16. All Along The Watchtower (Bob on electric keyboard)

Bob Dylan returns to London

Bob Dylan made a triumphant return to London last night (April 15) with a two-hour set at Wembley Arena.

Gracing the stage at precisely 8pm, the "poet laureate of rock’n’roll" appeared with his five-piece band, surprising fans by playing his first four tracks on electric guitar - on recent tours he has restricted his musical contribution solely to keyboards.

Beginning with a smouldering version of ‘Cat’s In The Well’, the set continued with classics ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’ and ’It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’.

Switching back to his staple tour keyboards, Dylan wowed the crowd with a string of back catalogue favourites including ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, ‘Chimes Of Freedom’, ‘Blind Willie McTell’ and 'Like A Rolling Stone'.

On a sweltering evening, Dylan and his band treated fans to a stripped-down version of track ‘Spirit On The Water’ from last year's ‘Modern Times’ which saw the singer play harp.

The singer peered out of his straw hat, simply asking "Alright everybody?" before concluding the evening with encores 'Thunder On The Mountain' and a Jimi Hendrix-inspired rendition of his own 'All Along The Watchtower' that had the masses stamping their feet in collective appreciation.

Bob Dylan returns for a second night at Wembley Arena tonight (April 16).

Bob Dylan mounts first art exhibition

Bob Dylan's first art exhibition has taken place.

'The Drawn Blank Series' took place in the small German city of Gemnitz on Saturday (October 27).

The exhibition drew together 170 of Dylan's drawings and paitings.

Included are portraits, still lifes, cityscapes and landscapes, all created between 1989 and 1992 for a book called 'Drawn Blank'.

Art historian Frank Zoellner said the style of the works reflected Dylan's music, including a sense of restlessness seen in many of the interiors.

He said: "The landscapes are very peaceful...On stage, Dylan never plays any song the same way twice."

The collaboration with the gallery came about when museum director Ingrid Mossinger came across Dylan's artwork on a trip to New York.

In a statement, Dylan told CBC: "I was fascinated to learn of Ingrid's interest in my work and it gave me the impetus to realise the vision I had for these drawings many years ago. If not for this interest, I don't know if I even would have revisited them."

Bob Dylan's 'Mr Jones' dies

The figure who inspired the "Mr Jones" protagonist in Bob Dylan’s classic 'Ballad Of A Thin Man' has died.

Jeffrey Owen Jones, a film professor at the Rochester Institute Of Technology, has been regularly identified as the subject of the song, which appeared on 1965’s ’Highway 61 Revisited’.

Jones was 63 and died of lung cancer at the beginning of November.

According to the widely held theory, Jones inspired the song after interviewing Dylan while he was an intern at 'Time' magazine.

The pair spoke at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, just ahead of the singer’s legendary performance where he went electric.

The opening lines of the song go: “You walk into the room/With your pencil in your hand/You see somebody naked/And you say, "Who is that, man?"/ You try so hard/But you don't understand/Just what you'll say/When you get home/ Because something is happening here/ But you don't know what it is/Do you, Mister Jones?”

Years after the song appeared, Jones told Rolling Stone he was actually honoured to have been written about by Dylan.

"I was thrilled — in the tainted way I suppose a felon is thrilled to see his name in the newspaper," he wrote. "I was awed too that Dylan had so accurately read my mind. I resented the caricature but had to admit that there was something happening there at Newport in the summer of 1965, and I didn't know what it was."

According to Editor And Publisher, Jones' passing has so far only been picked up by his local paper the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.

They reported that since his immortalisation in song, Jones had excelled an athletics before living Uruguay and Spain where he wrote and directed films. He then returned to America where he became a teacher and lecturer, and also worked for CBS producing award-winning educational films.

His sister Pamela Jones told the paper that "Dylan didn't paint a vignette of my brother that one would necessarily be proud of. But I think my brother was in the middle of history-making."

Although it is widely thought that Jones inspired the song, there have been other candidates for the protagonist, including a British journalist named Max Jones, who Dylan has mentioned himself.

UNKNOWN BOB DYLAN LYRIC OFFERED FOR SALE

The handwritten lyrics of an unknown Bob Dylan song have come to light and are being offered at auction.

The song, titled ''NYC Blues'', was written by Dylan in 1961 shortly after he arrived in Greenwich Village. Although it comes from his earliest, tentative days as a songwriter and the lyric was swiftly discarded, it contains at least one classic line : "I went to sleep at nite clean as I could be, When I awoke in the morning dirt all over me".

The lyric, written in pencil on lined paper, was left by Dylan at the East 28th Street apartment of Mac and Eve McKenzie, with whom he stayed when he first arrived in New York.

The document is being offered for sale by their son, Peter McKenzie, who inherited it with other papers left by Dylan at the McKenzie home.

It is being sold with a certificate of authenticationand a letter from Peter McKenzie, stating: "This handwritten lyric by Bob Dylan for the song 'NYC Blues' is authentic and comes from my collection. Bob Dylan lived with my family during the early 1960s."

Dylan wrote two well-known songs about his early days in the city; "Talking New York" which appeared on his debut album, and "Hard Times In New York Town", which eventually got an official release 30 years after it was recorded on the Bootleg Series Vols 1-3.

The lyric of "NYC Blues"appears to predate both but the song is not listed in any of the standard Dylan reference works.

The full lyric is divided into six lines of uneven length and reads:

You ever been walking down the streets in NY town
Walking down east fourth St,
Call for the Mayor to fix the trouble there, mayor'll say there ain't no
trouble, it's all down in Wash-S
Standing on the corner of Broadway an' 49th seen so many people I never saw in my life
I went to sleep at nite clean as I could be when I awoke in the morning
dirt all over me
Now I don't mind dirt cause there's dirt on the land but did you ever see
dirty - that's one thing I can't stand

A seventh line begins "I..." and then stops, indicating that Dylan was dissatisfied with the lyric and at this point abandoned the song.

Bids are invited at http://www.rrauction.com/bidtracker_detail.cfm?IN=600

T BONE BURNETT WOULD LOVE TO RECORD BOB DYLAN

Legendary musician and now producer T-Bone Burnett has revealed that he'd like to work with Bob Dylan.

Burnett's musical career started when Dylan asked him to play on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1975, and the pair have most recently worked together on song for the film The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood -- however when asked by Uncut if he would consider producing Dylan, like he has Elvis Costello and Robert Plant -- he replies: "I would if he asked me. I would love to record Bob with a deep, warm sound, like the kind I know he loves."

Burnett adds that he'd love to set up recording in the same style as Plant and Krauss' 'Raising Sand' was made. He says: "I would love to be able to just set up a room with mics in it and...leave [laughs]. I'd love to give him the sound for him to play in. But it's complicated, and I don't know if I could produce a record for Bob."

Bob Dylan to help teach Canadians to read

Bob Dylan is set to help teach families to read by raising money for the Raise a Reader charity in Canada.

The singer will be giving away some of the money he earns from ticket sales for his Canadian tour which starts in October.

Raise a Reader has raised more than $10 million over the past six years to help literacy groups and families in Canada.

Michael Buble, Anne Murray and James Taylor have all given the charity money as part of a campaign to get big names in music to help the charity out.

Bob Dylan will play:

Victoria, BC, Save on Food Memorial Centre (October 23)
Vancouver, BC, General Motors Place (24)
Kamloops, BC, Interior Savings Centre (25)
Calgary, AB, Pengrowth Saddledome (27)
Edmonton, AB, Rexall Place (29)
Lethbridge, AB, Enmax Centre (30)
Regina, SK, Brandt Centre (November 1)
Winnipeg, MB, MTS Centre (2)
Minneapolis, MN, Northrop Auditorium (4)
La Crosse, WI, Las Crosse Center (5)
Milwaukee, WI, The Riverside Theater (6)

DYLAN CHOOSES ROBERT BURNS AS INSPIRATION

Bob Dylan is the 100th artist to appear in record shop HMV's advertising campaign 'My Inspiration' and has chosen lines from a Robert Burns poem as his.

The adverts, which appear in store and in national magazines and newspapers have been running for two years, with iconic artists such as David Bowie and Paul McCartney and Elton John previously taking part.

Dylan will appear in the campaign from October 11, when he is also HMV's artist of the month - coinciding with the release of Tell Tale Signs, Bootleg Series Vol 8 - his astonishing 2 and 3CD collection of unreleased material from 1989-2006.

Dylan has selected these lines from Burns' poem 'A Red, Red Rose':

"O my luve is like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonny lass.
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry."

The next in line for the My Inspiration series is Oasis' Liam Gallagher who has chosen lyrics from his brother Noel's song "Supersonic."

Dylan makes stop at Grosvenor house

It’s not every day that you drive home from grocery shopping to find Bob Dylan rubbernecking in front of your house.

But that’s what happened to city employees John Kiernan and Patti Regan, whose Grosvenor Avenue home was the early-1960s domicile of music icon Neil Young.

“It was very neat,” says Kiernan, 53, a landscape architect who claims to have spent about 25 minutes chatting with the greatest singer-songwriter in the history of popular music.

“It’s a wonderful memory.”

Two Sundays ago, the day of Dylan’s MTS Centre concert, Kiernan and Regan arrived home between 4 and 4:30 p.m. to see two scruffy men who had arrived by taxi standing on the sidewalk outside their house.

“Oh, oh, Neil Young fan alert,” said Regan, who has become accustomed to such incidents in the six years they’ve lived in the amalgamated duplex at 1123 Grosvenor.

She went to talk to them while Kiernan lugged in the groceries. After he was finished, he walked out to chat, too.

“They were older than your typical Young fans,” Kiernan recalls thinking.

Nothing clicked until he noticed that one of the men had his black leather pants tucked into expensive-looking cowboy boots. He glanced up and studied the lined, unshaven face topped by a grey tuque and realized he was looking at Dylan.

Kiernan kept his cool, while Regan, a project manager in the city’s permits department, remained oblivious. Dylan, 67, was curious about the house and neighbourhood as they related to Young.

He also made small talk about the weather. Kiernan replied that it was unseasonably mild.

“You’re from Minnesota, so you know what it’s usually like,” Kiernan said. “Subtract 10 degrees.”

Dylan laughed.

Kiernan asked if they wanted to see inside the house, and Dylan was eager.

“How long do you have for the tour?” Kiernan asked, meaning the tour of the house.

Dylan replied: “We’re touring for another two weeks.”

They showed him Young’s old bedroom, now painted bright pink and occupied by Kiernan’s 16-year-old daughter.

“So this is where Neil would have listened to his music,” Dylan mused. They took him into the old second-floor kitchen, now a laundry room. “I remember thinking I should have done the laundry before I went out,” Kiernan says.

Kiernan explained the whereabouts of the Earl Grey and Crescentwood community centres, where a teenaged Young and bandmates played their first concerts.

“He was introspective and thoughtful,” Kiernan said. “He had an interest in music beyond himself.”

The encounter lasted more than 20 minutes before they left. Kiernan believes the cab driver did not know who his passengers were.

While Kiernan called him “Bob,” Dylan did not formally acknowledge his identity. He didn’t have to. “This was a guy who doesn’t shake hands or introduce himself.”

As the cab drove off, Kiernan said to Regan: “You were pretty cool talking to a huge celebrity.”

“What celebrity?” Regan asked.

“Bob Dylan.”

“That’s why he looked so familiar!” she exclaimed.

She started screaming to neighbours who were raking their leaves: “Bob Dylan’s in the cab! Bob Dylan’s in the cab!”

Kiernan admits they have no documentary proof of Dylan’s visit, nor did they even get an autograph.

“It seemed cheesy to ask,” he said. “I was embarrassed that we hadn’t bought tickets to the concert.”