WHO COULD ASK FOR MORE: RECLAIMING THE BEATLES …When asked by a journalist whether the group intended writing any anti-war songs, John – without a moment’s hesitation – replied tartly that ALL their songs were anti-war songs. These songs articulated both the immense fear that lay just beneath the surface of the supposedly...
Author: chrisgregory (Chris Gregory)
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RICHARD THOMPSON Sweet Warrior
Richard Thompson can transport you to places in his songs like no-one else. Drawing his inspiration from folk songs, oral tales, tattered history books, half remembered stories, bizarre websites and advertising catalogues, Thompson is a master of time and space. Many of his best songs place you in a specific historical context, then move...
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BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Magic
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: MAGIC Bruce Springsteen’s Magic is a journey into the darkness of the ‘American night’; a portrait of a country mired in confusion, its value-systems broken down, its soul in torment. As a writer, Springsteen is often misunderstood. This is partly because he often casts his narratives in the form of raucous rock...
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BOB DYLAN: Ain’t Talkin’
There’s no-one here, the gardener has gone… The hooded pilgrim advances along a thin, dusty dirt track. There is no moon. All along the skyline the fires rage. His hidden face contorts in shaded darkness. He burns inside. In front of him he seems to see the whole world, billions of outstretched hands calling for...
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SHORT STORY: Special Engagement
As Sheena came into the living room, Jimmy Carlisle turned down the volume on the T.V. automatic and leaned back in his favourite armchair with a smirk on his face. “Tell me…” He smoothed down one of the long thin brown strands that covered up his bald patch, leaving an oily deposit on his right...
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BOB DYLAN: The Levee’s Gonna Break
…I look in your eyes, I see nobody other than me, I see all that I am and all I hope to be… The secret language of the blues has always enthralled Bob Dylan. From his earliest days as a performer he has been irresistibly attracted to its sly, lascivious poetic sensibility, its subtle use...
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BOB DYLAN: Nettie Moore
The world has gone black before my eyes… Across the courtroom the judge reaches for his black cap. Now he is poised to settle it on his head. In that moment, for Lost John, time freezes. It is as if he has stepped out of himself, like he’s an actor in some projection of his...
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POEM: Deep Breath
you tore me into LITTLE STRIPS I hung, on a broken stick in rags and tatters, a teeth-chattering scarecrow on a rusty hook my eyes torn holes in a stiff black curtain flapping pointlessly in space smoke-blind, rose-pricked, sky-haunted, pecked-at by thin black crows seconds before the crash came you pushed me...
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BOB DYLAN: Beyond The Horizon
There’s always a reason Why someone’s life has been spared… Beyond The Horizon underlines the irony of Bob Dylan calling his latest album Modern Times. Once Dylan was one of the leaders of a musical movement which seemed to be aiming to sweep away the detritus of the past: now he celebrates the musical values...
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POEM: Hero
his eyes, full and enraged like two moons. The smoke from the corner of his mouth slick like Bogart, cool like Bacall the trilby turned down, the moustache and the leer, the raised eyebrow, the flash of the teeth in monochrome endlessly rerun, he is a patchwork of black and white dots, a form twisted...