An enduring love for Dylan
One woman put Bob Dylan into context for Marty Sharpe a decade after he burst onto the scene and he’s been transfixed ever since.
Every Dylan fan has a story. Here’s mine. It happened in late 1983. I was 16. An avid watcher of Ready to Roll and a keen follower of pop music, I’d never heard anything like Jokerman.
I was transfixed by its imagery and that plaintive, distinctive voice once so perfectly described as the sound of a sad balloon deflating.
‘‘Distant ships sailing into the mist, You were born with a snake in both of your fists while a hurricane was blowing Freedom just around the corner for you But with the truth so far off, what good will it do?’’
My mum’s best friend, Helen Morpeth, happened to be staying with us at the time.
Helen was a Socialist and an intellectual, who drove a white MGB convertible. She was well-read and widely-travelled and had a penchant for Camel cigarettes, gin and tonic and dinner parties. She was a member of the Star Trek fan club and the Friends of Russia club.
When you spoke to Helen you knew you had her full attention, and she never forgot what was important to you.
She saw I was taken by Jokerman
and she told me about this Dylan character.
Within a week she and I had found and bought a secondhand Thorn stereo. A day later she gave me my first album; The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
Without Helen contextualising the world of 1963, the poignant significance of its most powerful songs might have been lost on me.
For an adolescent romantic with a fondness for melancholy verse and righteous causes, that LP was a revelation. It sounded nothing like Jokerman, recorded two decades later, but was just as evocative.
And so began my Dylan journey.
When I got my first job I’d spend every spare dollar at Silvios secondhand record store on Cuba St in Wellington.
The music scene of the 60s and 70s had swept me up a decade late. The dotted mental lines between bands, musicians and influences became an obsession.
It was a maelstrom of styles and artists and at the eye of the storm, always, was Dylan.
It wasn’t chronological. I’d get hooked on one of his 60s albums, then one that had just been released. Then there were the bootlegs.
I’ve always thought Dylan had five distinct peaks; the early 60s (Freewheelin’ and The Times
I have a lasting memory of my son running down the hall in his nappies, giggling loudly as he screamed ‘‘Bob Dylan wears frilly pink undies!’’
They Are a-changin’), the mid-60s (Highway 61 Revisited, Bringing It All Back Home and Blonde on Blonde), the mid-70s (Blood on the Tracks, and Desire), 1989 (Oh Mercy) and the late 90s to mid-00s (Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft and Modern Times).
Over time and with reappraisal, the gap between his peaks and troughs has lessened. The Christian phase, the roundly rubbished Self Portrait album, even (what I consider his nadir) Down in the Groove, don’t look so bad now.
I haven’t been as loyal as some addicts. By 1988 I’d concluded, reluctantly, that his best was behind him. It wasn’t. Some of the best was still to come.
Dylan in concert can bear little resemblance to Dylan in studio.
I first saw him in concert at Athletic Park in February, 1986. Loved it, bought the T-shirt.
I don’t think The Evening Post reviewer did. She said Dylan, who was ‘‘hitting 45 now and it showed’’, appeared ‘‘paranoid, miserable and incapable of a smile’’.
All of which, naturally, made him more endearing.
I haven’t the foggiest idea what Dylan’s on about in many of his songs. Who was Mr Jones? Why do pigeons run to the Mighty Quinn? What are the Subterranean Homesick Blues?
I’ve read several of the tomes written about him, including his own autobiography, Chronicles. Each sheds a pale light on an enigma that need not ever be fully understood or explained.
My two kids were born between Modern Times
(2006) and Christmas in the Heart (2009). They were passive Dylan listeners from their bassinets.
Aware of their dad’s affliction they, at a very young age, thought it was hilarious to ridicule Dylan. I feigned furious indignation and tickled them until they apologised.
I have a lasting memory of my son running down the hall in his nappies, giggling loudly as he screamed ‘‘Bob Dylan wears frilly pink undies!’’.
They’d rather listen to Bruno Mars or Twenty One Pilots.
Dylan turned 77 in May. When it was announced that he was coming to New Zealand, my wife (whose attitude towards Dylan is more aligned with the kids’ than mine) relented to my appeals and agreed to delay re-lining the bathroom walls so we could take the kids to see him at Spark Arena on Sunday.
Three years after we watched Ready to Roll that night in 1983, Helen drowned in the Kattegat Sea off Denmark’s east coast. She had fallen through ice after walking out to take photos. She was 40.
She was living on the island of Anholt, where she had married a local fisherman. He died of an undiagnosed illness a few months after her death. The islanders say it was a broken heart.
Her death left a great emptiness in our family. I’m not sure my kids will enjoy the concert, but I’m hopeful they’ll one day look back and thank us for taking them. As I look back and thank Helen.