In Bob We Trust

El martes que viene, día 24, Bob Dylan cumple 70 años.

Como buen fan, cuando me he cruzado con el artículo de un camarada en The Guardian titulado ni más ni menos que "In Bob We Trust", lo he tenido que leer.Y me ha encantado :)

Dylan has been omnipresent for the past 50 years, yet we know next to nothing about him. [...]

He seemed to have found his voice again as he ruminated on mortality and communed with the ghosts of the great bluesmen.

Late Dylan is fascinating: the darkness, the obsession with time draining away, the refusal to stop touring even with a voice as rough as sandpaper. He transcends criticism now. [...]

I have a framed photograph of the young Dylan on the wall next to my desk. He is thin, wearing jeans and a check shirt, looking straight at the camera with a hint of arrogance, hands in pockets, his guitar case sitting on the road beside him. He is standing outside, in what looks like an empty car park, surrounded by pools of water. He is alone, self contained, at one with himself in this alien landscape. He has a slight smile, as if he has some secret information. Yet he never spells it out, never makes it easy for us. That may be why the love affair endures; the mystery remains. The answer is still blowin’ in the wind.

In 2005, the Guardian asked me to review a Dylan gig. This was probably a mistake as the chance of an objective assessment was nil. The reviews editor may have realised this when I tried to give the show seven stars. I remember becoming tearful during Visions of Johanna, one of his truly great songs, which even the ultra-reductive late Dylan is incapable of reducing to rubble. A man standing beside me saw me making notes through the tears. “We’re just crossing the ocean with Bob,” he said. “Write that down.” And I did, because he had summed up what it means to be a Dylan fan. We are on a voyage, and the voyage never ends.

Hala.

(En el Círculo de Bellas Artes se le rinde homenaje el propio martes con una charla entre el pedorro de Benjamín Prado y el fenómeno de Rodrigo Fresán; un concierto de Christina Rosenvinge, Nacho Vegas, Amaral y Hugues Augrey y una sesión del DJ Santi Alcanda.)