I can still recall walking up Fleet Street in London in 1963 having just purchased in a record shop a copy of Bob Dylan’s early album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”
I have been a Dylan devotee ever since. Dylan continues to offer explosive periods of creativity, depth of lyrical compositions, artistic potency, apocalyptic images, poetic power, anti-establishment views, anti – anti establishment views and an enigmatic presence.
I remember sitting in a small room in the Mayfair Hotel in London in the summer of 1966 with a handful of other newspaper reporters to interview Dylan. He remained utterly uninterested in the event. Bored, jokey, enigmatic, unpredictable, chain smoking, indefinable Bob Dylan. I remember saying to him in the interview. “Bob, I’ve been here for half an hour. Here’s what I’ve written.” I showed him my notebook. It was a blank page. He responded: “It’s all so silly.” That became the headline to my report as the second lead on the front page of the Dublin Evening Herald. “It’s all so silly, says Bob Dylan.” I still have the cutting in a scrapbook in the loft. Press conferences are rituals, a form of entertainment.
Bob had little time for the media circus, the endless numbers of fans grasping after his persona, and all the hype wrapped around him. After his motorcycle accident later in 1966, he stopped touring – just like that. For eight years. That’s Bob. Not beholding to anyone. He has never wavered from his indifference to the public persona, never signs autographs, never sought personal attention. Kept his personal life out of the spotlight. As he acknowledges, the songs emerged from a “creative well” – nothing to do with him..
With beloved Dharma friend, Dominika, I watched him in concert in Birmingham, England for my 65th birthday a couple of years ago. He wore his trademark New York policeman style trousers with the yellow strip plus the wide brimmed hat. He is in constant experiment with his music. He would sing half of a new version of his song before, we, the audience, realised what song he was singing. He took little interest in the audience, little apparent interest in his fellow musicians on stage. He walked on stage. Played. And walked off. He faced across stage with a very rare glance in the direction of 10,000 fans. He had his back to a third of the hall of 10,000 people. Still Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Still giving 50 to 100 concerts per year. Bless him.
A friend, Dieter in Germany, kindly put on a hard disc for me all 40 albums of Bob Dylan with around 500 songs. Today Bob acknowledges the power of his songs from the 1960’s. He doesn’t try to analyse his past.
Here are the full lyrics of Gates of Eden, plus a few lines and verses from other songs.
Gates of Eden perhaps surely ranks as the finest song on ultimate and relative truth.
GATES OF EDEN
Of war and peace the truth just twists
Its curfew gull just glides
Upon four-legged forest clouds
The cowboy angel rides
With his candle lit into the sun
Though its glow is waxed in black
All except when ‘neath the trees of Eden.
The lamppost stands with folded arms
Its iron claws attached
To curbs ‘neath holes where babies wail
Though it shadows metal badge
All and all can only fall
With a crashing but meaningless blow
No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden.
The savage soldiers sticks his head in sand
And then complains
Unto the shoeless hunter who’s gone deaf
But still remains
Upon the beach where hound dogs bay
At ships with tatooed sails
Heading for the Gates of Eden.
With a time-rusted compass blade
Alladin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit monks
Side saddle on the Golden Calf
And on their promises of paradise
You will not hear a laugh
All except inside the Gates of Eden.
Relationships of ownership
They whisper in the wings
To those condemned to act accordingly
And wait for succeeding kings
And I will try to harmonize with songs
The lonesome sparrow sings
There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden.
The motorcycle black madonna
Two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause
The gray flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey
Who pick up on his bread crumb sins
And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden.
The kingdoms of Experience
In the precious wind they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what’s real and what is not
It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden.
The foreign sun, it squints upon
A bed that is never mine
As friends and other strangers
From their fates try to resign
Leaving men wholly totally free
To do anything they wish to do but die
And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden.
At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what’s true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden
Excerpts….
BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND
“Yes n how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?”.
MASTERS OF WAR.
Come You masters of war
You build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.
A HARD RAIN’S A-GONNA FALL
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard and it’s hard and it’s a hard and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s gonna fall.
DON’T THINK TWICE, IT’S ALLRIGHT.
It ain’t no use to sit an wonder why, babe
It don’t matter, anyhow
An’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why babe
If you don’t know by now
When your roosters crows at the break of dawn
Look out of your window and I’ll be gone
You’re the reason, I’m trav’lin on
Don’t think twice, it’s alright.
THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING’
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be last
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a changing.
CHIMES OF FREEDOM
Far between sundown’s finish an midnight’s broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing.
Thank you, Bob Dylan. A very happy birthday to you from all of us.
And thank you for consistently Knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s Door.