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thursday, november 9, 1978
0
CTJ
If
I .i i. , .
Initial magic of Dylan stays sweet in an
By Kim Wilt
It seems very strange to me that I
should be writing a piece on my feeling
about Bob Dylan, and a comparison of the
1974 and 1978 concert tours, when it was
only five years ago this fall that I first
heard of the man. . .legend. . .poet. . .what
ever. Still, I can remember a weekend of
beautiful, crisp October days, lazily spent,
filled with the excitement of a new dis
covery. I had gone to Grand Island to visit
a friend who had recently moved there
with her family. Barb and I were close
best friends, shocked that we had been
separated. If I could have chosen someone
to share the experience of hearing Bob
Dylan for the first time, I could not have
chosen better.
Imagine you're fourteen, a shy sopho
more in high school, and not at all sure
you liked it. You buy a Bob Dylan al
bum, because you like Joan Baez, and you
have some vague notion that the two are
connected.
"I was going to buy you this for your
birthday," I told Barb. "Well, why don't
we buy it now, and see what it's like," she
said. If we didn't like it, we thought, we
could always return it.
It was Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. II.
We didn't want to start out with an album
which had no songs on it that we knew.
Greatest Hits had few that we knew-or
thought we knew. We weren't prepared for
what we heard -how could we have been?
and it took a while for the songs to sink in.
That weekend remains clearly in my
mind, though. It was beautiful weather
outside, and we spent most of our days
poking around Grand Island. Come sun
down, though, we'd rush home with ex
citement, that increased each day, to put
the album on her brother's record player,
and go into that trance-like daze that we
relished so much.
Created images
I can remember a fire in the basement
fireplace -the only light, flaring up and
dying, and A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
asking its questions and answering itself.
Barb was on the floor wrapped in a blanket
and I was sitting on the brick ledge that the
fireplace was built on. I guess you could
say we were stunned. We had never before
heard a song that created such images in
our minds, or stayed with us so long and
refused to go away.
I played All I Really Want To Do so
many times, over and over, trying to write
down all the words, that Barb went up
stairs in disgust. "Mighty Quinn"-I didn't
know he wrote that!, "My Back Pages"
what did he mean by that? "Memphis
Blues Again"-"I bet he was on drugs when
he wrote that," I told Barb. "He sounds
really spaced out."
I went home from Grand Island with a
head full of quotes and the beginnings
of a new way of looking at the world.
It was not a month later that the 1974
tour was announced-the first one in eight
years, the one that put Dylan on the cover
of Time and Newsweek, that earned him a
request for an interview (denied) with
Walter Cronkite and the one that so many
people could not get tickets for.
He chants, doesn't he?
I got tickets. I went. I called my mother
in the hospital, where she was recuperating
from a gall-bladder operation and told her
that I was going-told, not asked. Pretty
nervy for a fourteen-year-old kid, but I
think my parents understood more than I
gave them credit for, even though my
father remarked, while I was listening to
"Visions of Johanna", "He doesn't sing, he
chants, doesn't he?"
I had a friend who lived 60 miles from
Denver, and after some phone calls, and
letters, it was agreed that I would travel
by bus to her town, and the two of us
would go to the Denver concert together.
The only problem remaining was that of
obtain tickets. People began telling me that
all tickets were sold out, that 1 was crazy
for trying-and why did I want to go any
way? I was in grade school in the 60s,
when Dylan was at his "peak."
Well, we got the tickets, the least ex
pensive ones, but who cared? 1 left on a
Greyhound, rode all night, slept only two
hours for fear I would" miss the stop, but
again, who cared?
Not me; I was still surprised to find my
self actually going.
I can remember sitting in the coliseum,
eating Arby's sandwiches, and talking ner
vously. I remember the lights dimming, and
dropping my potato cake into the paper
sack, and never thinking about it, or any
other food, again. I remember his voice
so loud, and raw, and full of energy and
the charged-up excitement that was re
flected back at him by the crowd.
I took bits of notes during the concert-just
to be able to remind myself later.
I looked at those notes, recently. They say
things like "I feel right at home, like I was
in his living room," and "I fell like I'm
finally where I belong."
My friend and 1 wrote down every song
he played, with start around the best ones.
"Like A Rolling Stone" has stars around it,
so does "It Ain't Me Babe."
None measured up
Afterwards, back at home, there was no
concert that ever measured up, for me. I
turned down the chance to go to concerts,
just because I knew I would be
disappointed. Since then, I have learned to
attend concerts, and accept them for what
they are-entertainment-but the hope
always remains that Bob Dylan will walk
onstage, an unannounced surprise guest.
We danced in the aisles when he played
"Like A Rolling Stone." We stood up and
cheered when he wailed "It Ain't Me
Babe". When he left the stage at the end,
we lit up the stadium with stars oflit
matches and lighters-knowing that he
would come back. I have never been able
to tolerate the practice of holding up lit
matches at concerts ever since, because I
was at the original, the place where it
started.
Now, imagine you're nineteen, a college
junior, and another close friend of yours
has just moved away. By now, you have
collected 11 Dylan albums, including a
bootleg one, sent to you by an under
standing friend. Your parents, your
husband, your friends, all know you are
tied to Dylan in some invisible way, at least
in your own mind.
What do you do when you find out he's
actually coming to Omaha, in a few
months? When you've been hearing how
terrible Street-Legal is, even though you
like it? When nobody seems terribly ex
cited about it this time? Do you refain
from going, thinking that this time can
never measure up to last time, that you're
bound to be disappointed?
Maybe if you're a purist, you do. Maybe
if you don't want to run the risk of your
memories being shattered, you stay home.
Dylan is coming
But for me, it was just that Bob Dylan
was coming in concert, and I was going to
go see him. Nothing more. It was just like
last time, and it was also very different
from last time. It was the same -I was
shaking so hard, I couldn't hold the binoc
ulars to my eyes. It was different-1 hadn't
had to travel five hundred miles, and it was
less like a pilgrimage. It was the same -his
voice sounded the same, he played almost
the same songs, I felt at home, at ease and
yet terribly nervous. It was different he
had a different band, he was four and a
half years older, and probably in a
completely different frame of mind.
I could see him better this time, I had
the most expensive seats I could buy. Peer
ing through the binoculars, I thought I
could see a smile, some kind of enjoy-