Music tour: Prominent Melburnians share their memories of listening to Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is touring Australia in August 2018.  His most prominent fans (in Melbourne) share their personal stories about his impact on their lives.

Sam Newman
Television personality

Weirdos tend to be contrived, illogical and rambling. Bob fits this narrative ideally, and when you add a whining, non-melodic voice, it’s a recipe for ambivalence. But with a net worth of $200 million and a Nobel Peace prize behind him he probably doesn’t care so much.

Brian Nankervis
Co-host of The Friday Revue on ABC radio Victoria

As a 16 year old I’d play Like A Rolling Stone before going out. Then a friend loaned me Blonde On Blonde and we recited the lyrics to Visions Of Johanna. I hitched to Queensland because I wanted to say, I’d been ‘‘hittin’ some hard travelin’’.

Saw him three nights running at The Music Bowl in 1978 and at Kooyong, The Palais, Rod Laver, Byron, and soon I’ll see him again. He was interviewed by a friend in 1986, and I found a spot by the hotel door, knowing he would have to walk past.

He shook my hand. Brief, but deeply momentous.

Michael Veitch
Actor, comedian broadcaster, author; new book, Hell Ship.

I’ve always had the most idiotic fantasy about going back in time to May, 1965, and hanging around in the laneway behind London’s Savoy Hotel to watch Dylan filming the video to Subterranean Homesick Blues.

It is a sublimely jumbled masterpiece of inchoate images, none of which make sense on their own, but which together erupt in the brain, to linger there like a dream you can never shake.

And the video! Just him standing there in that lane, with that pile of cards. He dumped the cards in a skip and then went off to lunch. I would dive in after them.

Tim Ferguson
Writer, comedian, member of the Doug Anthony Allstars

I first heard Dylan in year 8 English class, 1977: the teacher gave us the lyrics and pressed play on his Casio cassette player. Like rolling stones we wandered, warbling out. The tune was threadbare, but the lyrics made rudimentary sense – I was hooked. The glaring honesty of Dylan’s unadorned delivery may be the reason few of his songs are covered. Who would dare match his frankness?

• Tim Ferguson’s Melbourne Comedy Writing Masterclass, The Wheeler Centre, August 4-5.

Ella Hooper
Musician

Another Side Of Bob Dylan will never be far from my player, as it’s the most warm, crackling, open fire of a record I think I’ve ever heard.

From its plaintive ballads to its cheeky rags and waltzes, Bob just sounds so damn relaxed, and why wouldn’t he be? He’s a master enjoying a youthful peak, in easy command of a freaky God-given way with words and chords, and I think he knows it.

Ballad in Plain D reduces me to tears and used to make me so nostalgic for childhood when I was still a child. It’s a perfect song among perfect songs.

I also bust out New Morning pretty often for a dose of that wizened, raise-the-kids-in-the-country Bob.

I find the simplicity of that record heart-wrenching, and somehow not very Bob at all. But I hate If Dogs Run Free. What the hell is that song? Am I alone in hating that song?

• To The Bone, Ella Hooper’s new single, out now. Hooper performs in Both Sides Now: Celebrating The Songs Of Joni Mitchell at Bigsound in Brisbane, September 4-7.

Sofie Laguna
Author of The Choke

Bob Dylan has threaded his way through my life since I first discovered him when I was 15. His songs have guided me and carried me in different ways.

The characters I am interested in writing about tend to be marginalised.

They come from life’s underclass, and are often isolated: language is not necessarily easy for them. I have this feeling that if I don’t give them a story, then who will?

Bob Dylan’s 1985 song, Up To Me, plays in my head every day as I write. I don’t understand the song, and yet I do. For me it is a song about sacrifice and determination and loneliness, and it always helps me.

• Bob Dylan, Playing six decades of hits at Margaret Court Arena, August 13-14.