BOB DYLAN – The Never Ending Tour
Happy Birthday Bob. No, really. I mean it. Whatever you say, sixty is a milestone that a lot of musicians don’t make. Look at Lennon. People think he is more of a genius than you. Why? Because he’s dead. Whereas you just trundle along like some insane breeding experiment between a man and a squeezebox on your never ending tour.
The idea of a never ending tour may – to the average music fan (ie simpleton) be a jolly good one. After all Bob gets to wheel out his atonal prose poems to all of his tone deaf monkey-like fans. But when you look into it there is something much more sinister going on. What would drive a man who is to all intents and purposes even grumpier than Van Morrison to keep moving on? Surely not love of his fans. So what can it be?
Perhaps it is a gypsy curse. That said even the most uinluckiest of Romany baiters in the world surely could not be cursed three times in their life. (Curses one and two being that voice, and that voice again). It is quite possible that he has been inhabited by the Wandering Jew of legend – which is kind of scuppered when you consider Bob was born again a couple of years ago – but maybe the Wandering Jew of legend felt that his curse was linked too directly to his religion. And its got to be said the Wandering Born Again Christian of Legend certainly does not have the same ring. Perhaps Bob is merely trying to break a Guinness world record for the longest tour, the most venues played, the most peoples ears destroy by his catawaulling. All these are possible.
However I think I have it. It is well known that both the CIA and the FBI held detailed files on Dylan from his arrival on the scene. The CIA in particular were very interested in the military applications of such a bad singing voice. Nevertheless it is clear that the relationship soured some time in the late eighties (when Bob was really into painting his own album covers). Therefore a number of deserved charges were laid upon Mr Dylan, mostly for breach of the peace but one at least for stretching a metaphor too far (Lily, Rosemary and The Jack Of Hearts). So the Never-Ending Tour is merely Dylan on the run from the Feds. For a crime he quite obviously did commit.
At least at sixty he gets a free bus pass – which will make his slow trundling evasion of the pop branch of the FBI easier.