Tangled Up In Bob

On the great man’s 80th birthday, guest writer and long-time fan Chris Wyness brings us – Tangled Up in Bob: My Personal Relationship With Dylan.

As a long-time Bob Dylan fan, his 80th birthday got me thinking about my personal relationship with, to my mind, the greatest songwriter of our time. When did I first hear his music, when did he become important in my life and why have I always connected with him in such a powerful way? Of all the musicians and songwriters I enjoy, Dylan has long been at the top of my list as the standout favourite, which is saying something considering the high calibre of musicians who reside on that long list.

His lyrics speak to me, his music enthrals me and his attitude to life fascinates me 

Before I write about Dylan directly it’s worth mentioning that as a child I had a fascination with popular music. At about the age of five I contracted meningitis, which meant spending a lengthy period of time in bed, much of it in a darkened room. To help pass the time my parents gave me a transistor radio, which became my constant companion. The stations I enjoyed the most were the ones that played popular music. I can’t remember exactly what music I listened to on those stations but being that it was 1961 I no doubt discovered the likes of Del Shannon, Ricky Nelson, Dion, Roy Orbison, The Everly Brothers, Neil Sedaka, Connie Francis, Bobby Darin and of course Elvis Presley.

However, my love of popular music really kicked in at the age of eight when I became aware of the Beatles phenomenon through listening to the radio, watching news reports on TV and then seeing their first performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. In fact it was from watching the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday evenings that I came to fully appreciate many of the musical acts I had heard on the radio or knew through a friend’s older brother’s inspiring record collection. Dylan, as it turned out, wasn’t one of the performers I’d see on Ed Sullivan due to his refusal to perform on the show after he was told he couldn’t sing his song of choice, Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues. However, at this point in my musical journey Dylan wasn’t yet a feature. In fact the little I did know about folk music was based around seeing Burl Ives and Joan Baez on TV, two of my mom’s favourites.

So when did I first discover Dylan? My earliest recollection of knowing he existed came about in 1966 when I was a 10-year-old in Grade 6. Our music teacher would have us sing popular folk songs of the day such as Puff The Magic Dragon and Where Have All The Flowers Gone along with Blowin’ In The Wind and Mr Tambourine Man. When the teacher introduced us to a new song she would give us a potted history of the artist, tell us why she thought the song was important, and then play the recorded version of the song on a portable record player. We would then sing off our song sheets as the teacher accompanied us on her guitar.

From this point on I developed an interest in Dylan’s music but really only in those songs that were played on the radio such as It Ain’t Me Babe, The Times They Are a-Changin’, Like A Rolling Stone, Positively 4th Street, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, and Just Like A Woman.

It wasn’t until 1969 when I was in Grade 9 that I first became familiar with an entire Dylan album, Nashville Skyline. A friend’s parents, who were country and western fans, bought the album when it was released, I suspect more because of its country feel than because they were Dylan fans. At that point in my life I had decided that C&W wasn’t my kind of music. So I was baffled by this artist, who I thought of as being about as far removed from this style of music as you could possibly get, releasing an album of country tunes. After repeated listens I became beguiled by the album and decided that this really wasn’t C&W but something else altogether. Looking back on it I think I needed a way to justify my enjoyment of the album so I could reconcile it with my dislike for C&W. I also realise now that it was my first inkling that Dylan was an artist who could explore different types of music and turn them into a style that was uniquely his own.

My first Dylan purchase was in 1971 when I bought the newly released Greatest Hits Volume 2 double album when I was in Grade 11, and soon followed that up with the purchase of the first Greatest Hits album. These two albums got a lot of spin time on my bedroom stereo unit and it was through repeated listens to these ‘greatest hits’ that I began to truly appreciate not only the music but also the poetic quality of Dylan’s lyrics. However, at this point those two albums were all the Dylan I needed in my collection. That was until 1973, at the end of Grade 12, when a good friend and devoted Dylan fan lent me a copy of Anthony Scaduto’s Dylan. Reading this biography was my Dylan Damascus moment. Everything I read about Dylan in the biography enthralled and captivated me and sent me off to the record store to start buying his back catalogue. Soon Highway 61 Revisited (the album that would become my favourite of all time), Blonde On Blonde, and Bringing It All Back Home were part of my collection. I quickly followed this up by adding the earlier albums to my collection.

It was around this time that I decided I was a committed Bob fan and went on to purchase all his other albums up to that point, including Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, purchased immediately after seeing the film, and Columbia’s revenge album Dylan, almost as disappointing to me at the time as was Self Portrait. For Christmas that year a family friend gave me a copy of Writings And Drawings, which had just been published and became my most prized book. This sat on my bookshelf beside Tarantula, Dylan’s misguided attempt at writing prose, and the paperback edition of D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary film Don’t Look Back about Dylan’s 1965 concert tour in England. I now have a collection of books by and about Dylan and a collection of DVDs featuring Dylan documentaries and concert films.

But something else happened at the end of 1973 that was incredibly exciting; Dylan and The Band announced a 40-concert North American tour, Dylan’s first in nearly eight years. When I discovered that the tour wasn’t coming to Vancouver, where I lived at the time, my disappointment was immeasurable. But then, as if by magic, a high school friend’s aunt, who had connections in the entertainment industry, was able to get four tickets for the Seattle show on February 9, 1974, and I was one of the chosen to attend what was to be perhaps the most important concert experience of my life. For me at the time it was akin to a religious experience sitting in the same room, well a large arena to be exact, watching my musical idol perform so many of the songs I had come to love and cherish. On top of that he was performing with his legendary backing band and a group I was a fan of in their own right.

Since then I have seen Dylan perform another 18 times in Vancouver, Toronto, Kitchener, London, Sydney and Melbourne. Aside from The Band, I’ve seen him play with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers in Sydney and Vancouver, sing with Van Morrison at the Fleadh Festival in London, heard him preach the gospel according to Bob in Toronto during his ‘born again’ tour, and perform with many legendary musicians. But in all the times I’ve seen Dylan, I have never heard him perform the same song the same way twice, which to my mind is an amazing accomplishment and shows another side of his musical genius.

Planet Waves, released at the start of 1974, was the first Dylan album I purchased as a new release and since then have gone on to buy all of his albums as they’ve been released – good, bad or indifferent. My first bootleg album, Great White Wonder, was a cassette tape I bought by mail order from a company in New York in 1974. The second was Stealin, a gift from a friend who had found the album in a used-records store. Over the ensuing years I’ve built up my collection of Dylan bootlegs, seeking them out from wherever I could find them, a task that became much easier with the dawning of the internet.

My world has been made substantially more fulfilling because of Bob Dylan. Not only have I been rewarded time and again by the joy I experience listening to his music, but over the years I’ve also been enriched by the friendships I’ve made with other Dylan fans, some of whom have become lifelong friends. What we all share is a love for a man who speaks to us through his music and reaches us in places that no one else touches. And when you think about it, that’s quite something coming from a guy who, as David Bowie sang, has a voice like sand and glue.