BOB DYLAN – HOW THE SPLIT-TO-SPLINTERS RIVERBOAT CAPTAIN WITH THE FUNNY VOICE LEFT ELVIS AND FRANK ON THE DEAD RIVER SHORE
As he pauses for breath over his Rough and Rowdy Ways, we look back at the world tour that put him on top of the world...
I used to have a radio show with a section called The World’s Worst Singer … yep, and its star was that man whose career has ultimately been bigger than Elvis’s and Frank’s.
The awards and accolades have poured in over the last 60-odd years – an Oscar, a Nobel, world renown, Rock’n’Roll fame, films, cinema, hits, crashes, flirtations with drink and drugs, divorce and a very bad back – art, welding, writing.
And, like Elvis and Frank, he is recognised across the world by his first name, good ol’ Bob.
The World’s Worst Singer section of my show – broadcast from a run-down studio in a European mountain range – would only play songs where Bob was singing like a god or, at worst, an angel. It went down a storm!
Let me say right now, I think Dylan’s singing has always been something beyond human comprehension, a voice that the world had never heard the likes of before.
Or ever will again.
Yep, we can all quote knowingly about the influences we hear in that coruscating, gentle, heartbreaking, funny noise that comes from that Chaplinesque riverboat captain figure hiding behind a battered-looking upright piano on a stage lit today from beneath like a Mephistophelian cauldron of white disfiguring heat.
Blind Willie, John Jacob Niles, Woody, Elvis and Sinatra. And ten thousand more. They all helped create that voice that Dylan quite rightly calls his own.
So, as his Rough and Rowdy tour comes to a temporary end and he hits the road with old mates like Willy Nelson and cohorts, let’s look back at a ‘compendium’ of thoughts, ideas, reactions and reviews of his stunning tour at 80-odd … not for him, a quick tinkle on the piano for a ‘nice cup of tea’ in an old folks home or drop-in centre.
Many of the reviews are from fans - we got permission from them to reproduce their work.
