This out-take originated in the Foreword to the chapter entitled Too
Much Confusion, partly because that was the article I had been
progressing towards writing since Dylan first ‘blew my mind’
as people used to say (honest, they really spoke like that). Later
I thought of moving it to the book’s introduction but I had
more important things in mind for that so it was dropped – only
to pop up here on the website’
How
I Got Into Dylan
To explain this involves telling you how
I first ‘got into’ Dylan. Perhaps you’ll indulge
this light ‘fannish’ introduction as a counterweight to
the more academic piece that follows.[1] It begins when I was 14 or
15 with a friend to be, Neil Crawford, declaring his admiration for
Bob Dylan and asking me what music I liked. I mentioned David Bowie,
whose Ziggy Stardust and/or Aladdin Sane was filling the airwaves
at the time. This brought a contemptuous response. I tried to defend
my choice by telling him to look beyond the glam image to the lyrics.
This made matters worse, the contempt level rose exponentially. Lyrical
meaning and profundity, according to Neil, clearly were the preserve
of this man called Bob Dylan. He spoke with such unswervable conviction
that I resolved to find out more.
This was not the first time I had heard of Bob Dylan, but earlier
memories are vague. I do remember a Melody Maker headline
Dylan Digs Elton! I was at the time very fond of Tumbleweed Connection
and was put off by the idea that the paper needed to praise Elton
via this kind of endorsement. ‘What does it matter what this
person Dylan thinks of it?’, I wondered. Oh boy, was I to learn!
There must have been other times I had come across his name too, but
it was the way Neil spoke that struck and stuck with me.
So the next time I was in the local library, I looked in the record
section. Those were not so common in those days – libraries
were still mainly for books, would you believe – and it was
a very small selection; but they did have a Dylan and luckily for
me it was a double! There was a kind of weird painting on the cover.
I rushed home to play it.
So it was that Self Portrait became the first Dylan album
I heard.
I cannot remember too much of what I thought about it; except that
I was not bowled over to the extent Neil’s words had made me
anticipate! I liked the traditional Western songs and ‘Belle
Isle’. Before David Bowie and Elton John I had listened more
to traditional Scottish music than anything else – apart from
The Beatles and The Who’s Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy.
This was not something I told my school friends, I can assure you,
but I guess it did help me relate to something like ‘Belle Isle’.
The conversation with Neil had made me pay attention to the name Dylan
and it seemed he was everywhere. My sister’s friends all knew
him well; it was almost as though he was still a big star, but I could
not find out anything he was doing in the music magazines. My sister
even got someone a book on Dylan for his birthday. Bob Dylan;
A Retrospective – I sneaked a look at it before it was
wrapped up and it seemed to confirm everything Neil had said in spades.
My sister brought a new boyfriend to the house and I told him I was
listening to Self Portrait. He said it was OK but not anything
near as good as the other albums Dylan had done. All of a sudden it
seemed clear – I had got the wrong album. I was just unlucky.
So I determined to get another. The library was not able to help this
time; they had three Dylan albums, of which I had one and the other
two were out. I had taped Self Portrait so I returned it
and ordered the others. Then I waited until I had enough money to
buy an album.
The next scene takes place in a record shop called Listen near Sauchiehall
Street in Glasgow. Listen shops had a particular attraction –
apart from the records themselves – they were deliciously dark
and druggy places where the weirdest characters hung out. Drug busts
eventually closed them down, if my memory serves me well, but they
probably would not have survived the coming of the Megastore Monoliths
in any case.
Anyway, disaster struck for me because LPs had just gone up in price.
It was probably by some minuscule amount, but I had gone in whenever
I had exactly enough money for an LP at the old prices and I did not
have a penny more. I hung around the shop browsing the shelves in
any case; having made the trip into the city centre I was not going
to just go away. I don’t think it occurred to me to go to any
other record shop, it would have been just so uncool to shop anywhere
other than Listen. This was a conviction held with a peculiarly teenage
obsession (as opposed to all the obsessions I still have in middle
age). I would buy at Listen or I would not buy at all.
Just as my interest was waning I came across a box of reduced items
in a ‘bargain bin’ and, almost unbelievably, there was
a smiling Bob Dylan looking out at me from an LP cover. I took it
up and asked the guy behind the counter (he was all hair and teeth
and looked like it was best for all concerned that he was confined
to the darkest recesses of this already unlit and cloudy place) ‘do
you know if this is from before Self Portrait?’ (I
had been told Dylan’s great stuff was earlier). ‘Yeah
man’ he grunted (everybody still said Man at the end of every
sentence).
So it was that Nashville Skyline became the first Dylan LP
I bought and the second I ever heard.
My reaction to it was not greatly dissimilar to my reaction to Self
Portrait. I liked it a bit more and fell in love with ‘I
Threw It All Away’, but again it was far from what I expected.
I made my dad listen to it (he lectured in language and literature)
and told him ‘this guy is supposed to be a great lyricist’.
There wasn’t much he could say but I remember him commenting
after ‘I Threw It All Away’ that ‘that one had something’.
So that was it, no epiphanies yet – but soon the library sent
a note to say they had one of the Dylan albums I had ordered in now
and were holding it for me. The note didn’t say much –
it didn’t even seem to have a title. All it said was: ‘Bob
Dylan. Dylan now being held for you.’ I went in and got it the
next day.
And that is how the album Dylan became the third Bob Dylan
album I heard.
From sometime in 1973 to some point in 1974 I was introduced to this
genius who has played such a role in my life via Self Portrait,
Nashville Skyline and Dylan. Oh, and just to let you
know, when the other library record came in it was, would you believe,
Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid.[2] As time passed I think
I must have heard Before The Flood at some point too, but
I certainly have no memory of Planet Waves or New Morning.
My whole impression of Dylan was about to explode into something totally
different in any case. I bumped into Neil and told him how I had tried
so hard with his Dylan guy and although I liked him well enough could
not understand why there was such a fuss about him. Neil was in a
dreamland: ‘get the one that is just out- it is the best thing
ever’ was all he seemed to be saying over and over. I think
this was the first time he had been out of his house in ages and he
agreed saying it was because of this album and I must ‘get the
one that is just out- it is the best thing ever’. It was some
record called Blood On The Tracks.
Before I could decide whether to try this, fate took a decisive hand.
My mother was by now at university as a mature student and a friend
of hers there, one Robert Charles, heard of my Dylan listening experience
and lent her A Rare Batch Of Little White Wonder for me to
tape. It completely blew my mind – all of it; the acoustic side
as well as the sensational band sessions. In my naivety, I knew of
no great acoustic/electric split, I just heard the voice I had been
waiting all my life to hear on every track of this precious vinyl
thing.
The sheer power of the music and the appealing, if mysterious, lyrics
of the electric tracks were something totally outwith my previous
experience, I’d never heard anything like it. A tired old phrase
normally but literally true on this occasion. Life has never been
the same since.
I knew from his voice – its always those uniquely communicative
vocals that catch you first – and the sumptuous, joyful music
that he was delving into deep ‘truths’ and this led me
to instinctively believe that the lyrics portrayed profound insight.
And this is what I always wanted to express, what those songs say
to me (and I know they will, naturally, say many other things to other
listeners). It’s important though to know that before I even
knew what they were saying to me lyrically, Bob Dylan had pierced
my heart and soul. There and then I knew this was it forever, there’d
be no going back, from now on the mid 60s classic sound was imprinted
forever.
It is one of the most rewarding mysteries of art’s effect on
us. Here is Ted Hughes talking of the same thing in relation to hearing
the poems of T.S. Eliot:
I prefer poems to make an effect on being heard, and I don’t
think that’s really a case of them being simple because
for instance Eliot’s poems make a tremendous effect when you
hear them, and when I first heard them they did, and when I was
too young to understand very much about them they had an enormous
effect on me, and this was an effect quite apart from anything that
I’d call, you know, understanding, or being able to explain
them, or knowing what was going on. It’s just some sort of charge
and charm and series of operations that it works on you, and
I think quite complicated poetry, such as Eliot’s, can do this
on you immediately.[3]
Bob Dylan’s certainly did this ‘on me’, and this
article is my attempt to share part of what those mysterious and powerful
lyrics say to me now when I hear them; what I ‘understand by
them’ now, in Hughes’s terms. This understanding has multiplied
the ‘tremendous effect when I hear them’ exponentially.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Readers of Freewheelin’ Quarterly will be familiar
with this tale.
[2] Which is not to decry everything on these albums but they were
so not what I was expecting.
[3] This is from a recording published as ‘The Poet Speaks,
No. 5’, and is conveniently transcribed and reprinted in Terry
Gifford and Neil Roberts, Ted Hughes. A Critical Study (London:
Faber and Faber, 1981), p.33.
Text copyright Andrew Muir © 2003
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