I am a journalist, writer and broadcaster ... lately I've been concentrating on music, I spent many years as a music critic and a travel writer ... I gave up my last editorship a while ago and started concentrating on my blog. I was also asked to join AirTV International as a co host of a new show called Postcard ...
SPAIN PROPERTY STILL SUNNYSIDE UP AS PUTIN’S BLOOD-RED WAR FAILS TO PANIC EU?
When that bloated Grim Reaper Putin invaded the Ukraine he spun the world by its tail.
And the gut reaction of many global property speculators and ex-pats was that, `particularly the Spanish market, would fail as Russian money was frozen in the world’s air like black ice.
But far from it.
The market in Spain is actually still booming – although house prices in places like Marbella, Torreveija and many parts of the Costas are so inflated that it can be cheaper to buy a house in the leafy suburbs of the UK and an expensive sunlamp.
Yep, the country which has been a favourite with Brits, Irish, Swedes and Russians for decades is no longer the cheap bunfight of wine women and thong.
Many of the sunny resorts are becoming oases for elderly couples moving in to Moorish retirement homes close to the beaches or pinned on a mountainside near a fly-blown lake.
Rich Russians have for decades been big buyers of swish and not so swish holiday homes in the Costas – Mad Vlad himself owns a 4.5 acre compound in La Zagaleta in the mountains outside Marbella.
It was thought that the freezing of Oligarch-ish fortunes in a panic response to the blood and destruction in the land of the sunflowers and corn would take the boom out of the market.
Certainly there were reports of deals falling through because of the big buck sanctions but the market held on to its hopes and prices more or less remained.
Actually. one reason Spain may have been seen as a safe haven was its initial inability to freeze any Russian bank accounts, despite detaining at least three luxury yachts linked to ‘blacklisted individuals’.
In fact after weeks of war even neighbouring Portugal has blocked only one account owned by a sanctioned ‘individual’, with just 242 euros in it.
So, there are many reasons people – including Putin and his lot – still love to be beside the seaside, soaking up the sun and the vodka-laced sangria.
And despite the war speculation and investment in the Land of the Bull – and nobody can deny how much ‘bull’ has gone in to boosting the price of homes in Spain over the last decade – it still seems the way to go for people looking for a cool new life in the sweltering heat.
The Russian Federation against Ukraine was bound to affect the foreign real estate market in Europe. And the world.
Well, after the Russian invasion, interest in countries that, due to geographic location or neutrality, can be considered safe for the foreign real estate market, has gone up.
“After the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, there was a shock that meant a decline in purchases of foreign real estate,” Jan Rejcha said. He is a foreign real estate specialist.
However, the invasion brought an immediate positive response and interest now continues to grow month by month, in Austria by 68 percent, Croatia 72 percent. And in Spain 45 percent.
In Switzerland the hills are alive with the sound of cash tills… interest increased by 210 percent! In Italy, it is 168 percent.
In 2020 the Costa del Sol property market suffered travel restrictions, But 2021 was totally different. The market has seen strong growth in all areas. And people who work in the property sector say the second half of 2021 was one of the busiest periods ever.
By the end of the second quarter, sales had picked up by 5.4 percent. But as summer hit, the Costa del Sol property market moved into top gear. By the end of September, sales of all property types went up by 23.6 percent.
Madrid stands at the top of the leader board with real estate values in the region going up by 11.3% between January and March.
Property went up by 8.4% on the islands of Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza, and by 7.7% in Andalusia, home to the Costa del Sol.
Just 7 of the total 52 provinces in Spain saw price drops in Q1 this year and all were below 2%.
Keep on keepin’ on Ma’am in our LAND OF SOAP AND GLORY
UPDATE: The Queen was advised not attend today’s (Friday) Jubilee service at St Paul’s Cathedral. She is said to be have suffered discomfort while watching Thursday’s parade at Buckingham Palace.
The decision was made with “great reluctance” after considering the “journey and activity required”, the palace said.
Meanwhile, the telly soap about Manchester – Coronation Street – has become Britain’s land of soap and glory as we celebrate the Queen’s Platinum jubilee.
Street veterans Helen Worth and Antony Cotton have received ‘gongs’!
They are among dozens of entertainers — including MasterChef hosts John Torode and Gregg Wallace — honoured to mark Her Majesty’s 70 years on the throne. Helen, aged 71, has played Gail Platt for almost 50 years.
She said: “To be honoured for doing something I have enjoyed so much for so many years is truly wonderful, and I am particularly delighted to receive this award in the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Year. Anthony, aged 46, made his debut on the cobbles as Sean Tully back in 2003, said he was “overwhelmed” with the same gong as Helen — for his acting and charity work with troops.
By Leigh G Banks: Grooming gifts, craft beer, a chocolate tool set, new socks. And a gift set of ‘vintage cut-throat razors’.
We’ve already got the meal tickets.
For many decades Father’s Day was just like any of my birthdays, bank holidays and Christmas’s.
I had drawn blank again.
But my soon-to-be ex-wife’s family didn’t. No. They all got to spend time with my children on ‘special’ days. Aunties, uncles, cousins, my soon-to-be ex-wife’s boyfriend.
Even the maternal family’s dogs and cats got more access to my children than I did.
Do you know, on these ‘special’ days, I deliberately tried not to even think about them.
Yeh, that’s right. It was Father’s Day and I was deliberately avoiding thinking about my son and my daughters.
If I did, the cracks would show and the darkness would creep in and I found it hard to cope.
And in some ways I was glad that they were banned from ringing me on these ‘special’ days. Not by the courts! Not by any rule-book spouting, big bonus earning, juniper juice smelling social worker. Not the police. Not child protection …
No. I was banned by the self-righteous, pompous maternal family’s determination to take satisfaction in convincing my children that I was the Monster from the Swamp of Deceit and Debris of the Heart.
My children’s uncles hated me because I’d ‘dumped’ their sister after being together for more than a decade. There was no violence between us, no smashing of things, no threats, no cheating, no lying.
No, none of those.
It was just that we didn’t get on any more. We didn’t really like each other when we woke up in the mornings and certainly despised each other by bedtime.
Ours wasn’t a good marriage. Two hormonal and rampantly excited kids made a mistake. They both thought they’d fallen for the their ‘forever person’ but got it wrong,
My soon-to-be ex-wife regularly spouted superciliously ‘if it wasn’t for the children we wouldn’t be together any more’.
After a decade I took her at her word and left.
And for the next twenty years I became the most hated man in my own extended universe.
Eventually, I got my three children back in my life and things are good, on the whole, and we spend time together whenever we can.
Walking back to happiness is a long road and too often it feels like a mountain.
But those mountains are there to be climbed. If you don’t climb them you’ll never know what’s on the other side.
The mountains of despair, which, stand like silhouetted sharks teeth against the sky’s canvas will obscure your future unless you get on top of them.
There is a Fathers Day Climb for Kids in Pen y Fan in the Brecon Beacons soon …
Andrew John Teague, founding member of D.A.D.s and NAAP, has climbed at least 50 peaks in the last few years.
And all for our children and us.
Andrew wrote this almost pastoral piece about the achievement he feels every time he makes that long arduous journey up the mountainside.
By doing what he is doing, he has created a metaphor for all our lives…
Andrew wrote: Located in South Wales the Brecon Beacons at Pen y Fan are surrounded by beautiful mountains and scenery.
And they are very popular with people from all over the world.
The Beacons are the training ground for the armed forces – and the SAS.
My favourite mountain to climb – and to date I’ve been up approx 50 times, including on my knees! Ouch!
This time of year the weather is normally extremely hot. Although the weather can change in the blink of an eye.
The sense of achievement when reaching the top is satisfying and the cause a worthy one…
Depending on the weather use suitable clothing. Always remember the weather can change.
Water to keep hydrated. Remember it’s not a race… enjoy the climb and take in the scenery. There are often burger vans for refreshments on the way up!
From the top of Pen y Fan on a clear day the scenery rolls on for miles.
Robbie Robertson announced the sad news on Facebook.
He wrote: “The story of The Band began with Ronnie Hawkins. He was our mentor. He taught us the rules of the road.”
Hawkins was born in Arkansas, but loved Canada. He was singer and band master Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks which rose to fame in the early 60s.
“Hawkins himself was practically Toronto’s answer to Elvis Presley,” The Band said on their website.
Roberston said on Facebook, “Ronnie was the godfather. The one who made this all happen. He had us rehearsing constantly into the wee hours. We balked about it, but we got better and better. Our goal whether we knew it or not.”
“After the Hawks left Ron and went out on our own, we joined up with Bob Dylan. Next the Hawks became The Band and the rest is history, as they say. All starting out with Ronnie Hawkins.”
Robertson said “He was not only a great artist, a tremendous performer and bandleader, but had a style of humor unequaled. Fall down funny and completely unique. Yep, God only made one of those. And he will live in our hearts forever.”
But the man who had shot white stripes of harsh reality across my young acned and blood-rush universe was even angrier.
It might have been the cider he drank sprawled across the couch.
But when Bob’s Like a Rolling Stone burst out of our telly – after it reached No 2 in the UK charts – Daddy vomited invective, fury, sheer hate. And it was all aimed at the new Voice of the World’s Wild Children.
And Bob careened and wheeled and spun and howled (better than any Norwegian painting) out of the tinny speaker as nubile girls in flowery pelmets gyrated on the flickering screen.
But there was a distinct fear in my dad’s bleary moustach-eod face. His eyes were burning with an emotion I don’t think he’d ever faced before …
Daddy had come face to face with the Young Generation of the 60s, they were marching on the dirty rainy streets he inhabited as a builder.
He didn’t like it.
But I did!
Then his handwritten lyrics for Like a Rolling Stone and the total escapist Mr Tambourine Man were sold. Rolling Stone alone is worth well over a million. While the Tambourine Man lyrics are set at half that.
The lyrics are written on parchment paper and feature scratched-out words. Blowing in the Wind lyrics with Dylan’s signature dated 2011 were expected to bring $150,000.
In June 2014, Sotheby’s sold a hand-written “Like a Rolling Stone” manuscript for $2.045 million, including the buyer’s premium. Sotheby’s said the document it sold was “the only known surviving draft of the final lyrics for this transformative rock anthem.”
But the lyrics were written on Roger Smith Hotel Washington, D.C. stationary.
But the next big Dylan auction will be on July 7 at Christie’s, when the new recording of “Blowin’ in the Wind” made on a new “Iconic Original” format pioneered by T Bone Burnett is put up for sale. It’s expected to sell between $725,000 and $1.2 million.
This is Dylan’s first studio recording of “Blowin’ in the Wind” since 1962. The new recording will only be available to hear at appointment-only listening sessions, first in Los Angeles on June 8, then in New York on June 15.
A SPECIAL INVESTIGATION BY LEIGH G BANKS and EHI EKHATOR, THE STANDARD GAZETTE
A council which won an international housing award sold a 92-year-old grandmother’s home for £50,000 under its market value and told her family they’d done it to save her £7 a week, it is claimed.
Newcastle City Council had apparantly been reported to police over claims about the sale of house in Redhouse Farm, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne. The council says that the police are not following up the claims.
A spokesman said: “While you state in the story that the council was reported to the police, the police have confirmed to us that they are not investigating the council.”
However, the council is still under attack by members of the old lady’s family after selling the house for £50,000 less than its market value to save £300.
Mrs Joan Bamford, a former magistrate, had lived in the house with her husband, Larry Bamford for decades before he died, leaving her, according to her family, with a small fortune.
Craig Bulman, the woman’s nephew, said: “My aunt wasn’t broke, she had a few hundred thousand in the bank left to her by Larry. He had his own drilling business and when he died in 2000 Joan was well-provided for, she would never have to worry about money again. The council stole her money!
Joan Bamford
“The council sold her house at a knock-down price and all they can come up with is to say they sold it in her best interests at a £50,000 loss and saved £7 a week.”
Today the house has a Mercedes and 4×4 in the drive after the garage where Larry had kept his Ford Sierra estate was knocked down by the new owners to provide a bigger garden.
Craig, an ex-army vet and Red Devils Freefall Team went to the war on Newcastle council in 2013 in an attempt to protect the assets his aunt and uncle had built up over 59 years ago.
In a series of emails and letters to the local authority, Craig has accused the council of abuse of power, being in breach of Section 4 of the Fraud Act 2006 and breaching code of conduct.
Newcastle City council is particularly proud of its track record in protecting people’s homes.
Its Active Inclusion Newcastle partnership is one of only two projects in the world to win a prestigious gold at last year’s World Habitat Awards. Newcastle says it has kept 24,000 families together through their scheme.
Former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Leilani Farha, who was one of the judges, said: “I congratulate the incredible coalition, led by the city council, that has been created in Newcastle to ensure the success of the homelessness prevention programme.
So, why in fact did they sell Joan’s home so cheaply when she clearly had the money to maintain it?
The problem started in 2012, shortly after Mrs Bamford was diagnosed with dementia.
Between 2012 and 2018, Mrs Bamford had stayed in three Care Homes – Byker Hall Care Home, Manor House Care Home in Gosforth, Lea Green Court Care Home in 2017 and in early 2018, she was moved to Kenton Manor Care Home where she paid £3,000 monthly until she went into the Mental health ward.
The family had agreed to the sale of the house after the realisation that it would cost £90,000 yearly as Mrs Bamford needed extra care.
After the former Magistrate was covered by section 117 of the Mental Health Act in 2018, 1983, which placed Mrs Bamford as the state’s responsibility, the family called off the sale of the house.
Craig says that the authority disregarded his aunt’s last wish to have the house remain in the family as the council claimed it was “in the best interest of Mrs Bamford”.
Newcastle Council applied to act as financial deputy for Mrs Bamford after her sister did not take the role because of personal circumstances.
In December 2013, the council informed Mr Bulman of the need to sell Mrs Bamford’s house, claiming it was for her best interest despite acknowledging she didn’t need the money.
The Council had noted in a correspondence to Mr Bulman that “Whilst the sale of the property after December 2017 was not to ensure that Mrs Bamford had available funds to meet her social care needs, the deputy remained under a duty to consider whether it was in Mrs Bamford’s best interests to retain the property or to sell it.”
The council claimed the cost associated with the property could have been a financial burden to Joan. A council spokesman also said that the price was based on the advice of three estate agents.
The spokesperson also said: “
A council spokesperson said: “When Mrs Bamford was placed in a care home, financial deputyship for her property and finances passed to the local authority after her family did not take up this role. This required the council to act in her best interests after she lacked capacity.
“In November 2019 after the property had been empty for seven years and was falling into disrepair the council took the decision – after independent valuations – to lower the asking price so it could be sold. This was taken in the best interests of Mrs Bamford who was incurring significant management and repair costs.
“The Office of the Public Guardian were made aware of the intention to sell the property and raised no concerns in this matter.
“We have been in lengthy correspondence with a member of Mrs Bamford’s family over a number of years about our decisions and have advised them of their rights if they wish to take the matter further.”
Jockey legend Lester Piggott has died at the age of 86.
His career lasted almost 50 years and he rode almost 4,500 winners – the third highest record in British racing history beaten only Sir Gordon Richards and Pat Eddery,
He was crowned champion jockey 11 times and his name became synonymous with the Derby, which he won a record nine times, the tally part of a haul of 30 Classic successes.
But apart from his genius in the saddle, Piggott often, unwittingly, found himself in the limelight.
He courted controversy off the racetrack with a complex personal life and famously being jailed for tax evasion.
Lester started riding as a young boy and, remarkably, rode his first winner as a jockey in 1948, aged just 12 years old, on a horse called The Chase at Haydock Park.
OUR QUEEN OF THRONES … 70 YEARS OF LIZ GETTING IT RIGHT, DESPITE THE FAMILY
The Queen has been on The Throne for 70 years …hmmm, to us Northerners that has a totally different meaning.
But you can wipe that smile off your face right away – don’t doubt for a second I’m logged in, pumped up and ready to poo-poo any negative toilet humour!
Yes, Liz lives in the equivalent of Britain’s biggest council house which also just happens to be the most expensive property in the world… £6 billion!
And she has probably the world’s most expensive dysfunctional family too. In fact sometimes The Royals make The Royles look sensible.
Her Mum liked a tipple or two!
Philip was a bit of a joker – although many didn’t actually get the joke…
Margaret was a party animal of gin-and-it proportions and ran off with a married man!
Charles went to war on the world’s most beautiful woman then married a horse…
Diana liked to secretly phone her lovers undercover of the night
Andrew spent millions to avoid breaking in to a sweat over his very public sex scandal!
Anne ran off with a sailor
Fergie got her toes licked in public!
Harry was 17-year-old when he was banished to Featherstone Lodge rehabilitation centre in London … for a DAY. He’d admitted smoking a joint
Harry was photographed wearing a Nazi costume
Harry got naked at a private party in Las Vegas
Meghan walked herself down the aisle after a tiff with Daddy
Meghan and Harry gave a tell-all interview to Oprah Winfrey about their rift with the Royal Family
And so it goes on!
But the one thing that has always stood out in this very rich ship of fools is the Queen’s Dignity…
Oh, and the £1.8bn a yearshe brings in to the UK– plus £550m of tourism revenues a year, and an increase in trade, from the Royal Family acting as ambassadors, worth £150m a year.
Yep, her family might be naughty boys and girls – rich, privileged pillocks.
But Liz has done it right – for 70 years.
So, below we have published the itinerary for a long weekend when we can party – and, unlike Boris, feel fine – have a laugh, make music hall jokes about being on The Throne for too long, take the mickey out of some pretty shoddy kids and grandkids, argue about how much value The Royals are to our country.
But most of all, let’s raise a glass and enjoy the entertainment and think about how many women in our world would have done everything that The Queen has done for her family, her job and her country.
She is the longest-reigning monarch:
The Queen has carried out more than 21,000 engagements over the course of her reign.
The Queen has given Royal Assent to approximately 4,000 Acts of Parliament
The Queen is currently patron of more than 500 organisations
THANK YOU LIZ!
Thursday June 2
More than 3,000 beacons are being lit across the UK and the Commonwealth.
9.25pm – Members of the royal family arrive to watch the lighting of the principal beacon at the Palace – a tall Tree of Trees sculpture.
Friday June 3
11am – The Royal Family arrive at the service of thanksgiving in St Paul’s Cathedral.
12.25pm – Members of the Royal Family afterwards attend a Guildhall reception hosted by the Lord Mayor.
Saturday June 4
5.30pm – The Epsom Derby. The Queen and her Family are expected to head to the racecourse on Derby Day, where the monarch is due to be greeted with a guard of honour made of up to 40 of her past and present jockeys.
7.40pm – Members of the Royal Family arrive at the BBC’s Platinum Party at the Palace concert.
8pm-10.30pm – The open-air concert in front of the Palace, featuring stars including Queen + Adam Lambert, Alicia Keys, Duran Duran and Diana Ross, is broadcast live on BBC One.
Sunday June 5
Street parties and Big Jubilee Lunches are staged across the country
2.30pm-5pm – The Jubilee Pageant takes place in central London, with a 3km carnival procession featuring a cast of thousands including puppets and celebrities and tributes to the seven decades of the Queen’s reign. It will move down The Mall and past the Palace.
The finale has Ed Sheeran performing, and the singing of the national anthem in front of the Queen’s official residence
Deliberate physical child abuse is described as non-accidental physical injury by the UK courts. The same should be said when children go through psychological abuse. The non-accidental psychological injury in the child. Child abuse is child abuse whatever the form. More and more often children are being set up to beat on the doors of the mental health industry. Psychologically manipulating any child is abuse… Psychological abuse covers far more than manipulation.
Some examples:
brainwashing denigration continued domestic abuse sexual abuse
Any form of abuse on a child will have a detrimental affect on the child psychologically. Physical abuse has visible signs but even they can be missed hidden. when looking at the psychological injury in the child it is harder to identify. Many professionals in the family court often don’t even look explore or bother. A child who has been manipulated – in affect tortured – giving a statement to a professional. “I don’t want to see my dad/mum I just want to be left alone.”
Often there is no real reason given. ‘Expressed wish’ of the child is given as the excuse for no contact. How can any professional justify giving easy, lame wishes, especially when, more often than not, children are manipulated.
Child splitting.
The only excuse is simply the child is ‘forced coached’. The child becomes the vessel of the controlling parent’s narrative. Judges who sit on benches across the UK fail to protect children from harm. Social workers in public law will remove children from both parents on the risk of future emotional harm. Flip the coin to private secret courts and the forgotten children are failed, failed and failed again. There are a number of examples – let’s explore. “I don’t want to see my dad/mum I just want to be left alone.” If anyone is clued-up. Stockholm Syndrome… this is where a person develops the unhealthy attachment with the abductor. This I very often a survival mechanism. The abductor will often be a stranger but can be a parent or relative. There are experts in many fields to unravel the damage caused to children. Often this is at great expense within the family court arena. This cost is expected to be met by parents who simply can not pull large amounts of money out of their pocket. An ever-failing court system where judges make bad judgements and no one is the wiser. Often the judgements are made over shoddy homework. Social workers and family court advisors often see an easy way ahead by targeting the targeted parent.
A term I use is ‘the dead blind monkey on Mars can see it’. Everyone else simply ignores it, Ostrich Syndrome. Having been involved in many cases and been there myself – seeing our daughter hurting – I believe the whole system needs to be changed to protect children.
He is the wild, exotic, mysterious roust-about brother I never had – and I didn’t know I even wanted until the day after my 9th birthday in 1962.
The buck-toothed goof of a leader of our gang in the rainy back streets of Manchester in the North of England was a deal older than most of us.
That night his mam and dad were down the pub getting beligerent, shrill and wasted so he sneaked us into his fetid bedroom at the back of their dank two-up-and-two-down on Ivy Street.
Six of us sat on his roofing-felt sheets, coughing as dirty eiderdown feathers floated all around us.
Our ape of a leader dragged his second-hand Dansette from the grip of the shoes and pants under the bed and – with a reverence only usually seen as he threatened to stove in somebody’s head with a monkey wrench – he slipped the first Bob Dylan album, black like moonlight, from its sleeve.
The vinyl began to spin, then the needle clunked and found its groove.
And that was the moment I found the brother I never had. And the imaginary best friend who changed my life.
He taught me about politics, right and wrong, love and hate, black and white, folk, mountain music, blues, psychedelia, poetry, fashion, Guthrie, Karouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs.
But he also taught me about broken hearts and how to survive them.
Bob Dylan, along with everything else he is, has been one of the greatest romantics the world has seen in this and the last century.
I was commissioned to write the article below two decades ago… I’m sure so many of us have had their lives informed and enhanced by Bob Dylan.
Happy birthday Bob
DYLAN, THE REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE?
HALF a century ago Bob Dylan was a motor-psycho nightmare pilloried for trying to subvert the great American Dream. But in reality he was kicking and screaming as he metamorphosed into a Kafka-esque god.
Like a crazed but foppish scarecrow he was shining lights into the beds of the supposedly great and the good, seeing through their walls and getting his followers on their feet screaming as he roared: “Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.”
But now as he reaches 70, many see him as the king of the condominiums, a Jewish money machine who owns a string of baby shops and, once, even a little coffee shop in his iron-and-steel hometown in Minnesota. Selling Times they are a-Changin’ to an insurance company in the mid-90s was the first sign of a sell-out by the man who never wanted to be king.
Let’s face it, the Golden Boy of the revolutionary Sixties – a child with a voice like rocks and gravel – spent almost half of his career working hard at failure. His concerts were very often car crashes with this drunken harmonicarist in the driving seat. His voice too was going through so many changes that it was like listening to Tom Waits going through puberty.
And his songwriting? Well, it just wasn’t what people were expecting any more from the man who wrote the ultimate rock n roll anthem, Like a Rolling Stone. Songs like Wiggle Wiggle and Tweedly Dum and Tweedly Dee were just wistful and nostalgic, few bothered to listen closely enough to catch the subversiveness he had now riven in the world of nursery rhymes.
One of the problems with his Royal Bobness is his need to reinvent himself over and over. He might still know exactly what he is doing, but throughout his often-catastrophic career generations haven’t caught on. He’s been the Chaplinesque folk singer, the wild amphetamine fop. He’s been the jokerman, the nasal family man, the womaniser and he’s been Lenny Bruce.
He has also been the golfer, the preacher of middle-class religion and the purveyor of corporate entertainment. Nowadays he’s the riverboat captain singing about the Mississippi and the Red River Shore – and he’s the good old granddad croaking out classics like Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and Little Drummer Boy.
He’s paid the price for being the quintessential rebel without a pause who deliberately howled and hissed the life out of most of his classic songs. And yet, even at his lowest ebb in the 80s he caused heart-stopping moments – and sometimes there were only moments out of mammoth shows – a split second when the genius that allowed him to invent himself in the first place glowed through. Very often that split second of genius was enough to rescue the whole show.
Witness 1987 when he played the NEC with Tom Petty. They stood stock still for 86 minutes and groaned mournfully through Senor, Joey and Emotionally Yours with Dylan refusing to lower the hood of his parka or lift the peak of his baseball cap. It was the direst of shows until he hit his Christian classic In the Garden and everyone left the venue that night knowing that Dylan could still be the shaman he had once been in the 60s.
Then witness Aston Villa in 1995 when he stumbled onto the stage in high-heeled crocodile skin boots with his hair as alive as if he’d got a head full of snakes. First thing that struck you was that he didn’t have his guitar. Next thing that struck you was that he held his right hand waving above his head. But when he blew the harp solo on Mr Tambourine man (yep, that’s why the hand was waving above his head) you knew this was going to be a show like nobody had ever given before.
And it was.
One moment he was as old as Willie Nelson, the next he was as sensual as Marlon Brando, that other rebellious god he was rumoured to have had a gay flirtation with. He smoldered through You’re a Big Girl Now and when finally he picked up his guitar he blistered through Silvio and Jokerman.
It was a secret for the next decade that in fact Mr Dylan had severed the tendons in his wrist in what was put down to a gardening accident. But then everything about the man is a mystery, like the motorcycle crash in 1966 which also apparently almost killed him. Some conspiracy theorists still claim that the accident was manufactured to avoid him being knocked off by the CIA. After all a whole world of dissident political leaders were winding up dead at the time, John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the unholy rot was setting in rock’n’roll too: Jimi, Mama Cass. The list would go on to get Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Keith Moon.
Bob Dylan is one of the few surviving geniuses of the 20th century. And this is why. As he considered finally packing in his hard won fame, he reinvented himself once more, this time as Millennium Man. Bob Dylan ended the century with the critically acclaimed Time Out of Mind and welcomed in the 21st century with a major award for his film theme Things Have Changed.
Today he’s back at the top, with two chart-topping albums, a best-selling book, a world-renowned travelling art exhibition, a Grammy and a Pulitzer Prize. So, what can we expect? Something different for a start. Remember he once played saxophone to a packed auditorium.
Here he is in Ljubljana, Slovenia, a few weeks ago. I was there:
“The band looks slouchy and dissolute. Electricity fizzes in the shadows around them. They exchange glances, Tony Garnier spins his bass and the stage erupts into a foundry of noise and spitting fire. Drums rattle down the canyon. Then the diamond-studded rim of a ten-gallon hat flashes as a figure as thin as a blade flickers into view. He nods to the band and takes his place at the keyboard.
“The band swings in to a country version of Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat and it’s like nothing you’ve ever heard before, stately. Pensioner Bob is as unstoppable as a freight train. Gone is the Chaplinesque folk singer – so is the wild amphetamine fop of the Sixties. Gone too is the grungy Eighties s king of stadium rock. Bob Dylan now embodies the ghosts of John Jacob Niles, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Woody Guthrie.
“His trademark guitar is rarely seen and he plays the keyboards standing up with his Stetson pushed lazily to the back of his head. His voice, the most controversial in the history of popular music, has thrown caution to the wind.
There were times in the last forty years when he would hit a note as clear as the ring in a bell. But not any more. His voice has become the soundtrack of America’s history. He howls like a dog across the ancient prairies, he strangles the lightning, regurgitates the rolling of thunder. He is a storm across the face of the moon.”
There is also the mystery of why he is he still on one of the most grueling international tour schedules in the history of performing? Why does he tour something like 150 nights a year?
He doesn’t need the money – his back catalogue is worth a not-so poor country’s national debt and something in the region of a million people a year pay a fortune to see him. He must be one of the richest performers in the world today.
And of course this all gives a lie to what Dylan still represents to people – he was at one point in the mid-1960s the ultimate hippie, the rebel with a cause, the wild child with an incisive wit, poetry better than Rimbaud or Verlaine and a wall of sound that made Phil Spector’s seem like a ghostly imitation.
But that’s where he let all us other lesser hippies down. While we went on to carve careers out for ourselves and went on the hunt for mammon and security, guess what, so did he. And just like he’d been sexier, wilder, more poetic, more romantic, more exciting, more stylish than we had, he was ultimately more successful too.
And while we got older and made more mistakes, so did he. We got divorced. So did he – the most expensive in America at the time, it cost him £2m. We may have had our dalliances with drink or drugs or both, so did he. Our careers might have languished in the doldrums. Well, so did his.
And you know what? We hated ourselves for allowing all these things to happen to us. And we hated him even more for allowing them to happen to him. We forgot that man and god has to suffer. We didn’t want Dylan to shine a light in our own beds and reflect our own decadence back at us. But that’s exactly what he did. You see, Dylan has the true romance of artistry. We generally don’t.
His creativity has allowed him to span two centuries, ours rarely spans more than a few seconds of passing thought.
Yet, it’s that creativity that he’s been universally condemned for. Take his Christian period.
Well, now that was a mistake on old Bobbie’s side wasn’t it? To start extolling the virtues of Christianity to the predominantly Christian world. The Christians threw him to the lions.
It was just that it wasn’t the done thing to talk about God in such an honest way. Things like “by the blood of the Lord, I’ve been saved” or When They Came for Him in the Garden from the album Saved were too overt, not subtle like With God on Our Side, Dear Landlord or almost all of John Wesley Harding and Slow Train Comin’. Dylan’s always sung about God – for Godsake! He says openly that he sold his soul to God.
You see, and here’s another of those old Dylan dichotomies, his rebellion comes out of absolute home-spun tradition. Every croaky wild and crazy sound that comes up out of his throat and every note that flirts off his guitar or keyboard is based on the very routes and history of the cotton fields, of the blues, gospel, blue grass, country, folk, Cajun, rock n roll, Tin Pan Alley, Elvis, Little Richard and Hank Williams. There’s reggae in there, rock opera, Frank Sinatra, John Lee Hooker. The list is as long as music itself. And we crucified him.
The fans wrote him off, although his concerts were still selling out across the world. So, he turned his tour into a rant. From being the man who thought it uncool to speak to his audience, he’d preach to them 45 minutes at a time, sometimes rambling, sometimes drunk or stoned or both. But he believed in his message. And we didn’t.
And he’s back courting controversy still. Remember when he went to the Vatican wearing Cuban heels and a Stetson? How the press crowed and poked fun. But nobody mentioned the fact that the Pope was wearing robes and a skull cap and talking about religion.
