Wednesday 10th October

In 1975 Dylan came up with a batch of songs, the mood, stark honesty and beauty of which has never been equaled, either by Dylan himself or many others.  Blood on the Tracks may or may not be specifically about his own life and falling out with his wife Sara, but it has some of the most wonderful lines ‘Like a corkscrew to my heart, ever since we’ve been apart.’  It feels of a piece also, the songs almost running into each other and being in the same vein.  He followed this with the almost as good ‘Desire’ and then took the whole show on the road with ‘The Rolling Thunder Review’ and made the film ‘Renaldo and Clara’ at the same time. Other albums followed ‘Street Legal’ and the religious trio ‘Slow Train Coming’ ‘Saved’ and ‘Shot of Love’ where though he might be singing about Jesus the songs were still brilliant. During the eighties his output became more patchy – ‘Infidels’ and ‘Oh Mercy’ were excellent but ‘Empire Burlesque’ and ‘Knocked Out Loaded’ were poor, but even here were half-buried gems like ‘Brownsville Girl’.   He is still knocking out albums, and they are still patchy.  But alongside this has been a series of releases which started with ‘Biograph’ and continued with at least nine albums, many of them doubles, and some entire live concerts called ‘The Bootleg series’.  And here the real genius of Bob Dylan becomes clear, the demo’s, the live acoustic versions, the myriad songs he discarded along the way show how almost everything he touched was gold.  He is impatient in the studio, and drops songs if they aren’t working and tries others. The rejects are often brilliant and one suspects there are still treasures to be uncovered.

He is by all accounts a cantankerous old sod – he was never exactly a nice person – and continues to perplex and frustrate and amaze and deceive in equal measure.  He has spent the last forty odd years weaving the mystery that is Bob Dylan, and trying to hide behind the mask he has created.  A true poet I suppose.