sympathetic to Dylan-the-visionary, and more to his critics. I’m not belittling his achievement: I still think his albums “Bringing It All Back Home”, “Highway 61 Revisited”, and “Blonde on Blonde” are works of genius, but from the snatches of concert we saw when he was being booed for introducing this stuff, his singing was more like sneering. Not one live version, for me, came near to the recorded versions I’m familiar with. After acoustic stuff like Mr Tambourine Man or Desolation Row, I can understand why people might have been less than thrilled to listen to a full decibel Like A Rolling Stone where they couldn’t understand a word he was singing but got the general feeling that he was mocking – and maybe it was them, the poor earnest saps in the audience, that his contempt was aimed at. The guy was on an amphetamine-fueled ego-trip. And that Newport Folk Festival business – well, it was a folk festival, wasn’t it? It was fairly insensitive of him, to put it mildly, to turn up and play his new stuff at full volume. Of course a massive self-belief pulled him through and made him what he was, but to get there he had to be a bastard at times.
Still, a great way to spend a few hours. Some of the interviews were wonderful. Difficult not to warm to Dave Van Ronk (who died a couple of years back), and Al Kooper was great. Dylan himself though? I don’t know. He didn’t say all that much, but it was good to see him saying anything at all.
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