David A. Windham

Bob Dylan

I went to see a Bob Dylan concert last night1,2.  I had seats up front just a couple rows back in the middle aisle and it was good.

  1. Watching the River Flow
  2. Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine
  3. I Contain Multitudes
  4. False Prophet
  5. When I Paint My Masterpiece (Bob on harp in beginning then on piano)
  6. Black Rider
  7. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
  8. My Own Version of You
  9. Crossing the Rubicon
  10. To Be Alone With You
  11. Key West (Philosopher Pirate)
  12. Gotta Serve Somebody
  13. I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You
  14. Melancholy Mood (Frank Sinatra cover)
  15. Mother of Muses
  16. Goodbye Jimmy Reed
  17. Every Grain of Sand

The setlist mixed several unique renditions of his songs from the last 59 years flanked by the majority of his most recent work from Rough and Rowdy Ways which in my opinion is as good, if not better than any of his previous work. It’s not really appropriate to compare his works because each one reflects a different state of mind and time. The most recent is littered with references to mortality and art keeping him alive. For the last several weeks, I’ve been recently listening his discography, interviews, outtakes, and reading anything related because there’s a small part of me that likes to try and personally connect to the event. Dylan explained in his Nobel Prize in Literature essay and in other interviews that he had connected to Buddy Holly in a very mysterious way just days before he passed. Ole’ Zimmy will turn 82 years old before this tour is over and although literal volumes have been written about him, this is mine. 

The first time I actually paid attention to Bob Dylan was when I was in my early teens listening to the soundtrack Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid3.  I had a kind of peculiar luxury growing up when it comes to listening to music. Our house as filled with albums because my father worked in radio and had promotional copies. We had a whole wall of cabinets filled with albums. I would just pick them out randomly based the covers and listen to them. I tended to gravitate towards the playful and colorful albums of The Beatles when I was really young. But for whatever reason, I first discovered Bob Dylan through an obscure soundtrack which only has two songs on it that aren’t instrumentals even though a couple outtakes have since been recorded by other artists. Kris Kristofferson played Billy in the film and the album was recorded a couple days before I was born. 

I listened to the other albums with interesting covers before I was old enough to drive… Dylan, Planet Waves, and Slow Train. I didn’t really pay much attention then because the lyricism didn’t resonate with me and I was too focused on new music and the sounds of bands like Led Zeppelin. In my late teens, I picked up a couple CD’s that I listened to a good bit.  During my first year of college, one of my best friends was a rabid Dylan fan. Her dorm room was covered in Dylan posters and out of respect, I borrowed and listened to every album meticulously reading the lyrics alongside.  Another college girlfriend would also listen to Blood on the Tracks regularly. And during my most debaucherous college days my friends and I would listen to The Basement Tapes somewhat religiously and play our own versions.  The CDs I wore out more than any other was the double disk live 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert. The very first songbook I purchased while I was playing guitar was called Classic Dylan which included Blonde on Blonde, Nashville Skyline, Blood On the Tracks, and Desire. At one point, I knew every note and lyric to all four of those albums and that’s pretty tough for even Dylan to remember who has often ad-libbed some of the lyrics in live performances. 

So what is it about Bob Dylan? I mean… there’s a reason he’s won a Noble Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Academy Award, Golden Globe, 10 Grammy Awards, various Hall of Fame awards, numerous books and documentary films. His own book Chronicles Vol. 1, received acclaim. My dad and wife both like to joke about him with the nasal voice bit. Just writing this is making me try to find the seed. My father has a deep interest in early American Rhythm and Blues which I think comes from his own experiences. I don’t have any real world experience that connects me with any Dylan’s political or protest songs. I think that the nonconformity and anti-authority aspect certainly hit some personal ideals, but it’s more than that. Dylan walked off the set and refused to appear on the Ed Sullivan show after CBS informed him that his tune my be considered libelous to the John Birch Society. But it’s not his political nature that appeals to me either even though I very much respect him for his participation in the anti-war and civil rights movement. In a way, I think it’s more about his individualism and sarcasm. At every turn in his career, he’s never taken the path of least resistance even though he could have retired on his reputation alone forty years ago. Even his albums from the last ten years have remained somewhat controversial because he shifts his artistic style.

I have had two very small personal connections to Bob Dylan. The first is that a friend of mine briefly exchanged words with him on the street in New York. As I was told, it went something like this… “Uh Mr. Zimmerman, I just wanted to say that I’m a big fan” and Dylan replied “what are you, some sort of penis salesman” and walked off.  The second is that I was building a website for a polo association down in Aiken, South Carolina when I met the sister-in-law of D.A. Pennebaker, the filmmaker who caught Dylan flipping cards in front of Allen Ginsberg for his documentary Dont Look Back4. They asked me to help build their website and I still host and manage it5. Pennebaker shot another documentary film titled Eat the Document6 that Dylan edited and has never been released.  

I still discover things about Bob Dylan that I didn’t know. I was recently listening to an interview with Larry Charles7 where he describes how Dylan had contacted and met with him about creating a TV Show.  That eventually became the movie Masked and Anonymous8.  In April of 2020, Bob Dylan had his first ever Billboard top charting track with Murder Most Foul9which is a 17 minute track about the killing of John F. Kennedy which is his longest song ever and references 70 other songs10.  I return to Dylan every so often when a new album is released and each time I listen to a new album, it leaves me the feeling of wanting just a little bit more. If I could attempt to distill my enthusiasm in the simplest terms, I think it would revolve around his distaste for the obvious and his embrace of the mysterious.  While listening to a lot of Dylan recently, I was constantly reminded that his music and lyrics make you think. In my opinion, his art attempts to closely mirror the type of balanced juxtaposition that our world is made of in the tradition of all the great works or art. If he reaches the end before this tour is over or another album is released, it’d be a perfectly poetic ending. Cheers to everyone I’ve known that shares my enthusiasm for Bob Dylan. These are some of the best people I’ve ever known because they seem to share an appreciation for the sublime that’s as old as humankind. 

  1. Bob Dylan – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan
  2. Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_and_Rowdy_Ways_World_Wide_Tour 
  3. Pat Garret & Billy the Kid – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Garrett_%26_Billy_the_Kid_(album)
  4. SubterraneanHomesick Blues – https://vimeo.com/63913470
  5. Dont Look Back  – https://phfilms.com/films/dont-look-back/ 
  6. Eat the Document – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_the_Document
  7. Larry Charles – You Made it Weird with Pete Homes – https://youmadeitweird.libsyn.com/larry-charles
  8. Masked and Anonymous – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masked_and_Anonymous
  9. Murder Most Foul – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_Most_Foul_(song)
  10. A List Of The Songs Named In Bob Dylan’s ‘Murder Most Foul’ – https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2020/03/27/822468820/a-list-of-the-songs-named-in-bob-dylans-murder-most-foul

22.07.02 – I had a text thread going with a couple friends about Dylan and we started ranking our favorite albums. I went ahead and made an exhaustive list excluding the various bootleg and outtakes compilations. There are some ties in here and I might could shuffle a couple around. It’s just me reminiscing about listening to them which might be affected by the state of mind I was at during the time that I liked each album. I’ll just put it here as a reminder.

  1. Royal Albert Hall
  2. Before the Flood
  3. Budokan
  4. Basement Tapes
  5. Highway 61 Revisited
  6. Bringing It All Back home
  7. Desire
  8. Street Legal
  9. Hard Rain
  10. Blood on the Tracks
  11. Blonde on Blonde
  12. Rough and Rowdy Ways
  13. New Morning
  14. Dylan
  15. Infidels
  16. Freewheelin
  17. Another Side
  18. Bob Dylan
  19. Dylan & the Dead
  20. Triplicate
  21. Tempest
  22. Under the Red Sky
  23. Slow Train
  24. Nashville Skyline
  25. Rolling Thunder
  26. Self Portrait
  27. Real Live
  28. John Wesley Harding
  29. Time Out of Mind
  30. Oh Mercy
  31. Empire Burlesque
  32. Shadows in the Night
  33. World Gone Wrong
  34. Shot of Love
  35. Saved
  36. Planet Waves
  37. Fallen Angels
  38. Love and Theft
  39. Knocked out Loaded
  40. Unplugged
  41. Good As I Been to You
  42. Together Through Life
  43. Down in the Groove