Bob Dylan

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I was always a big Dylan fan. Everyone has their favorites but I think Highway 61 Revisited is a work of pure genius (although "Your Gonna Make me Lonesome When You Go" is actually my favorite tune.

 

I have a lot of funny memories.  I remember how everyone seemed to have some intricate interpretation of the meaning of "Ballad of a Thin Man' - everything from protest against the media to gay rights (and wasn't it alluded to in some Counting Crows song?).  I remember how my atheist hippie college girlfriend got all pissed when he went through his Christian phase and swore to never listen again, but I caught her sneaking albums on her stereo.

 

But my favorite stories came from the electric utility guys I worked with in my job who used to service/visit his Malibu home.  They said he was the nicest, most down-to-earth celebrity they dealt with around there.  If he was around he always came out to talk to the meter readers and lineman.  And since a lot of these guys were very young, they didn't know who he was - some of them said they first thought he was some homeless guy wandering the property until he told them he was a musician.  But he never alluded to how famous and legendary he was, at least not with these guys.

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I was always a big Dylan fan. Everyone has their favorites but I think Highway 61 Revisited is a work of pure genius (although "Your Gonna Make me Lonesome When You Go" is actually my favorite tune.

 

I have a lot of funny memories.  I remember how everyone seemed to have some intricate interpretation of the meaning of "Ballad of a Thin Man' - everything from protest against the media to gay rights (and wasn't it alluded to in some Counting Crows song?).  I remember how my atheist hippie college girlfriend got all pissed when he went through his Christian phase and swore to never listen again, but I caught her sneaking albums on her stereo.

 

But my favorite stories came from the electric utility guys I worked with in my job who used to service/visit his Malibu home.  They said he was the nicest, most down-to-earth celebrity they dealt with around there.  If he was around he always came out to talk to the meter readers and lineman.  And since a lot of these guys were very young, they didn't know who he was - some of them said they first thought he was some homeless guy wandering the property until he told them he was a musician.  But he never alluded to how famous and legendary he was, at least not with these guys.

 

bobo,

 

That is just great! Heart-warming, actually. Out of all the things that are possible in this world, I would never have thought it would have been possible to increase my opinion of this guy, in ANY regard whatsoever... but your story did. So...thank you!

 

When you mentioned interpretation, I recently heard, on you tube (now deleted, unfortunately) part of an interview with Joan Baez. Looked other places for it, and it seems it was from No Direction Home, which I think I saw, but don't remember this:

 

About an hour into Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, Joan Baez—in an interview that will be edited by your PBS station—recalls an invincible young Dylan imagining what they'll be saying about him in the future: "A bunch of years from now, all these assholes are going to be writing about all this shit I write, and I don't know where the fuck it comes from and I don't know what the fuck it's about, and they're going to write about what it's about."

 

He was, of course, right!

 

 

 

 

Now, since I wasn't able to post that, here are 2 others, one of which I already posrted to another BB thread: "Mama You Been on My Mind."

 

 

Bob and Joan, 1964

http://vimeo.com/88290652

 

Bob

http://vimeo.com/79431247

 

 

Steve