More Memories of Dylan By Jane

I remember clearly the first time I ever listened to the great Bob, however I cannot recall when exactly I decided that I liked him.. Having just left home on impulse at the tender age of 18, straight from a council estate to the Avenues in a vain attempt to 'better' myself, I ended up in a somewhat squalid (ie typical) bedsit on Park Grove. Owned by a somewhat dodgy (ie typical) landlord called Mr Leak ( cos all his roofs did just that). It was 1989.

Nothing in the world could have prepared me for the culture shock. Princes Avenue may have been only a bus ride away from my estate, but it might as well have been on the other side of the world. That's what council estates become; little microcosms of themselves. Now I was no longer living in the land of tracksuits, cheap net curtains and dodgy bigoted attitudes.

I was no longer surrounded by spotty neanderthals who couldn't string a sentence together without spitting ( I'm sorry to stereotype, but that's how it was, and I'm one of the people allowed to say it). Anyway, I moved into this bedsit in a shared house, and met many dodgy but interesting characters. The sound of soft jazz and the smell of joints (not the Sunday kind any more) greeted me when I walked in..and I was free at last. It got better, I soon discovered there was more to music than just the charts, as I moved in next to a guy with a rather good record collection. I was completely taken in.....the rest is history.

He introduced me to Bob Dylan, The Moody Blues, Fairport Convention, Roy Harper, Nina Simone, John Lee Hooker..to name but a few. In other words, good music that I'd never heard before. But Bob was a bit of a hard nut to crack... I remember I was very much a fledgling feminist at the time ( as in, got the dungarees but not quite grown the full beard) and Bob offended me somewhat..

The first track I put on was 'Just Like a Woman', and straight away I hated it. I though this Bob guy sounded like a rasping old perv. He couldn't even sing!! 'She aches..just like a woman..but she breaks like a little girl!' What utter tosh! I took the needle off immediately ( for yes, it was vinyl, for all too young to remember ) and consigned him, I think, to the back of the stack..

I don't much recall what happened after that..I think it all merged into a haze of marijuana and guitar playing, and many happy nights of self discovery. But somewhere along the line, Bob gradually re-emerged, can't remember when or how, but I decided he wasn't too bad after all.. I can't think exactly which track it was that turned my head, it was either I Want You or It Ain't Me Babe, but something seeped into my consciousness then, and stayed there..

Perhaps it was Bob's honesty, his rawness, his refusal to perform the expected (remember when he went electric)..his renegade tendencies. Well it's not really a happy ending, I split up with the guy after discovering he was a complete control freak, a total d*ckhead actually, but still I miss his record collection. After that, things went downhill rather sharply, and not to go into detail..I never have experienced since the high that was 1989..the best year of my life. And I never stuck around to retrieve or record any of those albums. What a fool I was. There are some that I have forgotten about completely...but now and again, I am reminded of one when it pops up in someone else's collection.

And whenever I listen to Bob..or the Moody Blues, or Fairport Convention, et al. I remember that year with a sigh. Ah. So the moral of the story is, approach each new relationship with a stack of recordable CDs, and head straight for his record collection..dreadfully.cynical you may think, but you learn a lot between 18 and 33.  © Jane 2003

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