In the mid seventies when I was trying to learn guitar and do something or anything with music I really got hooked on Bob Dylan music especially stuff before his motorbike accident. The music that came after that was kind of spoiled by a change in vocal stylings that wasn't fixed until Blood On The Tracks.
I bought this big blue songbook which had all the songs of Bob Dylan up until that time. And I would play those songs that I did know and whose chords I could play relentlessly. Most of the time they were the only songs I played which sounded remotely like the originals. I guess it was the strumming. When I ventured over to the Kinks and the Beatles I had lots of trouble. Dylan was my teacher. Also when it came to writing songs.
Because I found it hard to play other people's songs I had to start writing my own. I started with with imitations of Dylan. And one of the most imitated song I probably did was Desolation Row. I was obsessed with this song. All 11 and a half minutes of it. And I would write my own epics based on poetry I had been writing to impress this girl I knew at teachers college. Songs like the Revolution Girl, State of Execution and the Life and Death of a Hong Kong Prostitute might have entertained me when writing but performing them in a Doncaster Pizza parlour was never going to work out. Especially when teamed up with John Lennon's Working Class hero.
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