Hear this Robert Zimmerman

I've had several goes at this this week, but I kept changing my mind. And now it's late. The tagline by the way is the opening line from probably the best song about Dylan, Bowie's Song for Bob Dylan, where he compares the voice with sand and glue (as such, it's therefore not an  invocation for the great man to read this blog).

Anyway, Bowie's song was written about forty years ago, and I had constructed an elaborate theory on the bike to work on Monday about Dylan's reputation being essentially solidified by a relatively small number of songs - i.e., we'd be reading the same articles about him if his body of work was much smaller, provided it had the key tracks in (this, by the way would be true of any artist). This article is helpful for this theory, because it essentially says, Dylan is great because of:

• Blowin' in the Wind (1963)
• A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall (1963)
• It Ain't Me, Babe (1964)
• Visions of Johanna (1966)
• Mr Tambourine Man (1965)
• Subterranean Homesick Blues (1965)
• Like a Rolling Stone (1965)
• Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

But I've been listening to Dylan all week, and come to the considered conclusion that that's nonsense - like some of the inexplicable other evidence in the Independent article (writing Tarantula (#20) is not a reason for  greatness - rather the reverse). In fact, while the best ten Dylan tracks stand up against the best ten from anyone else, actually it's the vast depth of his output that makes him great. So, that's not a bad list above, but it's just too short. I've no intention of writing a full list of what you would need to capture most of the reputation of his Bobness, but here are the obvious ones missing for me:

• Masters of War (1963), which has probably his best ever line - 'you've thrown the worst fear that can ever be hurled [and it's the hurled that makes it so good], the fear to bring children into the world'
• Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues (c.1964) - because everyone forgets that Bob is often funny and still is (see also the recent Po'boy 'called down to room service, send me a room'
• Only a pawn in the game (1964)
• Bob Dylan's 115th Dream (1965), which is a personal favourite, rather than an absolute classic. I can remember where I heard it, and it's sense of fun is infectious
• It's all over now, Baby Blue (1965). When he famously went electric at Newport, everyone talks about the electric set, but this is the final song, when he was persuaded to do a acoustic song. The version is available on one of the bootleg series and that version is chilling
• I'll be your baby tonight (1967); Drifter's escape (1967). John Wesley Harding is overlooked as a album, but it's a classic and the final track is the best of the lot, a low-key love song filled with gentle energy that has always remained with me, while Drifter's escape is filled with  mischievous fun, and always a pleasure to listen to.
• If you see her, say hello (1975). Just one of the saddest, loveliest songs ever written. Overshadowed by the pyrotechnics on rest of the record, but more impressive than the rest of them in the long run.
• Hurricane (1976). A superlative protest song a decade after he was supposed to have stopped writing them
• Honest with me (2001). I've always been confused by the inexplicable popularity of Time out of Mind, which to me has always been a mess of too-much-listening-to-jazz, while the follow up Love and Theft is a much better record, deft and assured, and this is a great thumper of a track.

This is a spur of the moment list, so I've obviously missed plenty off. A quick check of my most played tracks suggest in reality I should give space to Positively 4th street, Chimes of Freedom, My Back Pages, Love minus zero and Can you please crawl out your window ahead of some of these. So give them honourable mentions.

However, like Dylan, I'm in favour of these things being done quickly (like his records) and reflecting the vision at one point in time, not a long drawn out thought process. So, while there's more to be said here, others have said it. I simply wanted to show is that we could take away a sheaf of his greatest achievements and we'd still be celebrating the 70th birthday of a man that could go toe to toe on reputation with other popular music figures. With them, he's unassailable.

So, a belated happy birthday Bob, and thanks for everything.

Love the legacy

They buried Ballesteros today; and I didn't really have time to notice, which is a shame.

I was too young to see him in his pomp, though I have of course seen the footage since. By the time I started following golf, even cursorily, in 1993, he was fading, though he had a couple of Ryder cups left and even won the odd tournament.

But he was a titan of the previous decade and a bit, and - as every obituary has made clear - one of a tiny number of sportsmen to genuinely change their sport. I don't mean in achievement: his record is impressive, but it didn't redefine the era. Nor in style, though the manner he played is still magical. But he literally changed the geography and contours of professional golf and he created one of the few major competitions in English sport where people genuinely want the Germans to win.

It's not clear exactly how he did this. He was described as being the vanguard of European golf , but a brief look at the 1979 Ryder cup suggests that although he was one of the two first non Brits to play, he and they were rubbish, and he didn't play in the thrashing in 1981. By the time the Europeans had assembled a competitive team it had a raft of Spaniards and Langer in it. But, it will always be Ballesteros who remains at the heart of those 1980s teams and he lives long in the centre of folk memory. When we won the Ryder cup back in Wales, they revealed they'd had an image of Seve in the dressing room throughout. And he was as ever-present in the speeches as he was on the course in 1997, in captaincy.

So, whether he is missed because of what he had come to represent or what he was, it's fitting that he is. Few can do what he did, and no-one else would have had so much fun doing it.

Bibliography, April 2011

Read: 13

BOTM - C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary

J. Austen, Persuasion (K)
J. Austen, Sense and Sensibility (K)
D. Eddings, The Belgariad, 5 vols*
C.S. Lewis, Four Loves
Muraski Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, chs 1-17 (K)
A.Trollope, The Claverings (K)
M. Twain, The adventures of Tom Sawyer (K)
P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit


I'm not surprised by BOTM this time, given it is famously the best book ever written on cricket, though more on that later. I should give honourable mentions to some of the others though - Both of Austen were brilliant, though Persuasion edges its more famous counterpart, and The Claverings an underrated gem from Trollope. I have loved and reread before the Belgariad, an extensive fantasy sequence, and I stand by the judgement I made at 12 - it's brilliant. However, James was better.

However, I am not sure James is brilliant for the reason that is over given - its account of the racism rife in West Indian cricket before and just after the war. That is rather the minor theme running through the book which comes to glorious fruition at the end of the book. No, actually the best sections in the splendid book are James' account of the Victorian origins of cricket, closely followed by the description of an island obsessed by cricket (Trinidad) and the pen portraits of its great stars and their club environment. James' particular perspective - an intellectually brilliant black West Indian educated in the tradition of the British public school system. Having imbibed its ethos (one suspects better than most British natives) he able to create a beautiful and insightful view on the schools and the development of organised games within the Empire, as well an encomium to W.G. Grace. All are better than any account I have read on the subject.