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...
Category: Music
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BOB DYLAN: Mississippi (Part 2)
In the first verse Dylan begins with a simple statement of his intention to pursue his faith in his muse, combined with clear intimations of mortality which seem to motivate him. From the beginning the use of the pronoun ‘we’ involves the listener intimately in this process. …Every step of the...
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BOB DYLAN: Mississippi (Part One)
Despite his difficult relationship with the recording process and his focus on live performance, Bob Dylan has always conceived his albums as expressive units – groups of songs arranged in a particular order for specific effects. This is obvious in the case of albums as diverse as Blood On The Tracks, Nashville Skyline or...
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THE BEATLES Who Could Ask For More: Rock ‘n’ Reel Review
The following review of WHO COULD ASK FOR MORE: RECLAIMING THE BEATLES appeared in Rock ‘n’ Reel magazine this month…. REPRODUCED WITH THE PERMISSION OF SEAN McGHEE (EDITOR) WHO COULD ASK FOR MORE: RECLAIMING THE BEATLES BEATLES SITES BEATLES LINKS BEATLES.COM BEATLES STORY MARK LEWINSOHN BEATLE LINKS BEATLES BIBLE BEATLES NEWS I AM THE...
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BOB DYLAN: ‘Cross The Green Mountain
…All must yield To the Avenging God… In the mud and the blood of the makeshift trench, the soldier boy from Belvedere, South Carolina, is about to breathe his last. The Yankee bullet which had pierced his groin had come from some anonymous source, from the other side of the swirling...
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MUSIC BOOK REVIEW: Million Dollar Bash by Sid Griffin
Year by year the legend of The Basement Tapes grows. Here’s a few personal memories. I remember reading about the legendary Great White Wonder when I was at school in the late ‘60s. A little later, as a spotty teenager, I acquired a copy of The Little White Wonder, a white pressed bootleg album, in...
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THE BEATLES: Dylan, The Beatles and A Hard Day’s Night Part Two
The movie A Hard Day’s Night, despite being made in monochrome on a tiny budget, is decidedly cool, witty and fast moving. It has an ‘improvised’ atmosphere that recalls the contemporary methods of French Nouvelle Vague directors like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. As such it avoids many of the clichés of framing and narrative...
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BOB DYLAN: Waiting For You
Happiness is but a state of mind. Anytime you want, you can cross the state line…. Waiting For You was written for the soundtrack of Callie Khouri’s 2002 movie, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, a wryly bittersweet and avowedly feminist tale centred around the complex relationship between a mother and daughter. As with...
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THE BEATLES: Who Could Ask For More extracts Part One: Dylan, The Beatles and A Hard Day’s Night
INTRODUCTION The idea that Bob Dylan was a key influence on The Beatles is very well-known and accepted one. Dylan is often credited with opening The Beatles’ minds to wider horizons and encouraging them by example to write more personal, meaningful lyrics. Yet most writers have approached this subject in a rather superficial and generalised...
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BOB DYLAN: Things Have Changed
…I’m in the wrong town…. I should be in Hollywood…. If you strain your eyes hard enough at a Dylan performance, you will spot a small gold figurine wobbling on top of one of his band’s amplifiers. It’s there at virtually every gig. Dylan has even been known to grasp it and hold it aloof...