Former Keef offers his tribute to Bob Dylan in Bognor show
Bob Dylan fans are invited on a trip down memory lane in Bognor Regis.
The Bob Dylan Story is at the Regis Centre on Saturday, March 26 (www. alexandratheatre.co.uk or 01243 861010).
“Bob” and “The Band” capture classics including Like A Rolling Stone, Blowin’ In The Wind, Knocking On Heaven’s Door and Subterranean Homesick Blues in an affectionate trawl through the best of Bob’s impressive back catalogue.
The Bob Dylan Story is fronted and produced by Dylan fan Bill Lennon.
As Bill says: “I have spent many years as a professional musician and I’ve done several tributes over the years.
“I was Keith Richards in The Counterfeit Stones for many years from 2005 when the previous Keith left through until about 2016 and I just had such a great time but I got offered the chance to play the role of James Taylor in a show called You’ve Got A Friend and I just thought that I couldn’t turn down that opportunity. I’m a big fan of James Taylor but also I was just wanting to spread my wings a little bit more and just to be a bit more challenged generally.
“My natural inclination is towards acoustic and I suppose really it was just a nobrainer.
“So I moved from The Counterfeit Stones and did You’ve Got A Friend for a while but already I was thinking to myself that I’d like to try my hand doing my own show and the name Bob Dylan just really leapt out at me. I’ve always been a massive fan.
“One of the earliest records I remember listening to was The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan which came out in 1963.
“I was listening to it a lot later on in the late 70s when I was a youngster, early 80s and I just absolutely loved it. It just had the most amazing charm for me.
“It felt almost like it was coming from a different planet.
“A lot of what I was listening to on the radio at the time was great. The late 70s, early 80s are my favourite. Bands like The Police and Blondie and so on, stuff that I just love listening to but really Bob Dylan was just like something else.
“There was just this idea of an indefinable longing in his voice and his harmonica playing.
“And with some of the songs it was just like I was almost in them and I just got them even though sometimes his lyrics weren’t that easy to understand.
“And they were quite powerful lyrics too. They were quite powerful songs and I remember asking my dad what happened to Bob Dylan that he only had one of his albums.
“It begged the question of what became of him and I asked and all I remember is my dad saying was that Bob Dylan went a bit weird after that. And that was all I knew. And then when I was 16 or 17 I was listening to the radio and they played Positively Fourth Street and then Like
A Rolling Stone back to back and I realised that it was Bob Dylan, this guy that I used to listen to and I just thought that was amazing and I started listening to him again and when I went to university I had the greatest hits volume one on all the time.”
As for the band and the act now: “What we’re trying to do is get the sound of the records like the original recordings. We’re trying to give people a reminder of the songs how they remember them from when they heard them the first time around.
“I started out by trying too hard, I think, to sound like him.
“Now I go a little bit the other way, just singing the songs in the way that I want to sing them but putting in the odd nasal inflection and mannerism that Dylan had. And what we do is like a kind of greatest hits review.
“We do all the songs that people associate with Bob Dylan and some of the really strong album songs.”
Tickets for the show available on www. alexandratheatre.co.uk.