To mark our 50th episode, writer and podcaster Tom Jackson gives us his clear-eyed take on Dylan’s “Born Again” albums: Slow Train Coming, Saved, Shot Of Love and Trouble No More. “Slow Train Coming is not a smooth record, not a pleasant record, but I enjoy the tension.” And the accompanying live performances? “They were church services, really. But why is Dylan so angry? That terrible, clear-eyed vitriol. He’s got the answer but he’s still furious! I think he enjoyed baiting his audience, messi...
Feb 21, 2021•51 min•Ep. 50
Novelist John Niven loves up Dylan's Neighbourhood Bully: “I have a soft spot for Heritage Rock acts trying to do Punk in the late 70’s and early 80’s” before summing up the Dont Look Back days: “When you’re in your 20’s, you’re all about the cruelty”. His response to attending a New York screening of Eat The Document? “An absolute pile of heroin-addled lunacy”. But Niven has immense respect for the man and his work: “Listening to Dylan is like reading James Joyce. It can take 20 or 30 years to ...
Jan 24, 2021•53 min•Ep. 49
Edward Docx (novelist/screenwriter/journalist) is a hyper-articulate defence witness for some of Bob’s least understood albums: Street-Legal, Infidels, Empire Burlesque and Together Through Life. “There is no uninteresting Dylan album. He opens his veins and says "This is what it’s like for me now."” How passionate is Ed Docx about Bob Dylan? After recording the podcast, we continued our digital discussion for another hour. Here’s Ed on Street-Legal: “It’s his Bosworth. After the battle, there’s...
Dec 27, 2020•59 min•Ep. 48
Academic and author Pamela Thurschwell gives us her conflicted feminist take on Dylan, including his queer lyrical metaphors and what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a Dylan mansplaining session. Her namechecks range from Amy Rigby , Emma Swift and Joan Baez to Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Hall and Jane Eyre. Pam describes Dylan as “the dangerous guy who sees the world as it is”, but also “fragile”, “mean” and just plain “ornery”. “Why do I always go for the Dylan boys?”, she tells us, then ...
Nov 29, 2020•48 min•Ep. 47
Screenwriter Daragh Carville (ITV’s The Bay ) praises Dylan’s “extraordinary ear for spoken language” while reminding us that he “draws on cinema, is fascinated by storytelling but his own films don’t work at all”. All the great story-songs are explored, including Highlands (“I phoned people up, I was so excited!”), Dignity (“it never resolves but at the same time it’s perfectly satisfying”), The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll, Brownsville Girl, Hurricane, Isis, Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream, The Ba...
Nov 01, 2020•47 min•Ep. 46
Sitting on the porch of his Long Island lockdown hideaway, serenaded by a local bird, Loudon Wainwright III reminds us that he was proclaimed “the first of the new Bob Dylans”. It helped me get a record deal but then it got to be a pain in the ass”. He still has a “reservoir of respect, admiration and awe” for the man and his work. “I dream about Dylan a lot. He is on, in and under my mind: the Muhammad Ali of songwriters.” Loudon has seen Dylan in concert and been visited by him backstage after...
Oct 04, 2020•39 min•Ep. 45
Singer/songwriter/podcaster/painter Dan Bern admits: “It was not lost on me, being an isolated Jewish kid in Iowa, that Bob had come from just up the road in Minnesota.” When he first heard Dylan at age 15 (“everything he was saying had a bit of a sneer to it. It was a portal for me”), he traded in his cello for a guitar and started writing songs. They eventually included the outrageous Talkin’ Woody, Bob, Bruce and Dan Blues (“When I met Springsteen, he said, “I hear ya wrote a SONG about me!”)...
Sep 06, 2020•42 min•Ep. 44
Actor Rufus Jones (writer and co-star of Channel 4’s Home ) has hardly answered the BobPhone before he confesses that, despite his Cambridge English degree, “Dylan still scares the hell out of me”. But he’s relieved that “Bob’s entering a 'jolly grandpa' phase. He seems less concerned with preserving the myth”. Rufus references Beyoncé, the Eagles (“the story of the Eagles is better than the sound of the Eagles”), T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hieronymus Bosch and Christopher Ricks before moving on, v...
Aug 09, 2020•44 min•Ep. 43
Rolling Thunder Revue bass player and bandleader Rob Stoner on Jacques Levy, Emmylou Harris, Sam Shepard and how he “made out with Joan Baez on a motel room balcony” for Renaldo & Clara. Rob also sets the record straight on the Scorsese Netflix film : “I got a beef with that Van Dorp character!” and alerts us to his uncredited harmony vocal on Abandoned Love . What was it like playing live with Bob? “Sink or swim. If you’re good enough, you ought to be able to swim”. Did Bob actually never s...
Jul 12, 2020•53 min•Ep. 42
Actor/musician Danny Horn , 31, played The Kinks’ frontman Ray Davies in the West End; but it was listening to Dylan at age 14 that changed his life. Do Dylan and Davies have anything in common? Danny tells us that - in 1967/68 - “they both made love letters to versions of their own countries that never existed. And they share a mercurial way of thinking”. Despite hanging out with Ray D, Danny knows his Bobby D. The conversation ranges from analysis of songs like Abandoned Love (“he’s both wound...
Jun 14, 2020•45 min•Ep. 41
Actress Nathalie Armin (speaking at a digital distance) has been a Dylan fan since the age of six, when an unknown voice “showed her the colours in her mind” as she lay in the back seat of her father’s car. She graduated to playing Bob games on stage at the Royal Shakespeare Company (“we’d whisper Dylan song titles to each other. I always won”) and watching him perform at the Royal Albert Hall (“he was 72. I don’t know any 20 year-olds who have that much swagger”). The Bootleg Series Volumes 1 -...
May 17, 2020•35 min•Ep. 40
Bestselling Shakespeare authority James Shapiro joined us on the Bob Phone from New York, just before the world locked down and the Shakespeare-laden Murder Most Foul unexpectedly dropped. “In a time like this,” he told us, “I find great comfort in the complete works of William Shakespeare and Bob Dylan”. He goes on to link them more closely: “we think of Shakespeare as a word guy - but he collaborated with the greatest musicians of his day. He understood that music is magic” and he happily agre...
Apr 19, 2020•47 min•Ep. 39
Comedian Nish Kumar says: “Bob Dylan is the most enduring and important creative relationship of my life. If you can’t think of one Dylan song you like, then a part of your humanity may be missing”. When Bob and his band played the Hendrix arrangement of All Along The Watchtower at his first (and only) Dylan concert , it was “one of the greatest moments of my life”. In other words, he’s our sort of chap. Cheerfully agreeing that “there’s no bore like a Dylan bore”, Nish gives us his takes on Tan...
Mar 22, 2020•47 min•Ep. 38
Scottish playwright David Greig was first “cracked open” to Dylan when he heard Desire in a remote part of South Africa “under the influence of the most extraordinarily strong dope”. “That’s it”, he thought, “I’M GOING IN!” He has yet to come out. David wrote his version of Euripides’ The Bacchae by playing the Hard Rain album over and over while drinking red wine and channelling “Dylan as Dionysius, Dylan as shaman”. Quotes that leap out of this most Scottish of episodes: “Bob Dylan couldn’t ex...
Feb 23, 2020•45 min•Ep. 37
Writer Neil Gaiman fell in love with A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall via Bryan Ferry’s cover version. It ended up influencing the imagery of his novel American Gods (as well as the Amazon TV series). The song also provided a few gloomy pronouncements (“we’re in an apocalyptic state of mind: the doomsday clock is ticking”) in our otherwise jolly discussion. Colourful Bob theories are espoused: “if I were going to go cold turkey, I would have taken three months off to live with the local pharmacist” an...
Jan 24, 2020•46 min•Ep. 36
Rock journalist Barney Hoskyns comes on board for a special episode that focuses on The Band, with Dylan as their “weird” sideman. Tears Of Rage is compared to Philip Roth’s novel American Pastoral. Barney suspects it might just be “an anti-hippie song”. His “deeply emotional” attachment to the town of Woodstock is explored in depth: “overwhelmed by the mythology of the place”, he raised his kids there and explored its musical history in his book Small Town Talk (title taken from the song by Bob...
Dec 26, 2019•41 min•Ep. 35
On the BobPhone from the USA: it’s award-winning writer Jonathan Lethem , author of Motherless Brooklyn , with a supremely quotable episode. On his “Big Kahuna” interview of Bob for Rolling Stone : “he was direct and generous; we had a good time”. An advocate for Dylan’s latter-day stuff, he believes that “humour is underrated as a feature of the operation”. Among Jonathan’s many provocative thoughts: “The power of (Dylan’s) negativity is a form of creative dynamism” and “how many people could h...
Dec 15, 2019•48 min•Ep. 34
Broadcaster, journalist and “swivel-eyed Dylanologist” Andy Kershaw , “a radio station within a radio station” during his time on Radio 1, gives us his unvarnished thoughts. From arguments with his dad about Bob’s greatness to his first sighting of “the human American bald eagle” at Earl’s Court in 1978, to his unravelling of the identity of the “Judas!” heckler, to Bob’s actual response (“he doesn’t say “play fucking loud!”), this is a delightful and surprising episode. Andy’s encounters includ...
Dec 01, 2019•51 min•Ep. 33
As an early Thanksgiving treat, Luke and Kerry welcome American singer Piney Gir . Piney (real name Angela), hails from “a very strict part of the Bible Belt”, where she grew up listening to cassettes of wholesome Christian music and a few of the “less psychedelic” Beach Boys tracks. One day, Dylan’s Slow Train Coming caused chaos in her parents’ car: her dad, a born-again Vietnam vet, loved it but her mom hated it (“or maybe she might have hated my dad”). Piney’s parents’ church was hardcore: “...
Nov 17, 2019•37 min•Ep. 32
Is Bob Dylan a poet? We ask Ian McMillan , one of the UK’s best. Ian compares Bob to Dylan Thomas , both of them “great poets who can rub vowels against consonants and make a kind of smoke come out of them… a kind of music.” “Meaning doesn’t matter”, he says. “The basis of poetry is being able to mint a phrase like “Lay, lady, lay”. I was so excited when Dylan won the Nobel Prize. Dylan’s stuff will last forever”. Yorkshire-born Ian recalls arguing with his Andy Stewart-loving Scottish father ab...
Nov 03, 2019•44 min•Ep. 31
Music journalist Andrew Male begins by examining “the humour that turns sour… the madness” of Bob’s 1965 “speedy, hipster world”, the “fascinating cruelty” of Dont Look Back and Eat The Document (“he couldn’t stand that close to the flame anymore”). He goes on: “if you’re interested in Dylan, you have to see it as a grand narrative, even the points that you flinch from.” This episode bounces between Elvis’s version of “I Shall Be Released” , Dylan doing his “Movie Elvis” voice on “Spanish Is The...
Oct 19, 2019•47 min•Ep. 30
When writer Geoff Dyer approaches us as a fan of the podcast, we jump at the chance. He leaps right in with a detailed analysis of Idiot Wind, praises previous guest Michael Gray , quotes Simon Armitage and Clinton Heylin, applauds Desire and Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue and hails Dylan’s voice: “you always believe what he’s saying, even though he’s always an unreliable witness. It’s his incredible narrative power”. A few of the many topics: the 1978 Blackbushe gig (“explosively exciting”), ...
Oct 06, 2019•44 min•Ep. 29
Singer Robyn Hitchcock finds “the comfort of doom” in Dylan’s “personal mineshaft of bleakness” as well as in Bob’s latterday performance style (“he’s like a mute lamppost”). Robyn first saw our man at the Isle of Wight Festival at the age of 16 (“with his white suit and his new voice, it was like watching your beloved get off the train but – it’s not them. I was riveted. I just stared.”) A conversation with Nashville cats Charlie McCoy and Wayne Moss is recounted, BD and Jim Morrison are skilfu...
Sep 22, 2019•46 min•Ep. 28
Actor Michael Feast has a deep personal history with Dylan. He won a role in the landmark 1968 London production of Hair by singing Outlaw Blues and Highway 61 Revisited. His drama school years were dramatised by Camden Town flatmate Bruce Robinson in the cult film Withnail & I . “It looked pretty much like it did in the movie. Biba bags hanging over lights and all that sort of caper”. His Brighton Mod scooter and soul thing was shattered the first time he saw the cover and heard the content...
Sep 08, 2019•38 min•Ep. 27
Writer/performer Christopher Green illuminates the links between Dylan and female singers such as Indigo Girls, Marlene Dietrich, Marianne Faithfull, Kacey Musgraves and Emmylou Harris. A shape-shifting performer himself, Christopher temporarily gave up on Dylan when he heard Tracey Thorn berate him in her song Me and Bobby D , thinking: “he’s the voice of the Patriarchy and he can’t even sing”. In this episode, we grapple with some controversial questions: should we overlook an artist’s biograp...
Aug 25, 2019•38 min•Ep. 26
Blinded By The Light screenwriter Sarfraz Manzoor joins us for an unexpected “Bob Meets Bruce” episode. A passionate Dylan man, Sarfraz first saw Bob in 1990 , camping out with other hardcore fans for tickets at Hammersmith Odeon (he tips his hat to the legendary ‘ Lambchop ’). Topics include Oh Mercy (“...it feels like a contemporary album. That swampy, darker take on things feels right for now”) and Bob’s age when he recorded it (“he seemed a Methuselah-like prophet, but was the same age I am ...
Aug 11, 2019•38 min•Ep. 25
Sheila Atim - actress, singer, writer - won an Olivier Award for her performance as Marianne in Girl From The North Country , which transferred to the West End from London’s Old Vic . Sheila takes us behind the scenes of the most successful theatre adaptation of Dylan’s work. Did Bob come to see it? “I had a fantasy of him in a trench coat and hat, leaving a little post-it note at the stage door, saying “well done”. But that didn’t happen. A mug with his name on it was printed for him. I don’t k...
Jul 28, 2019•41 min•Ep. 24
Theatre director Stephen Unwin joins Luke and Kerry for one of their widest-ranging discussions; from Unwin’s favourite album The Times They Are A-Changin’ to The Bootleg Series Vol 8: Tell Tale Signs and Tempest . Topics include Bob and Brecht , Dylan and The Dead (“like orange juice and milk”), his disbelief in Tom Waits and his amazement at Bob’s awards ceremony persona (“such a tiny, eccentric, weird little guy!”). Tracks explored include Early Roman Kings (“can I be bothered with this?”) an...
Jul 14, 2019•41 min•Ep. 23
In our second Michael Gray episode, the noted Dylan authority exults in Bob’s legendary 1984 David Letterman appearance : “he breaks through the oleaginous smear that is American television and creates an authentic moment”. He goes on to describe “the fairly heavy occasion” backstage at Earl’s Court in 1978 with his young son, who bums a biro off Bianca Jagger to seek Bob’s forbidden (left-handed) autograph. Countless tracks and albums are measured up, praised or dismissed, including the recent ...
Jul 07, 2019•44 min•Ep. 22
We devote our next two episodes to Michael Gray , one of this podcast’s literary heroes. Seems we owe it all to Linda, the university girlfriend who introduced him to Bob’s work. “Coming from a rock ‘n’ roll background, I had no interest in folk-clubbery; it just seemed weird”. Soon he was marvelling at the poetry and, at Liverpool in 1966 , Dylan’s “extraordinary ability to recite at length, stoned out of his head, yet word perfect.” Michael talks us through the various editions of his classic ...
Jun 30, 2019•49 min•Ep. 21
