Tom Dunne's Music & Me: Bob Dylan rescued me from my teenage wasteland
Bob Dylan will turn 80 on Monday, May 24.
There is no escaping Bob. At some point in your music life you must come to Him. You might deny his divinity for a while, but at some point a verse, a phrase or a chorus will draw you in. You will be becalmed with wonder and inner peace. And Bob will say, “Come in, I’ve been expecting you.”
I came to Bob the day of my Inter Cert results, the year of our lord CXMVIXCIII, a very long time ago. I had done well, which was a surprise, and celebrated by buying More Bob Dylan Greatest Hits from George Murray of Murray’s Disks, one of the classic old record shops.
George would have sold me some seriously ropey stuff prior to this, compilations albums with tracks like Kung Foo Fighting (and worse) so there was a look of pride in his eyes as he slipped Bob into the bag. His work was done, another one in Bob’s pocket.
The exam results had been a relief to my family. There was a lingering suspicion in our home that I might still be a special child, and not in a good way. Years earlier, a belief that the ‘times tables’ were just really badly written, and therefore un-rememberable poems had caused issues in class.
“He’s in the dunces row, Tommy!” my mother said.
“He is not!” My dad was emphatic. “He’s just in the row by the window.”
“Yes, row D!” my mum explained, becoming clearly exasperated.
I have to admit I had found it odd that there was no row C. Just row A (very bright), row B (not quite so) and then D.
Next day, I asked the boy next to me: “What row is this?”
“The dunces row,” he said, almost with pride. I returned to looking out the window.
“But look at me now!” I could have said at this point: A certificate to say I wasn’t daft and a Bob Dylan double album nestling on the Bush SPR31, the record deck that other 1960s desks called “quite affordable”.
For a boy still quite impressed by the lyrical dexterity of Boney M (“Ra Ra Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen”) this was a step up.
“I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul” (Don't Think Twice, It's All Right) was still essentially in the same ball park (boy meets girl, boy loses girl) but was subtly of a different league.
As the nights wore on and I perused the 5th year reading list – Henry James, Portrait of a Lady, how brilliant - Bob played in the background and more and more of his lyrics slowly alighted upon me. At times I found myself almost startled by them.
This was an adult word of grown up relationships, as far from my teenage wasteland as it was possible to imagine. His girlfriends had “amphetamines and pearls”. Mine had clackers and access to her brother’s Chopper. That was some degree of a gap.
Lines such as, “His clothes are dirty, but his hands are clean, and you’re the best thing that he’s ever seen,” would haunt me for days. What wild world was this and how soon could I get there?
Dylan’s world started to subtly influence everything I read, watched or listened to. And even if his live performances often meant that you had to convince people that he really was playing the hits, his back catalogue had a power beyond this earthly realm.
In later life, besotted by the song writing of a man called Thom Moore (Carolina Rua), I asked Thom what had gotten him into music. He told me he’d been in the US navy in 1964 when their ship had called to Hawaii. On a day off they took in an outdoor gig by a newly emerging talent called Bob Dylan.
“Bob said he had a new song that he’d just written on the plane. It was Mr Tambourine Man. When he started to play it the world stopped spinning. I was just sitting there, doing somersaults in my brain.”
After that, Thom said he left the navy and headed to the nearest folk scene, which was in San Francisco.
It was funny that Thom mentioned ‘somersaults'. That was exactly what my brain did when I first saw his band Midnight Well, which I now see was like Bob reaching out to me across space, time and oceans.
