Malibu – the tragic truth behind the loss of Bob’s Christmas lights …

CHRISTMAS EVE UPDATE: Sadly, Bob Dylan’s hedge was burnt down in 2018 when wildfires hit Malibu … Bob was lucky but many of his neighbours weren’t, their homes were badly damaged, satellite pictures still reveal the scars of the devastation. Bob actually replaced the lights with a manger – it was apparently a blow-up one.

We are still running the story below, we believe it still an amusing story of the eccentricity of the world’s greatest songwriter … but we publish it with respect to those who suffered awful loss in the fire.

Well, what do you think? Do you prefer Bob’s colourful baubles before they went electric?

Any how, the Preservation Society thought it would take a festive look at how the jokerman of rock Bob Dylan has caused a bit of  light relief in Malibu for Christmas for the last decade.

We wrote in 2019: The geriatric, but still wayward star, has had the Christmas lights at his £100million Point Dume compound scoffed at for years – and not without reason!

When, nine years ago, he first paid his skewwhiff homage to tradition on the massive hedge which hides his home from the world, it was just an untidy rope of bulbs – some looking broken.

That’s when Merrill Markoe,  known for her work on The David Letterman Show, spotted them as she drove home, one dark and chilly night,  and decided to photograph them.

Her chronicling of the lights over the years became an hilarious series of articles insinuating Bob is using them to send secret messages to the world.

She said: “I wasn’t planning to write about Bob and his lights this year, but the events of 2016 left me little choice. In a year that took both David Bowie and Leonard Cohen and left Donald Trump in their place, it was impossible to ignore the fact that the world was in desperate need of timely reflections from Dylan, this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.”

Sure enough, the messages in the display could be his most complex Christmas message ‘since god rest me merry gentlemen’ on his 2009 festive album.

But there is no doubt somebody at the Point Dume complex –  a bit of a scrapyard actually, for the old vehicles Bob uses in his wrought iron gates sideline  –  has put a bit more effort in to it all this year and there are more bulbs and certainly a bit more colour.

And Merrill says there appears to be the letter N hidden in the hodgepodge of lights which could be an allusion to Bob’s Nobel Prize debacle – the old curmudgeon sent his old amour Patti Smith to collect it instead. She gave a rendition of Hard Rain for the gathered academics and literati and unfortunately forgot the words.

About his Royal Bobness’s house … it’s an eccentric mix of Santa Fe, Spanish, Moorish and, unexpectedly, Russian styles – including a tower crowned with a copper dome – and a lounge big enough to ride a horse through.

Good on ya Bob!

#christmasintheheart #bobdylan #christmaslights #Pointdume #Malibu #feastivefun