Dylan’s positively forthright views on the sporting life
Those who have spun Bob Dylan’s records in their bedrooms as youths or slipped a CD copy of Blonde on Blonde into the car stereo down the years may not have realised the sporting thread that weaves through his work. But like the biblical references, Shakespearean allusions and nods to 20th century icons, so too football, baseball and inter-county hurling run through his body of work. All you have to do is look:
“You got a lot of nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend. You just want to be on the side that’s winning.”
A young Darren Fletcher once revealed he attended a Dylan gig with Roy Keane on a club tour of the US. Diego Forlan later spoke about morning lifts to the Carrington training complex with Keane. Keane spoke little but played this album a lot, the Uruguayan revealed. Positively Fourth Street is widely interpreted as Dylan’s put-down of former friends from the folk community; those who turned their backs when the Village’s one-time darling ‘went electric’. In fact, it’s a paean to that tackle by Keane on Marc Overmars.
It was Niall Quinn who famously revealed that the Mayfield man folded away his captain’s armband and boots at Lansdowne to join the squad in Lillies Bordello after the defeat of the Dutch in 2001 — and this is the tune he trotted out, during a beery sing-song. One gets the feeling Keane chose this song deliberately. I’m not saying the seeds of Saipan were sowed in a nightclub off Grafton Street but....
“Catfish, million-dollar-man, Nobody can throw the ball like Catfish can”
THE one Dylan song that is actually about sport. This is in honour of one James Augustus Hunter, baseball’s first free agent. Incidentally, the day Dylan was born, a Saturday, the Yankees hosted the Red Sox in the Bronx. That day, Joe DiMaggio “singled to extend his hitting streak to 10 games, on the way to 56”. Ted Williams, another one of the game’s greats, was on the other side. The Yankees won, 7-6.
“You could have done better but I don’t mind”
DESPITE the GAA’s own efforts to go electric with the imminent trials of HawkEye, Dylan remains a purist when it comes to officiating in Gaelic games. Don’t Think Twice from the Freewheelin’ album is his rallying call to half-blind, ham sandwich-stuffed umpires. He added a new verse — which he sings when the mood takes him — in which he laments the lost art of the sideline cut. Rhyming ‘He’s not a good lad, but he’d stop a good lad playing’ with the couplet ‘I don’t know why, Denis Walsh won’t let Sean Og keep on staying’ is a high watermark.
“He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor”
OKAY, Aviva Stadium architects didn’t “put some bleachers out in the sun and have it out on Highway 61” but they crammed those rows of seats into the glass-framed Havelock end. Incidentally, Highway 61 Revisited was released as the B-side of Dylan’s Can You Please Climb Out Your Window. True fact.
‘We always did feel the same, We just saw it from a different point of view, Tangled up in blue.’
DESSIE Farrell, GPA chief and former Dublin star, entitled his autobiography after this tune. The song was written in the back room of Barry’s Hotel after Mikey Sheehy’s goal in 1978.
‘Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth, You’re an idiot, babe’
A sardonic take on the inner workings of FIFA.
“Man thinks ‘cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please”
WHO’S the biggest genius to grace Kilkenny’s Nowlan Park? DJ? Keher? Shefflin? Wrong; Dylan played the marble city in 2006, failing to come away with two points but satisfied that he had a bit in the tank and, when a few key members returned to the band, reckoned he could have a good run at the Championship. License to kill, however, is a tribute to King Henry Shefflin.
“How does it feel...”
Tiger Woods, Ryan Giggs. How does it feel to be on your own?
“The answer my friend...”
THE story of how the San Francisco Giants had to leave Candlestick Park before they could win a world series. The perennial under achievers took the title last season.
“Come gather ‘round people, Wherever you roam, And admit that the waters, Around you have grown”
WRITTEN, unusually for Dylan, by dictating into tape recorder on the train from Heuston to Limerick in the wake of Leinster’s defeat of Dylan’s beloved Munster (he’s also played Thomond) in the 2009 Heineken Cup semi-final. Several verses were lost when someone spilled a bottle of beer coming into Portlaoise.
* Adrian@thescore.ie; Twitter: @adrianrussell
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