Hurricane” released as an eight and a half minute single.

The song that kicked this post off was “Desolation Row” which even from the title is not going to be a happy journey but the images in there are stunning. This is the opening verse , and stands alone as wonderful poetry , but takes you into another world when you listen. It is the closing song from Highway 61 Revisited and you can read the full lyrics here.

“They’re selling postcards of the hanging

They’re painting the passports brown

The beauty parlor is filled with sailors

The circus is in town

Here comes the blind commissioner

They’ve got him in a trance

One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker

The other is in his pants

And the riot squad they’re restless

They need somewhere to go

As Lady and I look out tonight

From Desolation Row”

This is the sort of thing that hooks me on dylan. He can be surreal, he can tell a story , he can write a love song.

Eventually his sandpaper vocals became an acceptable foil for his amazing engrossing lyrics.

In recent years Dylan still has produced lyrical epics, “Tempest” a simple tune that lasts for fourteen minutes about the sinking of the Titanic, and then “Murder Most Foul” sixteen-minutes on modern history starting with the assassination of John F Kennedy. He actually gave this away digitally so it’s what we lead with on this item.

As I write this I have the playlist going but it’s still on “Desolation Row” and it’s so long that I will not finish it, also the Titanic gets a mention as well, plus Ezra Pound and TS Eliot.

Dylan takes me to some incredible places by listening to his albums. Check out that playlist you can come with me to places you have never seen or imagined, yet may have a strange familiarity.