A good friend of mine saw Dylan play live in New Zealand recently (for the first and last time) and, though a life-long fan, had to admit the event was disappointing. The Great Man’s only acknowledgement of the audience’s existence came at halftime, apparently, when Dylan said brusquely, ‘We’re going for a break now.’ I’ve seen him myself a few times and have mixed experiences – and though find his inconsistency frustrating can hardly complain of being surprised. Just check out the many You Tube clips to see any number of patchy performances – including a concert (forget which one) where Richard Thompson on back-up guitar frankly blows the star out of the water.

But. But. But. A recent documentary on Sky Arts focused Bob’s early years showed him brilliantly playing acoustic in various venues including various TV shows and the famous occasion when Martin Luther King gave his ‘I have a dream’ speech. The programme featured his first four albums which were largely recorded very quickly (The Times They Are A Changing in one day, so we were told) and with little or no other instrumentalists. The grainy black and white footage revealed Dylan’s very simple guitar technique – mostly just three chord strumming – and boyish charisma. Most strikingly, though, was to be reminded of how many amazingly good songs he wrote in that short period. Had he never written another number following that time he’d still be one of the most important sing-songwriters of the post war period (WWII – now).

The show did not cover any electric stuff though commentators remarked how Dylan was ready to move on and, despite protests from fans, had never considered himself a folk artist in the first place. He was, and is, I suppose, primarily a poet – albeit one with a highly tuned ear for melody.

My one big criticism of ‘Bob Dylan – The Folk Years’ was the constant interruptions from ‘experts’ (mainly music journalists) throughout the rare film footage which was mostly not previously shown. A lot of these archive TV shows ruin perfectly good clips to interject ‘wise’ or ‘witty’ banter – which is all too easy and usually irrelevant after the event. In this particular case I’d have really liked to see all the old films of Dylan playing coffee bars and little venues in the early Sixties, even if it was filmed on primitive hand-held cameras with lousy sound quality. What was most important, and really striking, was that despite these technical faults ( and Bob Dylan’s unsophisticated delivery and appearance) his genius shone through. Virtually every track on all his first four albums is memorable and still relevant today (as demonstrated by the number of covers continually done by other artists around the world). I always was, and remain, one of Bob’s biggest fans – even if, as remarked in an earlier blog post, the man himself is/was a shit (no personal evidence for this of course).