Why everyone’s talking about...

Why is Bob Dylan in the news?

Bob Dylan

The answer, my friend, is… that he’s just had his first American No1: Murder Most Foul, a 17-minute epic about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

First No1? But he’s been around for ages. Sixty years, in fact. His first professional gig was playing harmonica on a 1960 Harry Belafonte album, three years before his breakthrough. In his early days he introduced the Beatles to marijuana – mistakenly thinking they were already druggies after mishearing their lyrics ‘I can’t hide’ as ‘I get high’. Now 78, he previously reached No2 on the Billboard Hot 100, with Like A Rolling Stone in 1965 and Rainy Day Women in 1966.

So why is he suddenly popular now? Some say the haunting song-poem, which takes its title from a line in Hamlet, strikes a chord with today’s anxious times. When he released it, Dylan (pictured in 1966) said: ‘This is a song recorded long ago that you may find interesting. Stay safe, watch, and may God accompany you.’

Is Dylan the Godfearing type? He’s always had faith and embraced evangelical Christianity from 1979 to 1981, to the chagrin of those who had seen him as an icon of free thinking. One critic dubbed this output ‘God awful’, and a fan brought a sign to a gig saying: ‘Jesus loves your old songs.’

But I’m guessing he’s a man of principle? Up to a point: he’s done ads for yogurt, Pepsi and even Victoria’s Secret lingerie. Not as a model, I should add.

So after 60 years, he must be one of the most recognisable faces in music? You’d think. But in New Jersey in 2009 he was picked up by police investigating a ‘scruffy old man acting suspiciously’. Mistaken identity goes two ways, too. He once mistook talkshow host Michael Parkinson for a waiter. It’s also long been rumoured that Dylan secretly lived in London’s Crouch End in the 1980s.

Is that true? Hard to say with Dylan. He has a reputation for being taciturn in interviews. He possibly likes dogs better than humans. (Trivia: His bull mastiff, Brutus, regularly pooped in actress Katharine Hepburn’s flowerbeds when they were neighbours). It’s left to others to explain his acclaimed lyrics.

So he’s won accolades? Too right! They include a Pulitzer and the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, which he sent singer Patti Smith to accept, although she forgot the words to one of his songs. Mind you, so has he: once singing ‘stadows’ rather than ‘shadows’ in a recording session, then stubbornly insisting it WAS a real word. Peak Bob!

STEVE BENNETT