ARTIST FEATURE: Bob Dylan
- Posted on January 25, 2007 11:14 PM
- 0 comments
A Date with Bob Dylan
If someone asked you to list your top skills, how many pages would you fill? One... maybe two?Not many people have a list like this one:
- Singer / songwriter
- Author
- Poet
- Artist
- Actor
- Screenwriter
- Disc Jockey
- Vocals
- Guitar
- Harmonica
- Keyboard
- Musical legend
Then again, we aren't all Bob Dylan.
Born as Robert Allen Zimmerman it's a god thing he changed his name. Well, think about it... 'Zimmerman' doesn't quite have the same ring to it. He's also been known as Elston Gunn, Blind Boy Grunt, Lucky Wilbury, Elmer Johnson, Sergei Petrov and Jack Frost. Take your pick folks.
You know that stupid question that journalists often ask in interviews; If you could invite any five people over for dinner, dead or alive... who would you choose? Bob has always been at the top of my list. Imagine it, you serve up a traditional dish from his home town, Duluth, Minnesota, USA and spend the evening chatting about his sixty-five plus years on the planet. You could gas bag about his music career, the American unrest that inspired much of his earlier work. Maybe you could pop 'Blowin' in the Wind' or 'The Times They are a-Changin' on the CD player and discuss they way in which they became anti-war anthems.
As you sip pre-dinner drinks you could tell him how you grew up with his music (didn't we all?). You could explain why certain songs evoke memories from long ago - as crystal clear as if they only happened yesterday. In only a way that a song can.
It certainly wouldn't be your average conversation. A man with so much creativity and experience definitely has a lot to say. Be it through lyrics, a guitar or film. He's bridged the genres of Folk, Rock, Blues, Country and Gospel and has toured with an interchanging backing line-up since the late 80s. If you want an extra memorable dining experience you could invite Paul Simon, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Jack White and Eric Clapton along too. That way, they could tell you what it was like to perform with him.
No doubt you'd banter well into the evening... the man came from modest roots and while he describes the way in which the Cuban missile dilemma occurred just after his freewheeling'' song 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' was performed, you could add it to the playlist.
Wouldn't it be great to ask what it as like to live as an increasingly famous musician in the 60s. What was it like performing with folk legend Joan Baez? What about performing at the March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech? Wow.
You'd flick the CD ahead to Rock & Roll tune 'I Don't Believe You' and play along on your air guitar as you serve up a cheese board. By this time it'd be getting late, but squeeze in a few questions about the sermon the Pope once gave based on 'Blowin' in the Wind'.
Over dessert you might be tempted to put 'Mr Tambourine Man' on repeat. Once just isn't enough. Crank up 'Like a Rollin' Stone' as you touch on his motorbike accident in 1966 and the broken neck that stopped him in his tracks and forced him to re-evaluate his creative direction.
As you down 'After Dinner Mints' the choice of album should be offered up to Dylan. 'Desire', 'Blood on the Tracks', 'Street Legal', 'Slow Train Coming', 'Good As I Been to You' or 'The World Gone Wrong'. Yep, there's a lot to choose from and he doesn't look set to stop singing anytime soon. Dylan's most recent studio album 'Modern Times' topped the charts in America. Not bad for an old guy.
He's now a radio DJ (check out BBC Radio 2 for downloads) and the announcement of his 2007 tour has fans gagging for more. it's hard to blame them really. With a tune-packed career behid him Dylan rarely performs the same set twice. Perhaps you could close your dinner party with a sneak preview. But, some dinner parties are never meant to happen (if it does, can I come?). Some concerts however, are and when it comes to an artist as expressive as Bob Dylan takes the stage, it's as good as a one on one conversation.
If there's ever a cross generational concert, this has got to be it. If I had my way I'd take my parents and my grandparents with me. We'd all shut our eyes as the living legend picks up his guitar and shut our eyes to revel in the music. Then? Well, we'd let the memories dance.
Have you seen Dylan live? What's your favourite tune and what memories does it stir? Tell us in the comments section.
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