The Last Time I Listened To Bob Dylan...

By Neil Watson
 

...Was just like the first time I listened to Bob Dylan.
You knew immediately that you were hearing something special. You knew that something was happening here, and even if you were’n’t sure what it was, you had to hear more. 

Remember the first time you heard ‘The Lonesome Death Of  Hattie Carroll’
You’d never heard anything like this before. Never. You were listening to the real thing.  It just reached out and grabbed you like nothing had grabbed you before. 

Remember the first time you heard ‘Let Me Die In My Footsteps’
Do you remember the first time you heard ‘I Was Young When  Left Home’
The first time you heard ‘Percy’s Song’
The first time you heard ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune’
Dylan is laying down even more ‘weary tunes’ at this time of his life. 

I remember the first time I heard ‘The Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues’
The first time I heard Dylan sing ‘In The Pines’
The first time I heard ‘To Ramona’
And what about the first time I heard ‘Abandoned Love’
Onto the sublime ‘Blood On The Tracks’

‘Tangled Up In Blue’, ‘Simple Twist Of Fate’, ‘Idiot Wind’, ‘Buckets Of  Rain’, ‘Shelter From The Storm’. You will never forget the first time you heard THESE songs. The masterpiece to end them all.

But when you think back on all of this it shouldn’t come as any big surprise.
The last time I listened to Bob Dylan I was still listening to the man that was blessed with a brilliant and fantastic mind. (Go back to ‘Ranaldo & Clara’)
On a whole other level.

Never has any one artist absorbed so many styles and influences. Never has any one artist mastered and used words in the way Bob Dylan has. He is truly unique.
‘Was In Another Lifetime’, ‘One Of Toil And Blood’.  Reincarnated?
I think this brilliant mind has passed this way before.  He possessed the knowledge and sounded like the oldest of Blues singers at 19 years old.
The last time I listened to Bob Dylan I was still in awe.
Herein is a poet.  And lots of other things, And LOTS of other things.
Shut up and listen, He’s only just begun. He’s almost brand new!!
As fans we may be spell-bound, mesmerised… ‘Remember the red haired girl, melancholy, begins to smile’…  ‘Listen, the poet sings to us all’

‘But I’ll See You In The Sky Above
In The Tall Grass, In The One’s I Love,
You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome….
                                  When You Go’.

And I’m still in awe.

Thanks to John S and Chris C for inviting me along for this Freewheelin’ ride. Here’s to all the Freewheelers past and present, and to all the good people who’ve travelled  with you.