Interview with Phil Hale (+)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This show is a part of the FM podcast network, the home of great music podcasts. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Visit [email protected] you are listening to the Dylan Tons podcast. Hey everyone, it's Jim Salvucci, the Dylan tons and you are listening to what is it about Bob Dylan? Today our guest is Phil Hale. Phil lives in New York City and first saw Dylan live in 81 in London the same year I first saw him live. Since then, he has seen Dylan more than a hundred times. While having no regrets, he's not completely sold on the idea that it's the best use of his time either. That dichotomy has led to some attempts to write about Dylan to make sense of what seems like a grand obsession. Phil lived in Woodstock for a while and likes to think it was a coincidence. As a graduate in philosophy, he is at least attuned to the idea that some things can be pursued at length. And the answer never found. He's married, and if his wife entered an eye roll when Dylan is mentioned competition, she would place Eily, if not outright win it. Despite this, he salutes her patience. Phil, welcome. [00:01:13] Speaker A: Hey, Jim, how are you? [00:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah, good to see you. What is it about Bob Dylan? [00:01:19] Speaker A: Obviously, I'm aware of this question. I thought about it a lot, and then I've gone around in circles 3000 times and come up with nothing specific, I don't think. But if I try to get to it, I think some of it is what it's not, and some of it is what it is. So I listened to the Rob Kelly thing, and I know he mentioned that it was the voice. And I think fundamentally, at some level it is that it's what certainly pulled me in the initial phase was just hearing Dillan's voice and thinking that's some sort of unworldly sound that I'd never heard of before. And it was just intriguing. And over the years, that's been a sort of consistent. But there are also times when he's. The way he's used his voice has not been particularly attractive to me, to my ears. So I don't think it's just that either. And then obviously there's the songs themselves, and there are so many fantastic songs. And I think that just cross the. Just the different elements of both the emotional and intellectual kind of stimulus that is that his songs are very particular. And I also think there's a. Clearly there's some kind of emotional connection, and this is completely out of character for me, but I experience it in some kind of spiritual way at times. I don't think of that as a sort of. I don't even know what that means exactly, but it's a sound that seems to communicate something larger than the components of it. And then what? It's not. It's definitely not. I don't see Dylan as a sort of other figure, as an inspiration, actually, that's not true. I see him inspirationally on some level, but I don't see him as a mentor in life or anything like that. So some of my. To get to the question, root of that question is, as I said, it's in opposition to some of the things that I hear said and that I read about him. And I think it's got nothing to do with that for me, even though they seem to be very specific versions of Dylan that people have in their head and reasons that they're attracted to him. So it's some kind of just combination of that voice, of the songs, of this connection with something that I don't even come. I don't even know how to really put my finger on. And there you go. That's a terrible answer to fine question. [00:03:52] Speaker B: It's a great answer. Of course, I was going to ask you a follow up, which is, what exactly did you mean by spiritual? But then you went and said, you have no idea what exactly you mean by spiritual. [00:04:01] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, what? If I tried to put my finger on it, it was, and I've experienced it with more than one occasion. It's not like an experience that I think I'm in some way transported to some other realm or that it's something I take with me. But every now and then, more than every now and then, particularly in live performances, there'll be something that seems to be communicated through Dylan, and I know he's expressed that. And I think that's a very common artistic trope with the artist. I don't know where this comes from. I'm just a vessel for it and all that stuff. It's hardly. Dylan seems to say that a lot, and I don't deny his experience of it, obviously, where I think sometimes I kind of witness it or tie into it or connect into it. That's happened on more than one occasion, and it's almost impossible to describe it in words, but it nonetheless weirdly exists. [00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a common experience, that sort of getting in touch with the ineffable. Right. With Dylan, you can't even really put it into words, and he struggles to put it into words. Master wordsmith as he is, that idea that these things come from somewhere. I'm not a spiritual person myself, but I get what you're saying. It's an important way to understand Dylan. [00:05:20] Speaker A: I think it might be the wrong word. It might be more energy. There's an energy because spirit does have connotations that I'm not really attaching to it. It's more of a connection to an energy force, I think. [00:05:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I think of spiritual in the broadest and best sense is the search for meaning. [00:05:38] Speaker A: Right. [00:05:39] Speaker B: That sort of Viktor Frankl way of looking at the world. And I think when you're dealing with Dylan, there's a lot of searching for meaning, whether it's his meaning or whatever. But a lot of people really identify with the songs. Tell me a little bit about your background. [00:05:53] Speaker A: What do you want to know? [00:05:56] Speaker B: Where are you from? What have you done? [00:05:58] Speaker A: Okay, so I grew up in the south coast of England, on the coast. Moved to London. I actually studied in Liverpool, moved to London, spent 20 something years in London, working mainly in the restaurant business. Then I don't even know if those numbers are correct. Something like that. And then I moved, I got married, and my wife was living in New York. I relocated to New York. And restaurant business, not great for married life. So I shifted to real estate, which is also not great for married life. But it's slightly on the margins, better than restaurants. And I dont know, thats a lot of other stuff, but I dont know how interesting it is to anybody. Its the miniature of things. [00:06:39] Speaker B: William, when did you live in Woodstock? [00:06:41] Speaker A: So from 2011 to two years ago. And we didnt live there full time, but we spent a lot of time there. Its an interesting. I totally get. Woodstock obviously has a huge history way before Dillon, and as a. A retreat for the air and for the altitude and for health reasons and all that kind of stuff. And there is a terrible book by Alf somebody or another one I tried to read once and I just couldn't. About the history, Woodstock. But it has a lot of. There is certainly definitely a vibe up there, like a kind of. I get it. I get why there would have been that discovery of it when it was discovered. And obviously where Dylan lived. It's up in the woods. And I could see also why he was attracted to the isolation of that, and also the bitterness that came about when it was discovered. And people started bothering him. Because there is a sort of sense that you can get away from stuff up there. And to have that denied, I would imagine, was worse than not having it in the first place. Almost. There is definitely a still even though it's changed dramatically. And all the locals will tell you negatively that it's. There is definitely very. Something very special about that whole region. [00:08:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I imagine for Dylan it was. It's not only he could get away from everyone, but people treated him like a normal person more or less there too. I think that was important for him. [00:08:11] Speaker A: I spoke one time, just coincidentally, came over to our house as a builder, had worked on Dylan's house or done some work for him in some capacity. And it was with a buddy, and they were kids at the time, and they were at Dylan's house, I think, and they were up in the attic doing some work. And he said, boxes upon boxes of fan mail, all unopened. And they opened some of them and were reading them and it was just like. But it was, I think, by and large, yeah, he could go around town relatively untroubled, certainly at the beginning. And I know there was that great story when he played up in Hutton brickyards that he went to Neil Gaiman's house, which, of course, used to be Albert Grushen's house. And I don't know if you know that story. [00:08:51] Speaker B: No, I didn't know that story. [00:08:52] Speaker A: Neil Gabin tells the story. He tells it much better than I will, and I'll keep it very short, but. So when he played the Hutton brickyards, I don't know if you're familiar with that venue that they did up over there. Anyway, it was 2017, I think, played two gigs out there. And so he was seen driving, or black widow Zane was seen driving, actually being seen driving through Woodstock. And he went, I think, and revisited all these haunts, including Albert Grossman's house, which. So he pulls into the driveway. Apparently Gaiman is not there. And he pulls into the driveway and there's a. I don't know, the housekeeper or whoever is somebody is there, and they come out and I think it's one of those classic things of they look at Dylan, don't know him, and just think he's sure he had a hoodie. All them dogs are glasses, whatever, and there's always a stranger. I think they get hold of Neil Gaiman on the phone or something. And anyway, Dylan just says, I just want to go look at the house. Can I just go look at the house? Can I come in and look at the house? So eventually they, either by Gaiman's, like, permission or otherwise, I think it might have come later. They let him in. He wanders around the house and he looks at the kitchen. And then if you look back at the stories, that's where he was writing songs, whatever. And there's this sort of whole nostalgia thing going on for him. And eventually Neil Gaiman receives this painting from him as a sort of a gift post the visit. But clearly there's that thing. There's the John Lennon house visits and wandering around looking for Springsteen's house and all that kind of stuff. It definitely is in. It fit into that model of that kind of private, nostalgic side that we all have, maybe when we revisit places we used to live. Yeah. [00:10:26] Speaker B: And he spent there. Yeah. That was an important house to him, that's for sure. How did you first encounter Dylan's music? And what really. You said the voice, but what really engaged you? [00:10:39] Speaker A: I remember the specific moment. I was my parents at a cafe, which is not equivalent to a diner here, but it would be more like a rope chat, truck stop like kind of place, but in a permanent situation. And my job was to sit in the backyard and peel potatoes. And I was doing that one day. So this would have been like 78. Cause I don't quite know the timeline, but I know the timeline of the album. And I think it was released in 78. So I would have been 15 at the time. And I was listening to the radio and baby stopped crying, came over the radio. And retrospectively, with this whole canon of songs, I'm not sure that's one I would pick out to play to somebody and go, hey, listen to this. But there was just. I don't know, whatever it was, whatever that thing is. What is it about Bob Dylan thing that is hard to put your finger on? Wormed its way in. And then I went and bought street legal and then started to just, okay, I really like this album. And they started to buy other albums. And I lived in a relatively small town, no Internet, so it was somewhat piecemeal. And then there was a great record store, and they would order stuff for me or anyone. And so eventually I gathered more and more of the stuff. And there was definitely that sense of, wow, this guy has so many different people. Because if street legal is your entry point, then another side of Al Dylan does not sound like the same person in any way, shape or form. And I think that might have been the second album that I bought. It was just definitely one of those common stories that I hear of is this voracious appetite to listen to as much of the music as I could get my hands on. And I don't. Again, back to that. What's it about Bob Dylan? I don't have that with any other artists. I had multiple records of certain artists, but it's just whatever I'd buy him or I wouldn't buy him. It wasn't a need or desire to have them. So that was that. [00:12:34] Speaker B: Yeah, street legal. Like you said, it isn't a typical gateway album for most people seem to have come in at different times, but that's an interesting period. I came to Dylan around the same time, but I decided to be very historical about it because I was very literal minded as a teenager and decided to buy his first album in the second app, which is very silly in retrospect, especially since I don't. [00:12:55] Speaker A: Maybe the smarter way to do it. [00:12:57] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:12:57] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:12:58] Speaker B: I don't know if it's so smart, but. So you wrote a piece, an untold Dylan, which is a discussion group online entitled Dylan and T's Eliot meeting in the captain's tower. And you make an argument for the. I think at one point used the term metaphysical, which is one of my favorite words, metaphysical artistic goals of Dylan's performances. And you suggest that Dylan is both an artist and an entertainer. What's the difference between artist and entertainer in Dylan's context? [00:13:31] Speaker A: So maybe I'm wrong, but I just saw a clip today of the Rolling Stone singing like a Rolling Stone in their most recent concert. I saw something, hey, rock and roll, whatever the Neil Young song is. And I said, they're probably the current, most contemporary, contemporaneous artists of Dylan currently performing live. I think Springsteen is also. But he's a different animal, I would say they are all entertainers at some level, and they've got huge depth and breadth to their material, but they see, I think they see their business and their work and their job as giving to the crowd. McCartney would be another one giving to the crowd what the crowd have come out for. And I think if you see the crowd that goes to those artists, it's young people compared to the Dylan crowd. It's incredibly young. Right. And obviously huge numbers in comparison. And so I don't think Dylan sees himself as an entertainer in that regard, and I don't experience him as an entertainer in that regard. Yet it's guys on the stage playing music. You're not going for the answer, you're not going to that show to. So he's going to speak and he's going to tell us, like, we're going to learn something here and it's going to be this huge sort of dissertation on life and everything. He's learned and whatever. It's a piece of entertainment. And yet the point of that piece, to a degree, apart from maybe elements of my own insanity behind it, but the point of that piece is that if you go, because I saw nine out of those ten shows in 2019 at the Beacon, if you go, then you see he's not engaged in, you can do this on one show. I'm not saying you have to go see nine of them, but there is none of the normal interaction between the crowd and the artist that any of these other guys are trying to or not trying to are doing. And so it's almost like I experience it. I see it as Dylan doing this thing for himself and his band and whatever, right. That he is focused on that, as your friend of mine put it, in a much better way, was like he's in the deep conversation with himself, and you get to witness this conversation and it's so he's, you can't go just to be entertained. You cannot. I don't think you can go there for simple entertainment. You can't go there and say, I saw Bob Dylan. Right? I'm sure you can. And there's a lot of people walk out. A lot of people go, whatever, all that well trodden road and understand the songs, which I have total sympathy with, because if he sings a song, I don't know the words to. I don't understand a word of it either. But there's something else going on. There's a journey that he's on as an artist that he just happens to go, be successful enough, financially stable enough, have a big enough audience for that. He can do this in public. And I think thread that needle between without the public there. It doesn't mean anything or it means something different. So that's significant. It's not. He's going to do it in his studio. It requires the audience, it requires the atmosphere, it requires the venue. I think this is the significance of the venues, these smaller venues with this kind of steep seating facing him. It's like a gladiatorial kind of sense of it, like on a small scale. And he's in this sort of process of almost like educating the audience and educating them through just repetition in a way. With this fixed set list, I think you're just going to keep coming and see what I do, and one day you won't come, and then that'll be done. And so far, I see that he keeps re upping on the audience, and I know there's a lot of people it's a lot of repeat business for sure. But generally he's doing tools in, you would think, and revisiting them. Smaller places, less metropolitan centers or whatever. And generally those shows are selling out to this day. And it's almost like it's uncompromising in that regard. It's not. We're just going to entertain. You. Come and see the Rolling Stones. It's entertaining. It's. You go there. If you go there without expectation. And if I go to see Neil Young or the Rolling Stones and they don't play any songs I know I would probably like, okay, well, that was interesting, but, you know, it wasn't what I went for. And they don't do it. Rolling Stones, they could start me up or whatever. It's like they know what their crowd is there for. And Dylan's there for himself at a certain level, I think. And you join in or you don't. I don't know if that answers your question. [00:18:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that. That was a tremendous answer. I'm still trying to get my brain around the gladiatorial Dylan feeding himself to the lines for our entertainment in the coliseum. That's a. That's an interesting way of thinking about it. He's down there battling, right? He doesn't know how the. What the outcome is going to be, does he? [00:18:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. I don't know if we'll get there, but there's a whole conversation to be had around that stuff. And I think to the point about the article that you referred to is there is another argument which just says, like, the guy's just a musician. He just goes around, he plays the songs, and it's like you turn up and he makes some money and he moves on to the other thing. He goes back to his life and whatever it may be, right. And I don't think it's necessary to buy into that idea. If you understand, if you listen to Ralph and Rowdy, Wade's really enough time to understand it. And then just went to a show, and that was the first and only Dylan show you ever saw. I think you could walk away saying, if you like it, if you like Ruffin radio waves, if you like his voice, if you like the orchestration of his songs as they stand today, you could go, and that was a great evening. I don't think it requires anything more than that. Anything that's beyond that gladiatorial whatever. It's like, maybe just who knows, right? Who knows if any of that is in it? But it seems. I always feel like he could play Madison Square Garden two nights a year. He could do a similar venue in LA or whatever, and he could just go around and play the ten gigs that he plays at the beacon in, for example, in 2019 or whatever the number is. He could do two nights and get the same amount of people crammed into bigger spaces that they would probably sell out if there was a scarcity element of it. But he puts himself through this thing of like, I'm going to draw a crowd to a smaller venue night after night, play the same song. There feels something confrontational about that to me, not in a negative way, but it feels like there's something coming from him that's I'm just going to do it my way. [00:20:33] Speaker B: So what's he getting from the audience? [00:20:36] Speaker A: Well, I think without doubt he gets feedback and I think there's a. And I don't. I think the difference, there's a big difference between he not milking the audience and him not being aware of the audience. Right. So if you listen through his career or through his career, there are all sorts of times when he's interacted on a level with the audience. He's had people dancing on stage with him at certain points in time. He's cleared the front rows so he doesn't have to look at the same faces again. He's interacted with people. The two, Kate and Carolyn, who run the Bob gun fan club, the Facebook. And it's also the fan club, not just a Facebook page. I've been in fair few gigs where they've been there, and he always acknowledges them. Right. He's so he's aware who's out there. He's aware of what's going on, and I think it needs to be done in front of an audience, clearly, otherwise it's a totally different experience for him. I think he sometimes feeds on the audience, and other times I've seen situations where the audience had fed off him almost eventually. Right. And I also remember there was a show at the Beacon on one of those nine nights where he was playing Thunder on the mountain and he was really, I'm watching it. I was like, I don't know, whatever that is. 57 at the time, whatever. I was like 55 or whatever. The guy's 70, whatever he was. And I'm looking around at the audience and I'm just to be clear, I'm sat in my seat, I'm doing nothing to contribute to my issue with this matter is that I'm seeing this guy who is really feeding into this energy in the music, and I'm looking around and it's like, the crowd are pretty flat, right? It's pretty. There's no. He's not getting anything from the audience at that point in terms of a proactive response to what he's doing. And then there were two younger, I think they were both girls. Two younger girls stood up. Women, charade, I should say, stood up on the far side and started dancing, and then some people behind them started dancing, and then that section stood up, and then somebody started dancing in the middle section, and it stood up, and then eventually it rippled, and I was on the orchestra on the left, and eventually it got to our side, and I don't know. I don't know how many rows were stood up, but let's say twelve rows were stood up or whatever by the end of the song. And he looked out of the audience and just went, you know, and it was almost like, oh, you get it, finally. Do you know what I mean? And it was almost like, I'm not sure any of this was going through his head, of course, but it was almost like, why am I so much more energetic and engaged than you? Why aren't you responding? But there was never going to be an issue because there's always that thing, you know what, Bob? If you say, hey, this is one I wrote, and someone like, let's get up on your feet, everyone's going to do it, right? He has it. He has that in the palm of his hands if he wants it. Anytime he says anything, there's this applause, and, like, people are cheering, even if it's not anything particularly that interesting. So. And clearly, he just chooses not to do it. And I don't. I see it as often referred to as disdain or whatever. That feels like just so far off the mark to me that it's not even worth responding to if somebody says it right. [00:23:46] Speaker B: It's right up there with Dylan never. [00:23:48] Speaker A: Smiles, and he smiles all the time. If you get close enough, he smiles all the time. He smiles to his band, he smiles to himself. And I think he's having a good time, by and large. I've seen him some nights where he clearly is not having a good time, but that's. You play as many concerts as he does. It's 100% right. [00:24:05] Speaker B: Right, of course. So let's play a little nostalgia game here. Go back to 1981, when you first saw him, and tell me a little bit about that concert. What was it like? [00:24:16] Speaker A: You know what? That's my worst memory. It's on tropical memory war. You think that show is actually the featured disc. I have listened to it a couple of times to try and jog my memory, and I have very fleeting memories of it. Traveled to. There are a lot. There are shows that we could talk about. I have much better memories of, as you've asked. This month I traveled from the south coast, went up to Earl's court. It was probably the first. It was certainly the first London concert I'd seen. And it was probably the first concert I'd seen in that bigger venue. And so I remember there was a sort of. That sense of Alice is I went with my girlfriend at the time and we were up on the side and I remember sitting there. We're going relatively early, sitting there on the stage. And I didn't really know. I hadn't really paid too much attention to him. I wanted to go see him. Right. I had no idea. Maybe I did, probably from the albums, but I had no sense of that. He'd done this tour of religious. Only playing the religious songs, the christian songs. I don't think I had any idea that gone on. Maybe I did. I can't remember, but. So I had no real set expectations and to the point about listening to his albums by then, I listened to whatever albums I'd listen to. So I had that sense of his music. And I just remember sitting there and his backing singers came out and opened the show for, I don't know, good, maybe ten minutes, I suppose. I don't know. And I was like, okay, I don't know. What's this all about? What's going on? I feel like. Came to see Bob go kind of thing, and then he came out and I remember my abiding memory of it because we were not super far away, but not close either, was this big, a huge amount of people on stage, relatively speaking, and this sort of fairly static figure standing in the center with this enormous voice coming out of him, filling this hall. And I know it's amplification and whatever, it's not, but there was this sort of incredible power to his voice. And I think, if anything, that's what has stuck with me. There was just this. For all of that was going on stage, for all of the other backing, for all of the competing, the singers that were singing with him that are pushing his voice and whatever, that the power of his voice just was very dominant and the tone of his voice very common. And that sounds such a banal thing to say, given the fact, yeah, like, it's his show, but that's, I guess, my memory of it. And I I don't know why. I've never really gone back and truly dug into that one, but whatever reason, I haven't. So that's it. [00:26:53] Speaker B: It's interesting because, like I said, I saw him later that same year, October, where he had mixed in more secular material. Again, that's moving on. But I hadn't really delved into that period myself until I wrote about it for Aaron Callahan and core Carney's book on setlist. And I actually wrote on the month I saw him. And it was amazing when I went back to it, how rich it was. It was much richer than even remembered it. I was a kid. I was a teenager, so I thought whatever I thought. But at the time. But, you know, in retrospect, I really appreciate having delved into it a little bit. I really appreciate, because I'm not a nostalgic person, but I really appreciated what I witnessed. It was actually pretty cool the way he arranged the set and all these different things that were going on and the backing singers and whatnot. And you got to see, when I saw him, he wasn't using the backing singers quite that same way when you saw him. I know those set lists tended to have maybe three songs that they would come out and do, and then sometimes even during the performance, there would be a song that one of them might do. [00:27:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. I'm pretty sure that happened. I think there was a moment where he walked off, left the stage, and that's how little I dug back into it, which after this, I will go and do that immediately. [00:28:06] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:28:07] Speaker A: In case anyone ever asked me this question again, and I won't have to wander my way through it. But there was secular songs, obviously, at that leg of the tour, too, for sure. It was definitely the breakout from that prior. It's also, to your point, just to segue briefly, they went about the street legal being a particular entry point. Of course, my first three albums of hearing them, when I was aware of Dylan, because I didn't street easy, I was not really aware. There was no anticipation of it. It was just, hey. Whereas then, now there was this, like, oh, he's releasing a new album, of course, with those three albums. And as a totally non religious person, to go back to that idea of what was it about Dylan at that point, clearly, it was somewhat. His voice dominated, because the message of the songs, even though I think the songs have a quality to them and an interest to them, they weren't certainly a message that I was interested in hearing. Yeah, I wasn't. I didn't think, well, okay, that's that then. I've made a mistake here. Anyway. [00:29:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the first contemporaneous release that I ever bought from Dylan was shot of Love, which was another weird entry already into Dylan by then. And I had other albums, but the first time there was a new release, a shot of love, and then infidels. It was a very strange period. Empire burlesque. Very interesting way into Dylan. You said something to me, or you wrote something to me about how Dylan's performances since 2013, he said, I'm going to quote you here, may collectively be one of the greatest iterations of his live shows, and I'm not going to disagree with you. But why do you think that's true, and do you think others agree with you, aside from me? [00:29:50] Speaker A: I don't know. I would say it's a minority view if they do. And I think I need to qualify it somewhat with. There is a sort of, for me, there's an. In a metaphysical thing that we briefly talked about or the energy piece that we briefly talked about, there is something for me in the arc of Dylan's career that speaks to the idea of staying in connection with creativity. And I think for me there is an element that's not something I've done for myself. And so I witness it as with somewhat of awe and somewhat of wow. Like, that's an amazing thing to someone to pull it off. So when I think about that arc, and I think about where did I come into 81 in terms of witnessing it live, is that I think about Dylan as a person and where he was in his own personal arc of creativity or arc of life, physicality and energy and all those things that everybody, we all go through. That is that, of course there are, you say, the 66 tours, some reasons, 2013 to 2019. Well, I give you the 66 tour, and the argument's over. I wouldn't dispute that incredible quality level energy there. And I use that as an example because it shows playing the same set more or less. And then you can go to the beginning of the never ending tour and say, well, there's all those set list changes and all that kind of stuff. Now, the period I could pick out would be the 2000 to 2004, the Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell era. And that's a lot of people's favorite era, and I wouldn't dispute it. I loved that era for me, what I started, and again, purely personal thing of it, around 2008 to around 2012, I felt personally that Dylan's shows became not, for me, that interesting, not as interesting when he was playing to the side, playing the keyboards, organ, whatever you want to call it, his voice was in that credible, raspy phase, and I experienced it as. She doesn't have any new songs, particularly coming out around that period that it was there together through life. It's my least favorite album. So again, there's a personal kind of, like, I don't really want to ever hear Jolene again, but there's that element of it. But there's. I felt like when he's playing his older songs, that he couldn't find anything new in them. And unsurprisingly, right, they were, you know, they're old war horses. He's played them along many times. And I. 2012, I saw him at Bethel, and I saw him at Varky center, and he started playing the baby grand piano at that point. And fantasy on my part, maybe I just suddenly thought I was witnessing this reconnection. It was specifically around visions of Johanna, which I really noticed it on, that he was, like, reconnecting with finding something new just by playing a piano instead of keyboards. And he was actually playing the guitar as well and stuff like that. And by the time 2014 roll around, I say 2030, because I've listened to the Japan tour booths and I think it's there, too, but I didn't see it right. By the time 2014 came around for me as witnessing live shows, I saw those five beacon shows. There was this almost like a gathering of this new belief and a new way of structuring a set list and a new way of engaging with his own creativity again. And so the tempest song started getting introduced. Then he starts to. I mean, maybe they were a little bit before then or whatever, but they came quite dominant in the settlers, Scarlett town. All that kind of stuff he's playing. He suddenly starts to do this thing of playing standing center stage and engaging in these long songs. He moves almost slowly, if not solely at that point, to piano, and starts engaging with the band in a different way. I felt. And I saw again then he brings in the standards songs and stuff like that, which is, I saw the shows at the Royal Albert hall in 2015. All of those standards, all the standard songs got the huge. The best reaction from the crowd. And as they started, as he started to play them. And so there's this other thing that he's doing is, okay, now I'm going to be a singer, right? I'm just going to be a singer. And then I felt like the songs, masterpiece and whatever, he continued to engage with them and play rhythms into them and versions of them, that was seeking almost like a kind of, what's the song all about? To me? And he was really re engaged now. I found it fascinating. I saw. I've seen a lot of the shows, seen more shows since 2013 to the present day than I probably saw in all of the time before that. So I get it. There's much more investment of me in it, and I maybe want to see that. I want to believe that's true. I want to believe it's all been worthwhile, because I've witnessed this incredible thing that I. Whatever, may not be there at all, but my experience of it is that he's reconnected to his art. And so when I step back, not that he ever disconnected completely, but just at a different level, and new material and songs that he clearly wanted to sing, and songs that he. That the part of him that perhaps could never find the place to play those standard songs live could never find a version of himself where it was appropriate to play them. He suddenly decided that version is now. And they were seven songs of the set list or whatever. It wasn't like he just played one. I first witnessed it. He played state with me at the end of the Beacon shows, and it felt like a little out of place. Within a year, they were the centerpiece of that show. So I felt like this, just a reconnection with his art. And for me, there's an element. If I then look at it and go, wow, a guy who's done as much as he's done, I often think, how many songs has that man's sung? How many times has he sung a song live on record in rehearsals, the bootleg series? Just like, how many times to friends, just because he's filmed whatever. I can't believe how many songs he must have sung. And to find that connection and to find something new and to find a different version of himself, a different feeling about himself, and a different structure to his shows, and a different sense of how he was the bandleader and all of that. That, for me, was like, when I was trying to get out with that thing, it's like an incredible. Just like, it's an artistic achievement. I think a lot of the earlier stuff, forget the quality of the show, the material or whatever. He's a young guy doing it right. He's a young guy in the prime's life, full of natural creativity pouring out of him. This felt like, okay, he's got to work to find this, and then he finds this incredible thing. So that was what I was trying to get at. [00:37:10] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I like that perspective on it. Going back to the very beginning. Your answer? There's probably no other artist you can think of where you can sit there and rattle off these key moments in their performing history. Right? Where? Well, the 66 tour. You didn't mention Rolling Thunder. Right, the Rolling Thunder tour. All these different periods that were amazing and different people experienced them in very different ways. People have very fond memories of them, which is okay, I saw the Rolling Stones in 2020 and I saw them in 2000 and I saw. It's whatever this is. He's very particular about those periods. There's something really remarkable about him. And the live recordings, the bootlegs even stand up pretty well. But I do want to move to the studio. You said that rough and rowdy ways is perhaps his greatest studio achievement. And I'm a big fan of ruffle, rowdy bass. And I think it stands with the best of his work. Definitely top five somewhere in there. And so I would love to hear your opinion. Why do you say that? [00:38:16] Speaker A: Push it to the top five. To the top of the top five. And then you say it's all right. You already agree. I don't have to justify it. Okay. It's not dissimilar to what I just said in some regards. I think in terms of the difference for the studio part of it I would. And again, achievement is the keyword for me there. It's not necessarily. I'm not trying to judge the albums against one another. I'm just trying to achieve. To think about the achievement of it. And if I think about. I know there are uncredited producers perhaps on that album. Brett Mills is it. I think it was semi producing hit and forms. And added some of those particular musical pieces to it so there's a collaboration there that Devlin was maybe not as generous about as he could have been in acknowledging. And therefore this partly fits and negates my argument a little bit or my thought a little bit. But I'm just going to put that to one side. [00:39:13] Speaker B: I believe the word he uses on the. On the liner notes is additional. [00:39:18] Speaker A: So he's damned to say praise. But if I just put that aside for 1 second, right. And just think. Okay, so he's largely producing the album. Producing the sound of it. There's no Daniel Lenoir for good or for bad inputting, for example in some of you think about his later albums that people have thought about. And then I think about the content of the songs and the content of the albums and where it fits into. Again, that sort of artistic art. I experienced those songs as Dylan finally accepting about himself that he is a part of this tradition, that he's fully arrived as part of the tradition, and that he's been aspiring to it, maybe throughout his career. And the tradition of. There's that classic thing in the song, or whatever the thing is. The last thing I want to say is that I did some hard traveling, too, or whatever that line is. And it feels like, okay, unless he's in complete denial, he's aware, must be aware, that the journey is coming to an end in some regards. Right. And there's this acknowledgement in the content and the style of those songs that is placing him inside and outside of that. Right. So it's weibobble Matta's book, or whatever, which I read a long time ago. I didn't agree with all of it, but I remember the thing where he's basically putting in direct lines from Virgil or Homer or whatever. Why putting those into the songs, that feels okay. He's using that material to craft songs. This stuff feels like she's acknowledging his relationship to that history of western culture. And the whole thing about Calliope. Give it to me. Why not give it to me? That's incredibly audacious, right? Give it to me and I won't waste it. I don't know. There's the artistic creation of a person who says, I'm going to be an artist. I'm going to be this person. And then the journey that is a constant seeking of what that actually looks like. There is that audacity of give this thing to Millie because I'm worthy of it. And again, you can read too much into any line, but there is this whole, I can say, multitudes thing. He's finally, I think, acknowledging him to himself that, yeah, it's like, I'm good and it's okay. I can say these things indirectly about myself, that there's a sort of autobiographical element to it without it being anything to do with his personal life or whatever. It's to do with this connection with his muse or, like, amuse, or this whole entity that has been his creative life. And that's how I experienced that album, that it's a reflection of all of those things. So to do that in a way that the songs are great, that they are totally able to hold a live show together, there's no. Not one of those songs is out of place in his live show since he's been playing that album. Black Rider is a song on that album. That on the album's let me be Bitma. And it's a song almost, that's written to be performed, and then when he performs it, it's like there's a spookiness to it and it's sort of. And then he's messed with it and. Right. And he's put different, like, rhythms into it and changed it and whatever, but he's created this vehicle of songs that not only can he play live and build a show around, and it almost feels like they were. They all had that in mind. Like, it was not. It's not a coincidence. It's not like he wrote that album. And then one day I'm going to tour again. Oh, what am I going to do? Well, I guess I could do that album. It feels like this is unusual for him to do this album. So I feel that he's got this connection with it, too, that his songs are something. So if I think about the thought and then the execution of conceiving of the songs, conceiving of the concept of an album, of those types of songs, writing the Ashwin songs, key west, one of his best songs ever, in my humble opinion. So at this stage of the game, to do that is pretty remarkable. But crossing the Rubicon, like, didn't love it on the album, got into it, but to see it live, unbelievable. He's conceived of all that, executed it, written it, then recorded it, then gathered the people necessary to make the sound that he wants at that stage of needing to come up with. That's a huge level of creativity. And so to do it at that stage of his career, it's not even about his age. It's to do with what point you get tapped out, at what point I can't come up with anything new. I think there are a lot of artists who write the same song again, I think Dylan said that. Right. Not about himself, necessarily, but not excusing himself from it. And he absolutely did not do that. Right. Because even those songs are not even. There's a connection to tempest or there's no connection to love and depth that I see particularly stylistically. I could see that they're distant cousins, but it's not a continuation of it, I don't think. I know there's references in there that could pass between either album, but stylistically, it's a different animal. So it's. For me, it's just thinking that just stands on its own. And that, to me, is why I think it's the greatest studio achievement. Not to say it's his best album. I don't even know what that means. They're all so different. [00:45:17] Speaker B: That's a great take on it, though. I really like that. And I think love and theft, there's some thematic qualities that we see, really, throughout this century, and the. Dylan's work, both his prose and his. His music. But love and theft is a character driven album, which is very unlike Dylan eater. You don't get a lot of that throughout an album, whereas rough and rowdy ways just isn't. We don't see characters on the same level. We don't see all these different. He's not trying all these different Personas on. It's really, in many ways, it's his most personal album. [00:45:56] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. That's how it feels to me, anyway, but. And there's this. I was reading Stephen King's book on writing the day, and two things that just. I don't. Again, I think you can connect anything to anything if you choose to. So I don't know what. This is not some, wow, wait. [00:46:10] Speaker B: I'm a former english professor. I can assure you, you can connect anything to anything. [00:46:14] Speaker A: Right. Wait till what I've got for you now. This is going to be incredible. There is a point in it where he says writer and the audience choose to participate in a miracle together. And I think that's part of. In all the things that we've talked about today, there is a part of the element of that. But the other thing that he said that I thought was, like, he doesn't write from plot. He writes from putting his characters into situations and see what happens. And it suddenly thought, oh, well, yeah, I don't know. Visions of Johanna like a Rolling Stone. But also, then you bring it up to date and I can't think of an example, but I'm sure there are very many, like, the characters in his songs, he just puts them into situations. Right? And you don't even know what that situation is. And they certainly don't have any. There's no linear move through the situation, necessarily. They're just a bunch of characters. Situations that he's put to more point in love and threat just put into situations and. Yeah, tempest a little bit too, right. I think it's a little bit like that. Like early roman kings or whatever. I don't know what's going on there, but I don't know who everybody is and where they're coming from and what they're doing, but I feel they're. Wow, they're all in this situation, right. Obviously, desolation row would be another classic that just popped into my head. [00:47:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Almost setting enough of that. [00:47:28] Speaker A: Because it probably is going nowhere, but. [00:47:29] Speaker B: They'Re almost setting a mood. But it goes beyond that. There's something intellectual going on as well. [00:47:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Something conceptual or whatever. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe he doesn't. It's not conscious, maybe it isn't. I don't know. Maybe that's why it works. Because it's not so obvious that you can put anything onto it and make a bachelor Nobel prize speech of. I put all sorts of things into my songs and I don't know what they mean either. There's the permission to do whatever you want with it if it connects. [00:47:56] Speaker B: Tell me about the time you met Bob Dylan. [00:48:00] Speaker A: Okay, apologies to anybody who does watch this who's heard the story before, but. So I worked in a restaurant in London. It was in the 94, I think. I can never remember the year, but it was 94, I think there was the irish festival, the flower. Dylan was playing at it. And partly why I didn't really rack up so many shows when I was in that time of my life, because I was working nights. So whatever. It was like, okay, he's playing today. I had to be at work, even though it was earlier in the day or whatever. So I'm standing there and it was a busy restaurant. It was one of London's most sort of famous restaurants. It was Langens brassery. It's just by the Ritz. And I think Dylan actually was staying at the Ritz, if not somewhere close, very close by. And I get this call, like 08:00 or whatever, and says, I want a table at 20. And I'm like, yeah, that doesn't happen. You don't get a table. It's 20 on the Saturday night, right? It's not happening. He said, bob Dylan wants to come in for dinner. And it was moment where I just thought, winding me up, right? And somebody is whatever. And then so I continued the conversation. I'm like, I don't know if I can get it to him. He said, well, he doesn't want to come here until late. So I'm like, okay, all right, well, maybe we can do something around 1130 or whatever, but I can't guarantee it. So the guy keeps calling back. And eventually I did two tables of ten for them. And there was Van Morrison was playing, and there was a bunch of other people, I can't remember. They all started to drift in and ordered whatever and keep getting these calls. And this guy is like, how many people left in the restaurant? And I'm like, I don't know, like a hundred. And then half an hour later, how many people left in the restaurant? The restaurant closed, I think, at that time, 1215, right? I think the kitchen closed at twelve or twelve, midnight. At 1250. It's London, not New York. This goes on and on. And I'm like, 20, right? And he goes, okay, all right, and then call back, okay, there's almost nobody here now. He said, okay, he'll come down. And by that stage, it was way past the kitchen closing. And ironically, the week before, Lenny Kravitz, I was working and somebody, because we used to work alternate shifts, it was me and another manager, we work alternative shifts, turned away Lenny Kravitz late at night, and the owner got wind of it and went crazy. So I am like, this is going on. I'm talking to the kitchen saying, someone has to stay anyway. So eventually, could I get an order? Would you mind ordering in advance so I can only send some people home? And you ordered a salad. After all that time. Anyway, everybody goes home, they're still there. It's just literally by them. He comes in and of course he's wearing dark glasses, whatever, and sits down. And I'd send all the staff away, so I end up serving it myself. So I bring him a salad, he had a glass of red wine, and he's just sitting there. And I'm standing at the front of the restaurant and the guy, and I think it was Jim Callaghan, actually, but it's so long ago, I can't really remember, comes over and I say to him, and I was in that terrible dilemma of, this is my job. He's a customer. And then there's this, like, yeah, it's not done. So I'm like, I said to him, what are you doing? And he said, do you want Daniel Orson's autograph? I'm like, no, I don't want. And he says, you want Bob's autograph? Well, that's difficult. That's, I don't know if he's going to do that. The best bet you got is to wait until he leaves the table. And if he leaves the table, maybe you can just. So I had my car parked outside. I ran out of my car to get something, and all I had was knocked out, loaded on a cassette. And so I came back in and I took the loading of the insert out, and I stood there, and the bathroom was like, behind me. And he gets up to go to the bathroom. He comes back from the bathroom, and I, like, standing there trying to block his way but not be obvious, just to slow down the walk back to the table. And I said, mister Dillon, I'm really sorry to ask you, but is there any chance that you were stylish? Sure. And he lifted his glasses up and looked in and I to this day will say she raised his eyebrows in surprise that I had not downloaded. Is that one of mine? It may just be because I think their sunglasses are prescription and, you know, he probably couldn't see what it was, but anyway, so he signed it for me and then, you know, whatever, shortly afterwards they left. So it's a very low interaction with Bob Dylan meeting story, but it has some weird elements with it and my kid. Go on. Is I always answered the question of what would you say if you met Bob dung? Because Myers was like, would you like black pepper with that? That was it. It did at the very least take out like any concern of mine, there was a transactional nature to it. The rules were set, customer restaurant. [00:52:29] Speaker B: But the centerpiece of the story is the knocked out loaded cassette. [00:52:32] Speaker A: And I'm sorry Paul made so long to get there. They understand. It's. [00:52:37] Speaker B: No, no, it's a great, it's a great part of it. It's funny how that all the albums, at least it wasn't down in the groove. [00:52:42] Speaker A: Yeah, down the groove is really dark. So it'd have been much. It would have been hard, of course, idiotic behavior that I'm prone to. I nervously shoved the insert back into the cassette. [00:52:55] Speaker B: Oh no. [00:52:56] Speaker A: And of course so blurred as little. Whatever. I don't even, it's been in my basement for the last 20 years and whatever. Maybe one day I'll frame it. [00:53:04] Speaker B: So you, you started a Facebook Dylan discussion group, right? And I believe it went by the wayside for a while. And you said it's starting up again. So tell us a little bit about that. [00:53:14] Speaker A: Okay. There's little to tell about it. I can, it's, it's, I'm hoping Zuckerberg will, will send out a message like, what's the least Facebook group? What's the Facebook group with the least engagement? And that there's a big money prize because I'm gonna get it. [00:53:28] Speaker B: Not after you put this out here now. [00:53:31] Speaker A: So it's, it's called Dylan deep dive discussion 2022, because that's, I think we started in 2021, actually, and then it got updated to 2022. So I would say the one thing with it, there is very little engagement, but it's mainly meaty spouting nonsense. And then will, who's the guy I did it with, chimes in, he's much more sensible than me. And we started off just looking at listening to the albums in order. So back to your point of view doing that. I have to say I'd never done it. And I'd listen to them all, of course, and multiple times in different orders and whatever. It was fascinating to listen to them in order. I finally got, okay, now I buy into the idea that it was a shock that he went electric, because I was like, who cares? Why did anyone ever care about that? Who cares that it's still a thing. Incredibly, it is. They're making a movie about it now, right? It's still a thing, right? Leading up to that moment, I was like, no, who cares? It's just like, seem so irrelevant to anything. Listening to the albums, looking at reviews from the time, reading around it a little bit, it was like the momentum. I felt the momentum. We did one album a week, whatever, so it was within a short enough time span to feel the momentum that, oh, okay, I finally get it. And then all of these sort of moments in his career, they just were much more integrated for me. And the gaps between albums were, okay. It's just, it really tied his career together for me in a way that it never had before. And the beauty of Facebook is I literally, I just wrote something today for it. And it's like, at one point I'm like, I've reached the point of this where I realized again, no one was reading this, so I should shut up. And it's, there is that element of, I know people, even if it was interesting, which I don't claim that it is, would read long things on Facebook. It's not a forum for that. So it disciplined me anyway. And it helped to write about it to give a cause to listen to the album again that I'd already heard a hundred times, to read about what was going on at the time, just focus, like, okay, I have to write something about this, which was, for me personally, was an interesting piece of it because it really focused my thoughts around it. And then to know that you've got to write something short, so you have to really boil it down to something like one element of this, instead of like this whole, which probably anyone who's got to this stage of this thing will realize I overtook. But instead of doing that is you distill it down to something. And that was also really interesting to me, what came up for me. And so anyway, for reasons, nonsense, it fell by the wayside and then I thought it was annoying me that we dropped it or that I dropped it or whatever. And with the shows still going on, it was like, okay, we need to just pick that up again. Why not? And then we stopped in 84, it's 40 years of shows. It's incredible. There are still. We're up to 84. We're up to 87 now, but it's 20 years of 21 plus years, 23 years of performance, and then you drop back into that thing and it's like, oh, there's 40 years for us to cover. [00:56:46] Speaker B: That's amazing. [00:56:47] Speaker A: It's like when you think about energy, it's shocking, right? And it goes back to that. The end of Rolling Thunder, the movie, when the scroll of the dates comes at the end. [00:56:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:56:58] Speaker A: It's like, oh, my God, right? It's just like someone did that. Someone went out there and then created that and kept playing with different bands and went out. And I know. I was thinking, post Covid, when Dylan comes out with new guitars, new drummer, it's like kind of. The balls on the man are incredible. Right? I'm going to do this thing where I've stopped. All the momentum has gone, because I understand with not only Thunder review, there's this. With a never ending tour, there's this momentum element to it, right? Don't think about it. Book another tour. We're starting up again in spring. There was a sudden end to that. There was every reason to be like, okay, let's hang up the tent. Let's not do it. It's too physically demanding. God, I've not been on a bus and I haven't done this, and I haven't gone continent to continent and dealt with jet lag and all of the things that maybe play a part. And if you do that relentless touring, this felt totally like, it may never start again for that reason. And then, okay, I'm gonna start it again. And Charlie's gone. And I really like playing with Charlie, and Charlie knows my stuff and I don't have to. And now Matt Chamberlain, I think, was playing in 2019. I really enjoyed his drum. Seemed to get it. Those shows were great. Oh, I gotta think of a new drummer. And he has some contentious elements with his drummer sometimes. Oh, that's a thing. You know what I mean? But he did it. So anyway, I felt very. The least I could do was to get up and finish a tiny little Facebook project. So that's it. [00:58:35] Speaker B: No, it sounds really amazing. I love the scope of it. [00:58:37] Speaker A: I'll invite you to join. [00:58:39] Speaker B: I will. [00:58:39] Speaker A: I will look forward to learning absolutely nothing. [00:58:44] Speaker B: I love the scope of it, really. It sounds. It's really ambitious. And these are the things scholars have been really turning to, these kinds of materials because people have done so much thinking, so much research, and it's really been important, I think, to scholars that there's people out there, fans who aren't necessarily professional scholars, doing this sort of work that really bolsters what the scholars are able to do as well. So I think it's a nice synergy, to be honest with you. [00:59:15] Speaker A: Read it first. Okay. Before you convince that I will read. [00:59:21] Speaker B: It, I will read it for sure. Phil, I want to wrap this up, but this has been fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for appearing on the dilettantes. [00:59:31] Speaker A: Thank you for asking me. [00:59:32] Speaker B: Great conversation. And look forward to seeing your stuff on Facebook and whatever else you put on untold Dylan and see you around the next Dylan show. Show, I hope. Are you going to be seeing any of the ticket? [00:59:44] Speaker A: I have a ticket. I think I'm going to be in Spain, unfortunately. It's probably. I'm probably going to miss it, but we'll see. [00:59:49] Speaker B: So which show do you have tickets to? [00:59:52] Speaker A: The Jones beach one. Oh, cool. [00:59:54] Speaker B: Long island. [00:59:55] Speaker A: I'm sure it's going to be great. [00:59:57] Speaker B: It'll be fun. That's for sure. This has been wonderful. So thank you very much. [01:00:01] Speaker A: All right, thanks, Jim. Bye bye. [01:00:06] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Dylan Ponds podcast. Be sure to subscribe to. Have the Dylan tons sent directly to your inbox and share the Dylan tons on social media.