Songs From Another World

The tape begins with a loud burst of applause – applause which sounds staccato, computerised almost. Oddly, at the same time it sounds otherworldly, ghostly even. Maybe that is what it is. The ghosts of another time, another place, frozen and bound forever on or by the magnetic tape so that they can be made manifest at my beckoning by the merest application of my thumb upon the ‘play’ button of my Walkman. I become the ghost-master, but the ghosts are all in my head.

A ghost whistles. Somewhere in the applause is the hint of a harmonica. And then the rhythmic acoustic guitar; briefly repetitive, then moving onto a higher note, a more delicate pattern; then rhythmic, then more urgent, more insistent and for a split second you anticipate the voice, but too soon. A return to delicacy, then insistence, then…

She’s got everything she needs,
She’s an artist, she don’t look back.
She’s got everything she needs,
She’s an artist, she don’t look back.
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black.

The ‘time’ in night-time is puffed out somehow. It’s as if he’s trying to blow a fly off the microphone – the T is both forceful and soft, a sort of spat whisper. Does that make any sense? Whatever … it’s pure Dylan. The ‘paint’ is expressed, held briefly, perhaps slightly elongated, but has that nasal, country-southernish (?) drawl – a way of expressing himself that so many have tried (and failed) to imitate. The voice is what I want to describe but I don’t know where to find the words. I could say it is like a soft breeze blowing through a hillside conifer plantation, but I’m not sure if it is even like that. Paul Williams talks of ‘thick textures of sweet mournfulness’ but I’m looking for my own phrase. It does seem to possess a texture of something, as if you could touch it, but a texture of what? Of bitter honey? Can that be it? You see my difficulty. If you have the tape, listen to it. If you don’t, the nearest I can suggest to you is ‘Visions of Johanna’ or ‘Baby Blue’ from Biograph. The voice is what makes this acoustic set special. The guitar playing does not seem to me to be at all out of the ordinary – it does not compare, for instance, with that on Freewheelin’. The harmonica, of course, is inspired: searing and keening, exploding in bursts of vibrant energy across the ethereal auditorium. But, for this time at least, it’s the voice that matters.

And what is this ‘time’ to which I am referring? Well, if you haven’t worked it out by now, this is the Royal Albert Hall, 27th May 1966. The last concert of what was to be the last tour for 7 and a half years. The beginning of the acoustic set. A beginning that creates imaginings in my mind – imaginings of a small, frail, marionette lost in a stately pleasure dome. No, I wasn’t there, so these are visions, not memories. Visions of a lost thinness, clothed in a…suit? Hard to believe that, but all the photos from that tour show it to be true. Was it a dogstooth suit? Is that what it’s called? Anyway, it was a thousand miles from either the ‘Huck Finn’ tramp of 1961 or the comfortable scruffiness of today.

No, I wasn’t there, and if you were then I’m sorry if these ramblings and visions of mine do not coincide with your memories. I was at the De Montfort Hall, Leicester, on 15th May 1966 but my memories of that are actually more vague than the images that this tape evokes in my mind. Nearly all that I can remember from the Leicester show is people walking out, seemingly (to my memory) in droves, and other people booing and slow-handclapping. Some cheered him, but I feel that they were a minority. I cannot claim that I was wise enough to know what he was doing at the time. I sat in silence (well, not exactly silence, the music was so LOUD – I had heard nothing like it before), dumbfounded, fence-sitting, not knowing whether to cheer or boo. Please forgive me.

Actually, there is a scene near the end of Eat The Document which was filmed outside the De Montfort Hall before the show. I’ve ‘paused’ every second of that piece of video trying to get a sight of a younger me, but in vain. The thing is I do remember waiting outside the hall with friends for the doors to open – it was a pleasant spring evening. There is the merest glimpse of the side of a bespectacled head which I like to pretend is myself - but I don’t really believe it. Ah, well. It would have been nice to have featured in a Bob Dylan movie!

A word of warning: this essay will add nothing to the sum total of knowledge about Dylan’s art. It is not interpretative or literary critical. If you are looking for insight, search elsewhere. This is utterly subjective. It is an attempt at a hymn of praise – an appreciation – a eulogy – a shot at describing what it is in this performance that moves my heart and my very soul. If that sounds excessive, this is not for you. Why am I bothering writing this? Because I just love this concert and that makes me want to try to communicate the feelings I experience when I listen to it.

Wish me luck.

Ratso Revisited

‘The War and Peace of Rock & Roll.’ With this ringing endorsement from the master himself, Larry Sloman’s epic On the Road With Bob Dylan arrived in bookstores around the world in June of 1978. I would have bought it just for the (original) cover – a striking Mary Alfieri shot taken from behind Dylan as he was performing in one of the Rolling Thunder Revue concerts during the late autumn of 1975. Hailed immediately as a masterpiece of rock journalism, the book was out of print for two decades or more until it finally resurfaced as a companion piece to the Live 1975 Bootleg Series set in 2002.

Now it’s available again, this time as a 30th anniversary commemorative of the legendary Rolling Thunder tour which it documents in such a unique manner.

All of this raises a rather logical question: how does one approach a review of a book which has already been hailed as a rock & roll classic? The task is daunting to say the least. For starters it is essential for 21st century readers to grasp the context of the era in American history which frames Sloman’s narrative. In the fall of 1975, the country was still in the first stages of recovery from the national trauma that was the war in Vietnam. A pall of suspicion and cynicism enveloped the land. At the same time, the entire nation was preparing for the biggest party in its history – the Bicentennial celebration of 1976. Somehow, the Rolling Thunder tour managed to connect with each of these phenomena simultaneously. It was pure Americana, and it is this dynamic that Sloman’s book manages to capture brilliantly. But it wasn’t easy.

As he relates the tale in the book’s opening chapter, Larry Sloman had the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time late one Sunday night/early Monday morning in October of 1975. That evening, Sloman, in the company of Byrds founding father Roger McGuinn, strolled into New York’s famed Other End café on the hunch that a suddenly rejuvenated Bob Dylan might be among the patrons. It was this stroke of intuition that culminated in Sloman’s being given the chance not only to observe but to actually chronicle an extraordinary chapter of rock & roll history. Sloman and McGuinn arrive at the famed club to find Dylan sequestered at a side table with Off Broadway director Jacques Levy and singer David Blue among others. Mischief is in the air and Sloman is ready to seize the moment. Bored and perhaps a bit disillusioned by the structure and predictability of the greatest hits arena tour with the Band in 1974, Dylan on this evening is ready for something new and outrageous. Before sunrise, the scene has shifted to the Kettle of Fish, and we discover that Dylan is a man on a mission, ready to launch a tour reminiscent of the traveling medicine shows of a century earlier. A surprise birthday party for Gerde’s Folk City proprietor Mike Porco later in the week is designated as a sort of dress rehearsal for what will become the Rolling Thunder show, and as the long evening dissolves into daylight, Dylan announces that he’s ready to hit the road and invites an elated Sloman to come on board as a reporter. In this capacity, Sloman will have the double barreled assignment of covering the tour for Rolling Stone magazine while he acts simultaneously as a scribe appointed by Dylan to produce a book which will record the Rolling Thunder odyssey.

As one might expect, Sloman begins his tale from the first person point of view, but a humorous encounter with Joan Baez in the parking lot of a Shelburne, Vermont country inn culminates in his receiving the nickname ‘Ratso’ from the folk music queen. For Sloman, this is serendipity; he realizes that in a unique way, the new handle defines his role on the tour, and from this point on, the narrative switches to third person point of view, allowing ‘Ratso’ to become the main character in his own drama.