Happy Birthday, Mr Zimmerman.....

Forever Young!

As with a lot of things about Bob Dylan, there is even doubt about his age.....  Received wisdom has his birthday as May 24th, 1941, but as this picture:

shows, which is borrowed from the cover of the official booklet issued with:

there is a possibility that in fact the man will enter his eighty-first year on May 11th, 2021.....

At least the year is consistent....

Just another story?  Like his early 'travels' as reported here:

At ten he ran away.....?

During his first nineteen years, lived in Gallup, New Mexico; Cheyenne, South Dakota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Phillipsburg, Kansas.....

Nah....!  

He was brought up in Hibbing and attended college in Minneapolis for around six months..... As Robert Shelton wrote in No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (1986), Dylan didn't actually run away from "good ol' Hibbing" at all, except in his mind, where he kept running for years......

However, by the time Bob Dillon, or Bobby Dylan, or Bob Dylan as he became, was twenty he was making waves in New York City, and it was there that the late Robert Shelton first met him at Gerde's Folk City in June 1961.  

On Friday, September 29, 1961, The New York Times published Mr Shelton's review, in which he wrote: Mr Dylan is vague about his antecedents and birthplace, but it matters less where he has been than where he is going, and that would seem to be straight up.....

And the rest, as they say, is history.....

My earliest connection with Dylan was around '63/'64, though I cannot be quite sure.  Tim Binding (later the well-known novelist) lent me Another Side of Bob Dylan.....

And I bought the sheet music, to strum and wail with my cheap guitar.  And I also bought my own copy of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (see above) on September 16th, 1965.

By which time the man was a global megastar.....

Well you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and those amongst us who worship at the altar will already know most of what we want (or need?) to know.  Those who could never quite get past the whine and the vocal obscurities (my parents would never understand a word - I now marvel at the extreme clarity of his diction) will not thank me for going on.

However this is a birthday tribute and I want to  tell how much I am indebted to my friend, and I would like to impress on all unbelievers how sainted the Bob might be.  He's not perfect, but then nor am I (nor you, I suspect).  Check Joan Baez, Diamonds and Rust:

Now I see you standing

With brown leaves falling around

And snow in your hair

Now you're smiling out the window

Of that crummy hotel

Over Washington Square

Our breath comes out white clouds

Mingles and hangs in the air

Speaking strictly for me

We both could have died then and there

Now you're telling me

You're not nostalgic

Then give me another word for it

You who are so good with words

And at keeping things vague

Because I need some of that vagueness now

It's all come back too clearly

Yes I loved you dearly

And if you're offering me diamonds and rust

I've already paid

There isn't the time, nor is this the occasion, to catalogue all the achievements, nor some of the failures, of a sixty plus year career, which include, among other things, a Nobel Prize for Literature (2016).... (Wasn't he the guy that invented gunpowder?)

October 3rd, 1987

Me and Bob go back, way back. As I said, we were first acquainted around 58 years ago, though we didn't actually meet then....

It was on June 20th, 1989.  It was in Rome, when we were both trying to paint our masterpieces, that we actually coincided.  He was about to perform at The Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, and I was an audient, but wandering backstage before the performance, I encountered a strangely garbed misfit, who could easily have passed for a Dylan lookalike.  

Hi Bob, I offered, tendering a pack of MS.  

Thanks, the figure rasped, taking a cigarette and waiting for me to offer a light.

I flicked my Zippo and took in the guy's outfit.  Some kind of hound's tooth, deeply knitted, or was it made of felt? A tight fitting suit with braided edges and stripes and a blazon on the breast.  

What you doin here? he asked.  Haven't seen you in a while.

You?

I'm just keeping on keeping on.  

Smoke wreathed and eyes furtive.  I shifted slightly.

You know how you said, in San Francisco, in '65, in response to the question, Do you think of yourself primarily as a singer or as a poet?

Ha! And I said, Well I think of myself most as a song and dance man, y'know.....

And you also said you dig Rimbaud, W C Fields...

Yeah, he asked What poets do I dig?  Rimbaud, W C Fields.....  Ah, the family, you know the trapeze family, in the circus.  Um..... Smokey Robinson, Allen Ginsberg, Charlie Rich......

I will not say he was brilliant that night.  I've seen him perform several times and this was not his greatest night.  The guitars were too loud, his voice was shot; he mumbled and fumbled and failed (I would say) to engage with the crowd, and he went too fast....  But it was not a wasted evening.  Like bumping into Van Gogh in a field of sunflowers, my moment with his genius was a moment off guard, a few moments shared in a dark space.  We cannot all know each another, and ultimately the human race is just one of the many many viruses that plague this planet. But, from that particular happenstance, Bob and I were firm friends.

June 6th, 1991

On the above occasion we didn't actually meet face to face, though he did lean out of a car window, waving, as he was driven up to the Palaeur. And, in fact, we have continued in the same way, missing each other in many places from Scotland, to Key West. 

I remember calling on him a few years ago at Aultmore House, an Edwardian mansion near Nethy Bridge, in the shadow of the Cairngorms.  I was working at the time for the RSPB at nearby Loch Garten, where ospreys had an iconic nest.  I called at the house, waiting, as one does, for the echoes of the doorbell to die away.  Heavy footsteps approached, the door opened, and a man in a ten gallon hat blinked up at me.

Is Bob home, David?

Sorry buddy.  You just missed him. I believe he could be in Malibu..... If you want to call.....

Ah well.  I know we will catch up again soon....

An overview of his career tells that he hit the world stage in the early sixties.....

In 1969 he starred in a Jann Wenner interview in Rolling Stone:

In which he told all....

Or nothing.....

Is that the story?  

I mean, I just can't be spending my time reading what people write.  (laughter).

In 1973 he produced the sound track for, and had a significant role in, Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

He's been written off.  He's come back.  He's produced art works to fill the Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai.  He's sold over 100 million records; produced 38 studio albums (at least....); written a novel (sort of); hosted a radio series; written part one of his memoirs.....  He owns 17 homes worldwide (at least that was the count once) and is worth $375 million - though who knows?

And he is still going.  Sixty years on.

Eighty years on.....

And for many of the millions like me he has been there at significant times in our lives....    Some lines touched us for no reason (The pump don't work 'cos the vandals took the handle....)  

Then I remember Kath Owen, from Pontypridd, yelling, I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough....! in an M6 underpass at Bailrigg....

My chosen moment, just now, relates to The Basement Tapes, which, when they emerged, were rough and unpolished.  One song, I'm not there.... later the leitmotif of Todd Haynes's 2007 film, now spins awkwardly in my mind.  As Greil Marcus wrote in Invisible Republic, The song is a trance, a waking dream, a whirlpool...... The progression in the melody is unnoticeable and unbreakable, the sympathy between Dylan, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel absolute.

In the last lines of the song, the most plainly sung, the most painful, so bereft that after the song's five minutes, five minutes that seem like no measurable time, you no longer quite believe that anything so strong can be said in words: "I wish I was there to help her - but I'm not there, I'm gone."  There is a singer and a woman in the song; he can't reach her, and he can't reach her because he won't.  They might be separated by years or by minutes, by the width of a street or a thousand miles; there are moments when the music is so ethereal, so in place in a world to come, that the people in the song become abstractions, lovers without bodies: "She's my own fare thee well."

Now, remotely and unhappily, there is something of my life in these words, in this song....

Yeah, she's gone like the rain

Behold the shining yesterday

But now she's home beside me

And I'd like her here to stay

She's a lone, forsaken beauty

And it don't trust anyone

And I wish I was beside her

But I'm not there, I'm gone

I rang him, Mr Dylan, the other day. To catch up. To thank him. To offer him upcoming birthday wishes.

He didn't answer. 

Maybe he was in Nethy Bridge?

So.... 

Anyway....

Happy birthday Bob!

You hear me?

Hey!  It's me.....

You remember?

We met, erm, forty, or so, years ago.....  Briefly....  You know?

Yeah, well.  Have a great birthday.

Yeah,  Whenever.....

The Traveling Wilburys, c 1991

Not everyone makes eighty.....

May your heart always be joyful

May your song always be sung

May you stay forever young

Highlands

Pretty much a long way from most places!

My Heart's in the Highlands

by Robert Burns

(1759-1796)

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,

The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;

Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, 

The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;

My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;

A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,

My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow;

Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;

Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;

Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

The Falls of Shin

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;

My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;

A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,

My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

 

Daniel Defoe, in his A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain observes that this frightful country of Scotland, can be divided into four quarters: The South Land (which is south of the River Tay); The Midland (from the Tay up to Lake Ness and the Aber, including Isla and Jura); The Northland, and The Islands. He goes on to say, as he enters the third division, that the mountains are so full of deer, harts, roebucks, etc.... also a great number of eagles which breed in the woods.... the rivers and lakes also in all this country are prodigiously full of salmon.....

Red Grouse

OK. So there's deer. So there's salmon. But there are also birds. Don't forget the birds. Wonderfully varied, impermanent, characterful, elusive, frustrating, but ultimately so worth the watch......

Lapwing

And not just the powerful, elemental, grand birds that dominate.  There are birds to suit all tastes (?) - and I am not including young Gannets here - and interests. I wrote something about Ospreys in another entry, and alluded to some visitors in writing about Islay, but on the shores here, of loch and coast; in the heather and on the rocks; in the air and on the water, the Highlands abound in wildlife, much of it in avian form.....

A Redshank skims the waters

And the ubiquitous red-eyed oystercatcher seems different here, purer, perhaps more at home. The last ones I saw were busy on the lawn of my hotel in the Isle of Wight, but here they seem to have time to linger, basking in the cool light of their own reflections.....

Some are more difficult to see close up, and without the advantage of the high-tech, extremely high cost, equipment of the SpringWatch team, it is still possible to appreciate the colours and temperaments of rarer species, such as Slavonian Grebes bobbing on Loch Ruthven....

And flitting, resting, watching, feeding, there are so many beautiful species, just being, like this upright Wheatear among the heathers......

But then it is not only birds, either. Off the shingle of Chanonry Point, we watch dolphins tumbling in the tidal rip. Defoe reported the fishing of porpoises here, but our sport is in watching these creatures doing what they do, without obligation....

I love Scotland, and I shall personally grieve if it detaches from me in any way.  Like Robert Burns I am not a Highlander, nor am I a frequent visitor, nor can I offer this frightful country anything in the way of appeasement, but something of my heart is in the Highlands, for personal reasons...

As recounted in an earlier piece, entitled The Battle of Blenheim, and of a very different nature, I lived for a while in Dunrobin Castle, on the shore just north of Golspie.  In early 1969 I took this picture:

And in 2014 I took this one:

Better camera, perhaps; better weather, certainly.....

Inside there is still the same questionable opulence:

And from the rooftops I imagine the dusty vistas are as they were when Garibaldi docked at the quay:

It was weird to roam that Gormenghast-like castle freely. The thirteenth century core had been consumed by additions aeons ago, and the servants' quarters were crawling with nothings to remind even the dust of shames long past.  For an impressionable youth it was very impressionable.  From the haunted chamber, where perhaps a young woman had had a fatal accident with a sash window, to the Duke's bathroom, where a wicker seated commode communed with a claw footed bath, the world was eerie, detached and strange. Fulmars launched themselves from my window-sill; the raven himself was hoarse....

Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
(My brother had thanes on his mind)

By th' clock ’tis day,

And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.

It was extraordinary to be so far north. When I arrived, not yet eighteen, it was deep winter, and the days were so dark you needed a torch to read at midday. The sea was spectacular, hurling spray at my window fifty feet or more above the gardens. When I left, in late summer, you could read without a torch at midnight.

That July the world seemed to be whirling out of control through space.  On Tuesday 1st John Lennon crashed his Austin Maxi into a nearby ditch and spend five days in the local hospital, with Yoko Ono and her daughter Kyoko.  John had 17 facial stitches and Yoko 14 (Julian had been with them too, but he was unharmed).  

That same weekend, my group, The Dunrobiners, which had become something of a phenomenon in the area (well, we cut a disc in a recording studio in Wick!) was heading a Ceilidh at the Stags Head Hotel. 

There was talk that John might come down from the hospital to see what was going on, but the delightful Alice Sutherland leaned across to me and smiled, We don't need no John Lennon.  Whisht, you're our Beatles!   Perhaps he heard her.....

Later that month Brian Jones died and Mick Jagger threw butterflies at heaven; and then men seemingly stepped on the moon, while we attended dances at the Drill Hall, an extraordinary example of corrugated architecture, into which the entire village and many more from far and wide would crush, jigging and bopping to the scottish equivalent of a Show Band.....

And we would nightly carouse in the wonderful Sutherland Arms Hotel, fuelling our dreams with Tennants Heavy and ten year old Glenmorangie.....

I loved it there, and on returning recently it was sad to hear that Mrs Hexley, the landlady, had long since passed away, but one of her sons still lives in the village, and most wonderfully I learned that Murdo, the perfect barman, was still around, working now as a guide in the Castle.  

A piece of my heart is certainly there.  As curiously is Bob Dylan's....  apparently, or so he said, in Highlands on Time out of Mind:

Well my heart’s in the Highlands gentle and fair

Honeysuckle blooming in the wildwood air

Bluebelles blazing where the Aberdeen waters flow

Well my heart’s in the Highland

I’m gonna go there when I feel good enough to go

Well my heart’s in the Highlands wherever I roam

That’s where I’ll be when I get called home

The wind, it whispers to the buckeyed trees in rhyme

Well my heart’s in the Highland

I can only get there one step at a time

My heart’s in the Highlands at the break of dawn

By the beautiful lake of the Black Swan

Big white clouds like chariots that swing down low

Well my heart’s in the Highlands

Only place left to go

Curious how Burns and Zimmerman share this sentiment, perhaps.  Maybe it's because Bob and his brother David share a home at Nethy Bridge, in the Cairngorms National Park? But it's good enough for me.....

Well, my heart’s in the Highlands at the break of day

Over the hills and far away

There’s a way to get there and I’ll figure it out somehow

But I’m already there in my mind

And that’s good enough for now

Copyright © 1997 by Special Rider Music

With many thanks to Dr E for all the driving

http://www.richardpgibbs.org/2012/11/the-battle-of-blenheim.html

Inside the Stags Head, 1969
(is that a metaphor?)