Category: Music

Hi folks…. Been a while since I posted regularly as I’ve been working hard on finishing my book DETERMINED TO STAND: The Reinvention of Bob Dylan. There will be some extracts from the book in the next blog My Bob Dylan podcast A HEADFUL OF IDEAS will also be going live soon. Watch this space!!!...

…Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life,and few there be that find it – King James Bible, Matthew 7;14 For this the Golden Sun the Earth divides And, wheel’d thro’ twelve bright signs, his chariot guides. Five zones the heav’n surrounds: the centre glows With fire unquench’d, and suns...

THESEUS. Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace; four happy days bring in Another moon; but, O, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires, Like to a step-dame or a dowager, Long withering out a young man’s revenue. HIPPOLYTA. Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; Four nights...

 “You’re the only thing alive that keeps me going You’re like a time-bomb in my heart…”   In Tempest Bob Dylan takes us on a ‘dream journey’ through storms and bitterness and rage. The dream visions increase in intensity, as he draws us into a parallel vision of ‘modern times’ in which the ghosts of...

… I walk alone through the shakin’ street…            In recent years, in his interviews and in his Theme Time Radio Hour  show, Bob Dylan has professed considerable admiration for ‘crooners’ like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. This may have come as something of a surprise to those who associated Dylan with...

          Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall...

The frozen smile upon my face fits me like a glove… And she bore him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land Exodus 2:22 There in the tomb stand the dead upright, But winds come up from the shore: They shake when...

Sometimes like women or unwedded maids Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows Than have the white breasts of The Queen Of Love… Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus Little by little, bit by bit Every day I’m becoming more of a hypocrite…  The main story which Tell Tale Signs tells is that of Bob Dylan’s reinvention...

 …Soul of a nation is under the knife… Dignity, like Series Of Dreams and God Knows, was originally written and recorded for Oh Mercy. It was eventually released in remixed form as a single some five years later and also appeared on the MTV Unplugged album in 1996. Tell Tale Signs features two radically different...

The ‘Drawn Blank Series’, the exhibition of Bob Dylan’s paintings currently showing at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre, provides a valuable insight into Dylan’s creative and imaginative processes. The paintings are based on a series of drawings Dylan completed in the late 80s and early 90s. In what the exhibition catalogue describes as ‘an intense burst...