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The Cambridge Bob Dylan Society - Stories In The PressBelow is the article (minus pictures) that appeared in The Cambridge Evening News on Saturday May 20. It can also be found here. Pensioner Dylan is forever youngIN THE 60s, Bob Dylan was the voice of youthful protest, his songs soundtracking everything from the civil rights movement to a generation's outrage over Vietnam. But even the voice of youth has to grow old some time and, this week, the man born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941 officially becomes a pensioner. Not that he has any intention of settling down. Dylan has been on a "never-ending" tour since 1988, and plays his latest batch of live shows in the UK next month. One fan who's already bought his ticket is John Nye, from Cambridge, who has seen Dylan more times than he can remember over the past 40 years. "My first concert was the Albert Hall in '66, when I was 15," says John, now 55. "That was my musical awakening. I went home with my ears ringing, absolutely mesmerised." That passion for Dylan never waned and, in 1984, John got together with friends John Stokes and Chris Cooper to form the Cambridge Bob Dylan Society. Still going strong after 22 years, it is now the longest-running Dylan society in the country and regularly attracts between 50 and 80 members. "We're a meeting place for Dylan fans," says John, who still runs the society with John and Chris, plus more recent recruit Keith Agar. "We fill a niche; Dylan's always been very secretive about himself and fans always wanted to get a little closer to him. They want to hear more about him and understand what he's up to and keep in touch with developments." The society meets every two months at The Boathouse pub in Chesterton Road, Cambridge. Members swap Dylan anecdotes and opinions, watch rare video footage and, occasionally, welcome live Dylan tribute artists or authors who have written biographies of the great man. "It's very informal - it's more like a friends' society, really," explains John. "Around 20 or 30 of the people have been coming along since the beginning, while others come and go. "People come along to be entertained - Dylan described himself as a song and dance man years ago. He's there for entertainment, and so are we." Sadly, the society has never had any contact with Dylan himself. "I don't think he even knows we exist," laughs John. "Dylan lives a very private life. He's not a great communicator." Not in conversation, maybe. But through his music, Bob Dylan is one of the great communicators of the age. "Dylan's big achievements are threefold - as a songwriter, vocalist and musician," says John. "As a vocalist, he tried to break the notion that a singer had to have a conventional good voice. He sings with a very natural voice, and that opened doors for other people to do the same. "As a musician, he sparked several genres of music, including electrified folk rock and country rock. And as a songwriter he pioneered different schools of songwriting, from confessional singer-songwriting to the hallucinatory stream of consciousness type of songs. If it wasn't for him, you wouldn't have had Strawberry Fields Forever or a Whiter Shade of Pale or anything like that. He was a huge influence on The Beatles and his influence is still seen today, with bands like Coldplay and Oasis. He's still as relevant as ever." As for turning 65, John doesn't think his hero will use the landmark birthday as an opportunity to look back. "Dylan always looks to the future," he says. "He's still writing, still touring - and he's started presenting his own radio show. The famous documentary film about Dylan was called Don't Look Back, and he never does." □The society meets on the last Friday of every other month at The Boathouse, Cambridge. The next meeting is on Friday from 8pm.
DVD:
"Bob Dylan 1975-1981: Rolling Thunder and The Gospel Years"
This is a real fan's-eye view of Dylan during one of the more trickier time periods in his enormous career. The DVD contains no Bob Dylan songs and is a totally unauthorised documentary, but has oodles of in-depth interviews.
Some of the stories on the way are very revealing, and some just make you wish you'd been there. Like the one about the tour plans for the first Rolling Thunder Revue. Or rather the lack of plans. The rag-tag band of folk troubadours that was The Rolling Thunder Revue (and their followers) had no idea where they were going next, literally, during the early days of the tour. They would turn up in a town, unannounced, and play a local small venue. The disbelieving audience would go and see if the rumour was true and be knocked out to be offered tickets to see a Bob Dylan and Friends show in their local small hall. Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Scarlet Rivera, Claudia Levy (Ms Jacques Levy) and Rob Stoner flesh out the tour stories, while Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, in his first interview in 30 years, gives some background.
Here comes the story of the Hurricane... Rubin Carter's interview is particularly revealing. Here's an extract:
"Dylan and I hit it off quite quickly, and quite well. We were both entertainers, he being a troubadour, and me being a prize-fighter. We both had family tragedies. His family were escaping from the Russian Tsar and my family was escaping from segregation. We thought we had an obligation to speak out for our people. That's what Dylan was doing, and that's what I was doing, and so we talked, the first day, for 8, 9, 10 hours. We talked about everything. And I thought that was the end of it.
"I didn't know Bob Dylan was going to write a song. He didn't know he was going to write a song. The next day Bob was back, and we talked another 8, 9, 10 hours. The next day Bob was back again and we talked another 8, 9, 10 hours, and then Bob went away, and I said: 'Okay'.
"A week later he came back, and he had a demo of the "Hurricane", and I listened to it and I said: 'Wow, listen to what this genius has put together'. He took 6 weeks of trial, and many, many years, and put it in that song ... a powerful piece of writing. What Dylan did was to move this case from being totally black, onto the whole world."
The DVD then moves on to the late 70s with some wonderful interviews, including bassist Rob Stoner, who was band leader for the Rolling Thunder Revue and for part of the 1978 "costume extravaganza" tour, and producer Jerry Wexler, who contributes to The Gospel Years segment of the DVD, and was surprised to find that the content of "Slow Train Coming" was going to be "wall-to-wall Jesus".
The Gospel Years were when Dylan's radical new direction alienated many fans and enraged critics as he preached evangelical messages from the Book of Revelation. Others interviewed to tell this part of the story include backing singer Regina McCrary, keyboardist Spooner Oldham, who gives a first-hand band member's point of view of Dylan on the road and in the studio, songwriter Al Kasha, "Dylanologist" A.J. Weberman, and Dylan's Bible class teacher Pastor Bill Dwyer, a Bob Dylan fan, who describes Dylan's born again transformation. He recalls Dylan coming to class as Dylan, complete with sunglasses, leather jacket and beret. If you want to be anonymous and don't want to look like Dylan, then don't dress like Dylan, he would tell him. San Francisco Chronicle reporter Joel Selvin, who wrote the infamous "Bob Dylan's God-Awful Gospel" review of the first night at Fox Warfield that "poured a bucket of cold water" over ticket sales for future shows, tells of the phone call his wife received from Dylan informing her that her husband had lost his "license to review"!
I was particularly interested in Rob Stoner's account of the rehearsals for the 1978 tour. Here's an extract:
"It was understood that we were rehearsing for a Japanese tour. The promoter had already sent a list of the songs he wanted Dylan to perform. So we worked up arrangements of these songs. Actually I came up with those arrangements, with David Mansfield, and the help of the other musicians. We would try and make the tunes sound as unrecognisable as possible. It was a whole new approach to his music.
"Bob wasn't around for a whole lot of that. He would just leave it to us to come up with stuff. I would do the singing at the rehearsals and Bob would come by at night, after rehearsals, and he and I would listen to the tapes and he would express his approval or disapproval of various arrangements that I was making. Bob had other things to do at the time. He was editing Renaldo and Clara. He needed time to do whatever he was doing and if I could be the surrogate singer and save him the time and effort of showing up to do what is basically the nuts and bolts of getting a band together, why should he waste his time on that when he can waltz in at the last minute and hear the finished product. It's better to keep him enthused and fresh than have him slog through version after version of these songs he didn't particularly want to do in the first place".
There's an awful lot to commend this DVD. It must have been a real labour of love for Joel Gilbert. His interviews are excellent, and he doesn't shrink away even from reading the questions from a page to be sure to get it right. And the questions are probing. Special features on the DVD include Journey to Hibbing, an informative guided tour of the town and it's places of interest, Ramblin' Jack's Early Days, a long conversation with Ramblin' Jack Elliott who tells all, and Photo Gallery 1975-1981.
Highly recommended, but at 4 hours it'll take a whole evening to watch it.
DVD: "After The Crash - Bob Dylan
1966-1978"
Throughout the two-hour documentary our old friends Dylanesque provide the backing music, a demanding job, which they handle in their usual very competent way. How does Michael do it, he makes it sound so easy. A good DVD, highly recommended.
REVIEW: Dylan:
Visions, Portraits, and Back Pages
The book has articles on Dylan's life, times, influences and loves (yes loves!). Key albums are studied in detail, as are the tours. There are four main chapters: 1. Minstrel Boy - How Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan, wowed the Beatles and helped invent rock 'n' roll...; 2. Wanted Man - Dylan's wild years - the sex, the drugs, the divorce, the religious conversion...; 3. On The Road Again - The fall, the rise and that never-ending tour...; and 4. Long Time Gone - All the Dylan albums, songs and further reading you'll ever need... A nice addition are the Eyewitness accounts of key events in Dylan's career - New York 61, Newport Folk Festival 65, UK tour 66, Stockholm 66 and Isle of Wight Festival 69, with quotes from notable people there at the time. The stories behind the music include personal accounts of Dylan encounters by the likes of Waylon Jennings ("It's just something in our personalities that clashed immediately. Don't blame me, I'm the good guy") and Joe Boyd ("So I went to sleep on the couch and in the morning I had breakfast with her and Dylan"). The book looks at every aspect of Dylan, and draws many a conclusion, some easy to agree with, some not. But that is the point about Dylan collecting, and a book like this. It's what being a Dylan watcher is all about, that everyone has their own spin on things as well as their own personal list of highpoints from Dylan's vast career. An album dismissed by one person will be absolutely loved by another. That said, this book is ideal for the new collector and the old hand alike. You can't please all the people all the time, I think Jeremy Paxman said that, but this book comes close. For more information go to the website www.dk.com NME - 'Bob Dylan And The Folk Rock Boom 1964-1974'
How Dylan sparked the 60s vogue for protest songs is also looked at, as well as how his influence launched the careers of many others in the music world. For more information, or to buy a copy on-line, go to http://www.nme.com/originals/25 .
REVIEW: The Bob
Dylan Scrapbook 1956-1966 "The Bob Dylan Scrapbook 1956-1966" is already available in some countries, so I'm told, but the UK market has to hold its breath just a little longer - until October 3 - although the wait is worthwhile. This is a gem of a book, stuffed full of memorabilia. Even if you weren’t there in the early days, after looking through this collection you’ll feel closer to it all.
A really good idea are the two small books of photographs one from each of the Newport Folk Festivals, 1963 and 1965. My favourite, though, is attached to page 12 and is a facsimile of the front cover of Dylan's personal copy of the Woody Guthrie autobiography “Bound for Glory”. Dylan's autograph and the hand-written date, April 21, 1961, can be seen on the back of the cover. Dylan's hand-written lyrics are stashed away in various pockets throughout the book, one with interesting, fragmented lines written on the back, clearly not intended for the song, but snatches of thoughts for some future project. The hand-written version of “Talking New York” bears little resemblance to the version on Dylan's first album. The lyrics to “She's Your Lover Now” were also a surprise. Listen to the Dylan and The Band version of the song (available on Bootleg Series Vol. 2), and Dylan stops after the line "And now your mouth cries wolf...” It was generally thought that the stop was for some technical reason or an interruption, maybe, but one glance at the hand-written lyrics shows the real reason - that's where the lyric ends, there is no more. Also, according to the hand-written lyrics, the line is “Now you’re my prize wolf…” There's a note underneath, written presumably by Dylan, suggesting that 5 lines more are needed! The songs are written on anything that came to hand at the time – including sheets from a lined notepad or hotel writing paper. All are two-sided facsimiles. Fascinating stuff.
The Scrapbook was created in association with Dylan, and the text, written by Robert Santelli (curator of the exhibit “Bob Dylan’s American Journey 1956-1966”, which debuted in November 2004 and is intended to travel to museums throughout the world), includes interviews with Dylan and his friends, as well as fellow musicians, who together flesh out this interactive biography covering Dylan’s formative years, his arrival in New York in 1961, and beyond… up to and including his motorbike accident in 1966. This is a real treasure chest of Dylan memorabilia, and an absolute must for all Dylan fans. My final question is, are we in for all this again - CD, DVD, Scrapbook - when the next instalment of Chronicles hits the streets? I hope so. Listen to the music of Bob Dylan
There's a great collection of Dylan covers
about to be issued by Drive-Thru Records. It's a double CD called
"Listen to Bob Dylan – A Tribute" and has been a labour of love for
Stefanie Reines, owner of Drive-Thru Records, who was determined that
people should do as the album title states and listen to the music of
Bob Dylan.
Each track is a thoughtful and sincere
tribute to Dylan. An awful lot of work has gone into this project and
it's hats off to Stefanie that it's worked so well. The end result is an
eminently listenable collection. Release date is August 16.
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With
Dylan's constant searching it's hard to try and pin him down and
explain his motives for a single event, whether it be for an album or
series of concerts. But to try and explain away Dylan over a six year
period, is near on impossible. Although this 4-hour DVD has a brave
attempt. All manner of key personnel from this period of Dylan's life
were searched out for the project, and Director and Producer Joel
Gilbert (Bob Dylan 1966 World Tour -
The Home Movies, Bob Dylan World Tours 1966-1974 - Through the Camera
of Barry Feinstein) fires some pretty canny questions at them during the
interview segments to flesh out the stories.
It's a serious attempt at covering this
tricky period of Dylan's career too, which was musically so broad - from
Blonde on Blonde to Street Legal. A lot of it is speculation and
hearsay, of course - as it always is with Dylan, but here the people
most likely to know more than most tell their stories. Contributors such
as writers Al Aronowitz, Clinton Heylin, Patrick Humphries and Nigel
Williamson, and musicians Bruce Langhorn, Ron Cornelius, Eric Weissberg,
Scarlet Rivera and Rob Stoner attempt to fill in the gaps, as does the
late Jacques Levy, in his last ever interview, the Dylanologist A. J.
Weberman and Isle of Wight Festival organiser Ray Foulk, who, by the
way, used to come to our early TCBDS meetings when he was in Cambridge.
One
for the Christmas stocking, perhaps, although it'll have to be a
pretty big stocking. This is a big book, in every sense of the word,
and a huge and absorbing project, brought to us by publishers Dorling
Kindersley, in partnership with those
writing bods at MOJO magazine, who looked after content and design. A
large team of writers and photographers got involved, under the
editorship of Mark Blake, including Greil Marcus, Andy Gill, Daniel
Kramer, Nick Kent, Jim Marshall, Barry Feinstein, and Bono, who wrote
the Foreword in which he says: "Bob Dylan's got you from the cradle to
the grave". Amen to that.
The
latest edition in the NME's 'Originals' series is out and features rare interviews, reviews, news
articles and photographs from the archives of NME, Melody Maker and
Disc Weekly to tell the story of 'Bob Dylan And The Folk Rock Boom
1964-1974'.
This
is the touchy feely part of the very welcome Dylan onslaught on our
senses. We've had the autobiography part 1, the interview, the
newspaper articles (oh so many of them) and the audio; the film is
waiting in the wings, but now it's the turn of the hands-on book - the
Scrapbook. Nearly every page of this large slip-cased hardback format
has something attached to it in some way, either in a paper or
transparent pocket, a slit, or just stuck to the page. There are
removable facsimiles of ticket stubs, concert posters, concert
programmes (including the one for Dylan’s first concert at Carnegie
Chapter Hall in 1961), rare photographs, copies of newspaper reports,
sheets of hand-written lyrics, early promotional material, etc. etc.
There’s also an audio CD of interviews attached to the inside front
cover. 
“This
project is all about love. I really want kids to experience what I do
when I listen to a Dylan record. He’s an acquired taste, but once you
get it there’s nothing in the world that is better or that you’d rather
have,” she says. “This is a very personal project for me,” says Stefanie,
“I'm so excited just to see Bob Dylan's name and the Drive-Thru logo on
the same CD!” It is her greatest hope that "Listen To Bob Dylan – A
Tribute" will turn-on a new generation of fans to Bob Dylan’s music.