Holed up with a cold and no money I had the perfect excuse for staying in. No Direction Home, the long awaited, by me anyway, Dylan documentary is on telly. Hurrah for the BBC and my license fee.
The Scorcese film lived up to expectations. Fantastic live footage of Dylan with The Band in ‘66 (minus Levon Helme) - including the famous Judas shout - reminds you that rock ‘n’ roll should be exciting, confrontational, fun, rather than indie schmindie and join the dots careerism. Dylan and the Band weren’t merely ‘tight’ or musical, they were fucking flying!
Dylan himself was an appealing mixture of funny, vunerable and sharply arrogant. Some of the press conferences outdid the famous Beatle affairs ; Dylan was funny, but it wasn’t the Beatles’ music hall humour, it was sarcastic yet honest and you could tell he was weirded out by many of the questions.
In the end though it was the songs that stood out and there were plenty of them. Great ‘protest’ songs, great love songs, great put down songs, faboulous all of them and that’s why, regardless of his appealing character, Dylan is loved.
Coming after the fabulous autobiography, it’s been a great year for Bobby Dylan fans. Who’da thunk it?
0 Responses to “With God On Our Side”