Bob's Birthday

Hard to think, 84 is such a strange number for a touring musician. Well, tell that to Willie, but when I was young, which was some time ago, we won’t say exactly when, Dylan was 21 and I was listening to Freewheelin’ in my friend Billy’s basement room where he had a record player. Billy was athletic, a regular kid, a doer, not a thinker like me, as I saw it. I mean, we were only twelve, but still, I never would have put him down as a Dylan fan, but there he was, first in the neighborhood with the record. That was a groundshift to me, even then I could see, ok, this Bob Dylan guy reaches across barriers.

So I became a musician as I reached my twenties, playing acoustic, in little clubs and electric later, in bands, and Dylan was always to me the god figure, I had a mind-set of worship, I loved everything he did, was blown away by the poetry, by the humor, the rough honesty of his voice, the harmonica. When Highway 61 came and it was different, wild rock and roll, organs and cranking electric guitars, I wasn’t betrayed, I was transformed. Holy crap, he can make this kind of music and poetry too?!

Years go by without your control and life zips along like one of those calendar animations in old movies where the months and then years flip flip flip and hello, people are starting to get old.

Dylan to me never seemed or seems old, even now. He’s too singular and cranky, separate from trends you associate with age, though cranky does equate with old, something, for instance, Paul McCartney isn’t, is it the veggies? Paul was always the cheery upbeat guy hiding the steely resolve underneath and so he still is. And so Bob still is the mercurial outsider who’s listened to more music than you ever will be able to, and despite being trapped in a meat sack, like all of us, he lives outside time as we think of it. He, along with the songs, are some kind of perennial energy we’ve been lucky enough to have here on this bum-steer planet. A near death experience expert I saw on YouTube said people who’ve had the NDE tell him that earth is one of a few planets you go to when you’re ready for the big leagues, training ground for the very strongest and best. I have some serious reservations with that perky view, I think it obviously leans more to Mad Max territory, but I consider myself to be absolutely blessed to have been able to hear the music I have heard on earth. If we were to be judged by anything, come up with what might redeem all our horrific, insane, narcissist reckless careening world-erasing history, I’d say, well, listen to all the music we’ve made. I don’t know if it would tip the scale, but that’s the best argument I have to offer.

And Bob sure added to it. One birthday of his, decades ago, I played a Dylan Birthday Bash show where local musicians got to do one Dylan song each. I did Wallflower, with acoustic guitar and harmonica. It went over well. The woman I was with, my girlfriend at the time, really enjoyed the night, despite not being overly familiar with Dylan’s music. On the way to the car, both of us a little tipsy from pints of IPA, she was singing, imitating Bob’s voice. It was charming and funny. She’d been cheerfully infected by Bob.

Happy Birthday.