Bob Dylan at 70: Still alive

My favorite song of Dylan’s is either Desolation Row or Idiot Wind (the one on Bootlegs 1-3), 2 of his best and most criminally underrated songs (understandable though since he’s written SO many great songs to choose from).

As for his later career I’d say Not Dark Yet and Mississippi are his finest.

Happy Birthday Mr. Dylan!!
May we get to share many more of them with you…

“58 but she says she’s 64..” or something like that the song went.
How I dreaded listening to all those early lps. How could any one find anything pleasureful with that off key high pitched nasal whine of his? Just kind of strumming away with no rhythm, no beat. And the words…whadda that’s suppose to mean? It was 1964. I was eight years old when an older brother by 12 years endocrined me to Dylan. Peter Paul & Mary….yeah…OK. What pre-schooler- half a century later-isn’t spellbound by some mystical dragon?
But this stuff?? I can’t count the dozens of nights we fell asleep to Bob’s pre-Self Portrait lps…all of them. Frequently stacking two or three lps on the Tonecrest cosole at very low levels. Falling asleep to them in the bedroom we shared. There were a few songs..very few on the eary lps that I actualy liked. That same brother and a sister, 10 years older, both took me to see Dylan at Kiel Opera House in St Louis in ’64 or ’65. I thought..OK..he might sound better in person. To be honest I remember going and recall but a few of the acoustics pieces he performed. Something about it’s all right ma…the gates of Eden and for sure, another about some tambourine. Then suddenly, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde,…..hmmmmm.
This guy might have something here. Our music transcended as my brother bought the sheet music for The Beatle’s You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away and listened to my Hey Jude 45 over and over. Lennon’s Imagine he liked as well as his Oh Yoko. Wonder who inspired the prominant harmonica riff in that particular diddy? It would be years later when Bob took to the gosphel and the style had lost it’s grip on a pair of sibblings. Despite the creative shift, I distinctly remember one Christmas to hap hazzardly replace the well worn scratch riddled lps of my brothers Dylan material. His present from me was Columbia’s double lp, Dylan’s Greatest Hits.
My present from by brother that Christmas…the very same. That was 40 years ago and now driving a small panel van over the road into the wee hours of the morning, hundreds of miles from home very selective with age. Among the cd’s which carry me through the lone nights..Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. As both the sun and moon arc across the windshield one tends to do a lot of thinking. Like the local pub I infrequently visit and the barmaid [whom I'm nearly old enough to be her father] and the 60′s affliction we share. And how her sibblings play instruments and how she wishes she had that natural rhythm. My remark of
“all those silly hippies who named their sons Dylan” drew her immedate, intense, responce of
“MY son’s name is Dylan.”
As the mile markers wisk past like shooting gallery thimbles, memories and incentives glow and slowly fade. Like seeing to it that 9 years ago- Knocking On Heavens Door was played at my brother’s funeral. Sort of the ballad of a thin man, literally, revisiting highway 61. Just pledging my time, like a rolling stone, when that subterrainean homesick blues often sets in.

My favorite is Visions of Johanna, and all the rest are my second favorite. Love you BOB, happy birthday!!!!

My favorite song has to be Idiot Wind. A painful time in my life not to be forgotten. As what “scholars” say was a painful time in Mr.Dylan’s life. I don;t know if that is true and it really doesn’t matter. He saw my heart and soul. Happy Birthday Mr.Dylan,may you stay forever young.

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