Bob Dylan has always been almost as old as my parents. He has also always been forever young, staring up at me from the cover of  the book that has graced my coffee table for decades.

When was it that a Bob Dylan song first mattered to me? I cant remember. Nor can I remember a time when it didn’t, a time when I wasn’t tangled up in blue.

Maybe it was in the Spring of 1979, when my high school English teacher let me borrow his Street Legal LP, an album that was crucified by a handful of critics considered more qualified than the rest of us to measure the success of a Dylan song. Pioneer of Dylan studies, Michael Gray, was not among them, writing that Street Legal is “one of Dylan’s most important and cohesive albums . . . of astonishing complexity and confidence delivered in one of Dylan’s most authoritative voices.” Granted, he points out that it was badly produced, but that doesn’t matter to me.  What matters to me and anyone else who has ever missed someone – or something – is “Where Are You Tonight?” It remains a staple in the soundtrack of my life. Everybody has one. We all have one.

But without you it just doesn’t seem right.
Oh, where are you tonight?

“Hey, hey, HEY, hey.”

Where are you tonight? 

Picturing the picture on the cover of the Street Legal album, it occurs to me that this was the first time I considered Bob Dylan in color. Until then my idea of him was monochromatic, an iteration of the Dylan we know from the “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video – forever flippant, flipping over cue cards, dropping them in the alley. Deadpan.

Laid Off. Bad Cough. Paid Off. And, finally – naturally – What?? 

What??

Always on the road, heading for another joint.

That’s what.

That’s why. 

During one of my first summers in the United States, an American cousin took me to Buffalo to see The Grateful Dead open for Tom Petty and Bob Dylan.  In color. Previously, I had seen Dylan perform at Slane Castle in Ireland in the summer of 1984 –  a mighty performance with Santana and  Van Morrison. But this was different. This was as American as the idea could be. Deadheads. Tie-dye. Weed. The Wave. This was the Fourth of July.  “It doesn’t rain on the Fourth of July!” Bob Weir told the crowd, and like poetry,  the heavens opened.

This was Positively 4th Street (What??) and I loved it.

As a going away present, my cousin later gave me the coffee table book. Published in 1967, it is a collection of black and white photographs by Daniel Kramer, indelible images taken over a period of two years, revealing a young man Kramer characterized as someone “who set his own marks and did not allow himself to be manipulated.”

Gentlemen, he said
I don’t need your organization, I’ve shined your shoes

For Kramer, Dylan was “someone worth photographing,” someone worth seeing from different perspectives. For me, Dylan is someone who forces you – without telling you – to shift a little in order to see better.  Thus we find him perched on a branch in a tree or in an alleyway in London or Stuck Inside of Mobile. Or in the falling shadows.

Photography is just light, of course, and the good photographer will always find the right light. It is writing with light. As Amyn Nasser describes there is a kind of magic in this

. . . ability to stir the soul with light and shape and color. To create grand visual moments out of small and simple things, and to infuse big and complicated subjects with unpretentious elegance. [The photographer] respects classic disciplines, while at the same time insists on being fast, modern and wild.

Like a welder … seeing things in front of us and into the empty spaces between them. The self proclaimed song and dance man makes gates out of vintage iron and scrap metal items, spanners, chains, car parts, and axes. Some include reminders that he is also a musician – a treble clef or a guitar. Born and raised in iron ore country in Hibbling, Minnesota, Dylan writes in Chronicles, that he has always worked with iron in one way or another. Paul Green, the president of the Halcyon Gallery in London – which first showcased Dylan’s iron works explains, “He’s drawing from an industrial past, a working man’s past . . . It’s partly about looking back but it’s also about resurrecting these items and the physical act of putting these objects together.”

Why do gates hold such appeal to Dylan? He says it’s “because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference.”

What??

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Something is happening here, and Nobel Prize winner, Bob Dylan, doesn’t have the answers either.

His Never Ending Tour began in 1988 and continued for more than 3,000 shows until COVID-19 changed plans. During his time away from the road, , he stayed busy, releasing three original songs from a new album,  Rough and Rowdy Ways. “Murder Most Foul,” a 17 minute rumination on the assassination of President Kennedy and America and music,  arrived unexpectedly one midnight  with a Tweet from Dylan: Greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude for all your support and loyalty over the years. This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant, and may God be with you.” Two years later, The Rough and Rowdy Ways tour began. It continues in Portgual next week.

Why does he keep touring?

I keep touring because: it is a perfect way to stay anonymous and still be a member of the social order,” he said. “You’re the master of your fate. But it’s not an easy path to take, not fun and games.

Wall Street Journal

Happy Birthday, Bob. I find myself remembering you on a hot monsoonal night in the summer of 1988. You were playing at the amphitheater in Mesa, Arizona. Lightning struck during “Mr Tambourine Man.” Of course it did. At the time, a recent immigrant to the United States, those were days of wonder for me, days before we worried about what waited around the corner – before we were observant, before we knew better.

As easy it was to tell black from white
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right
And our choices were few and the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split

On your birthday – and every day, Bob Dylan – may you stay safe, stay observant, and may God be with you.

 

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