If someone shouts, ‘don’t look’ or ‘don’t look back,’ the natural instinct is to turn and have a good look. When the Sea God Poseidon caught a glimpse of Medusa, it was a disaster. She was a beautiful young priestess with golden curls falling over her pretty shoulders and served in the temple of Athena […]
Tag Archives: bob dylan
THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’
In 1964 I was sixteen. I bought a black rollneck sweater and a pair of Cuban heeled boots from Anello & Davide in Coven Garden. I read The Outsider (L’Étranger) by Albert Camus. I learned how to talk with a cigarette balanced in the corner of my mouth and heard The Times They Are A-Changin’ […]
SHE BELONGS TO ME
When Paul McCartney was asked in HMV’s ‘My Inspiration’ campaign to name the songwriter who had most inspired him, he chose Bob Dylan and said his favourite track was She Belongs To Me. It was an incisive choice. As young guys – before they were famous – they must have had similar experiences with those […]
BOB DYLAN AND BRIGITTE BARDOT
Bob Dylan and Brigitte Bardot were outriders, rule breakers, iconoclasts who became icons of the sixties revolution. When Dylan in 1965 played Like a Rolling Stone at the Newport Folk Festival, this electric tidal wave was a manifesto, his resolve to take folk, country and jazz out of their boxes and meld them into the […]
JUST BE YOURSELF
People may tell you to just be yourself, but what they usually mean is ‘just be like me.’ It is human nature to believe we have made good choices and our children should set off down the same path. The reverse is also true – clever sons rue the errors of their fathers and […]
BOB DYLAN PLAYS LITTLE RICHARD
Bobby turned on the radio late one night in 1957 and the sound of Little Richard hammering out Tutti Frutti over over the airwaves changed his life. Tutti frutti, oh rootie / Tutti frutti, oh rootie, ooh Next day in the storeroom at the back of his father’s appliance store in Hibbing, Minnesota, he blew the dust off […]
THE ENEMY OF THE UNLIVED MEANINGLESS LIFE
I’m the enemy of the unlived meaningless life. This line struck me like the unexpected blow with the cane Zen teachers use to spark fire in the souls of acolytes on the edge of Nirvana. I thought: who am I? Where have I been? Where am I going? Has my own life been full and worthy, […]
THE ANSWER IS BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND
Blowin’ in the Wind was a song drifting through the ether waiting for someone to reach out and grab; a lyric ‘that the times seemed to call forth,’ to quote critic Greil Marcus. Dylan scribbled the words down in ten minutes, he said. ‘If I hadn’t written it, someone else would have done.’ Blowin’ in the Wind is […]
JOSEP PLA WAS MY FIRST SPANISH TEACHER
Josep Pla was my first Spanish teacher. If I drop the odd anachronism into the conversation, don’t blame me, blame the great Catalan writer, journalist, bon vivant and, it has been said, forerunner of magic realism. It all started after spending Semana Santa climbing the dirt track to Sant Pere de Rodes with my wife […]
THE FOURTH MAN
Nobody remembers the fourth man in the Olympics. Or the climbers who followed Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to the peak of Everest. Who took to the stage at the Royal Ballet after Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn? In the 2012 Olympics, Mo Farah won gold in the 10,000 metres. He went on to win the 5,000 metres […]