Expecting Rain

Bob Dylan after hearing the Nirvana song Polly

This is a pretty well known Bob quote on Cobain, I was wondering did he ever mention Kurt again,

One Cobain biography I read claims Dylan turned up to a private fucntion in honour of Kurt to pay his respects.

Anyone on the forum know anything about this?

How did Dylan come to hear Polly?

Another question raised!

.. i've never heard anything of anything contained here
- but, i guess that don't mean it AIN'T 'pretty well known'
- but, i guess that don't mean it is........ and i'd like to -
get a look at some of this, since i'm a big fan of Bob AND Kurt ..
- Maybe YOU ought to give US some hints towards verifications
.. and WE'LL give you a hand tracking it down ........

1. Doubtful that Bob attended the private service on Apr 10, 1994
because he was on tour and playing in St. Louis, MO at The Fox Theater
http://www.bobdylan.com/tour/calendar/1994

The private memorial service for Kurt Cobain was held at Unity Church of Truth in Seattle Washington on April 10, 1994.
http://www.feelnumb.com/2011/09/12/dave ... l-service/

2. It's highly doubtful Bob would have attended a public vigil even if he wasn't in St. Louis on that day.
A public vigil was held for Cobain on April 10, 1994, at a park at Seattle Center drawing approximately seven thousand mourners

3. It's possible Bob could have attended this service on May 31, 1999, as he was not booked to play anywhere
on that date according to tour dates from bobdylan.com archives http://www.bobdylan.com/tour/calendar/1999

A final ceremony was arranged for Cobain by his mother on May 31, 1999, attended by both Courtney Love and Tracy Marander.
As a Buddhist monk chanted, his daughter Frances Bean scattered his ashes into McLane Creek in Olympia,
the city where he "had found his true artistic muse".

Great research and reporting Leocadia! Thanks!

Thank you, Stillgobarefoot. I love Cobain, thanks to my youngest daughter. In 1998, when she was 14 we went to Seattle for the sole purpose of visiting the bridge which he was said to have lived under for a while. While we never got to see that bridge, we listened to his music on the train and had a great time in Seattle. I took her picture hugging the statue of Jimi Hendrix in the Capitol Hill section and also we visited the Pike Place Market (a tip from an old biker we met on the train who said he used to drink with Janis Joplin).

Re: the quote in question ..
'This Kid has heart' - Bob Dylan after hearing the Nirvana song Polly..

..from here:
... http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Cobain
.. Where i found that the quote was attributed to the author of THIS book:
... 'Heavier Than Heaven' by Charles R. Cross

- i was led to this:
... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavier_Than_Heaven

.. Where i found these comments at Wikipedia -
( not implying that is the eqwikilent of being 'chiseled in STONE, but... )
- regarding the aforementioned book, 'Heavier Than Heaven'

-= These comments are quite interesting, and not surprising, really ......

Criticism

.. 'While arguably the most complete Cobain biography, Cross opted to include his
own impression of what Cobain's final days were like. Several people questioned
the inclusion of fiction in what was claimed to be a non-fiction book. At the same
time, Cross' desire for the book to be as complete as possible meant that he
occasionally accepted secondhand (and incorrect) information as fact. The book
was criticized as being a collaboration between Love and Cross by friends. However,
beyond the criticism, the book contained many details about Cobain and Nirvana's
career that had otherwise gone unnoted.' ...

.. So, i'd say - we're left to remember to read several sources
when we're looking into these matters - and use our instincts ....
- the ones we have every right to - by INGESTING and DIGESTING
.. the thing that is the most important: THEIR MUSIC. ...
- and Thanks Irishbob .. for striking up an interesting conversation ...

Thanks for the above links - this has to be one of the BEST quotes ever:

If you're really a mean person you're going to come back as a fly and eat poop.
As quoted in Monk Magazine (1992-10)

Clarification: The above was a quote from the Wiki site that Grumpy put up. It was NOT intended as anything else
Sorry if anyone was offended.
doomed

- Hey! Doomed .. .. After your 'Clarification' -
.. i suddenly read that QUOTE there .. as one of the funniest
- Thinkgs i might've taken the wrong way~! .. and i'm still laughing. ..
.. Thanks! = it's even better now reading it again, and again ..
- in fact .. i will always remember it and GRIN!! ....
.. Oh! - and thanks Kurt! = You really had a way with words!

One reason you never got to see that bridge is that it's two hours away, in Aberdeen. But you definitely chose the right city of the two to visit!

Though it's easy to believe that Bob may have said "That kid has heart" the all important question to me now is:
did he really say those words in response to having heard Polly? I doubt it.

If there is no evidence to back this up, I would prefer not to believe it. I never knew what the song was about
until, because of this thread, I did a little research on the lyrics. I know Bob has written and sung about
atrocities, but if it's true that Kurt wrote this song about the torture and rape of a young girl, I don't ever
want to hear it again. I never actually read the lyrics until today and mis-heard much of them. Before
checking into the lyrics, whenever I heard this song, I thought it was just a bunch of sexual metaphors,
about a kinky tryst with Courtney. When Dylan sings about inhumanity and evil, it is usually through the
eye of an observer with the over-riding sense of condemnation being stressed. Not so with Polly.

First of all, it's not clear from the lyric of 'Polly' that the victim has to be a child. In fact I don't see anything in the lyric to establish that. Clearly, though, we're dealing with an atrocity involving imprisonment, torture and likely rape. The song is sung from the point of view of the perpetrator. Cobain's calm, matter-of-fact delivery compounds our discomfort; the clinical detatchment of 'it amazes me the will of instinct' speaks to the complete, psychopathic dehumanization of the victim.

Your moral revulsion is understandable, but let's be clear that Cobain is hardly the first songwriter ever to do this kind of thing. Consider the endless parade of blues and folk songs about men murdering or beating women, or Johnny Cash's take on 'Delia:'

Went up to Memphis Delia was there
Found into her parlour tied her to a chair
Delia's gone, one more round, Delia's gone

First time I shot her shot her in the side
Hard to watch her suffer
But on the second shot she died
Delia's gone, one more round, Delia's gone

These songs often decline to express 'condmenation' at the acts being perpetrated. Sometimes they come with a reference to being haunted by the ghost of the slain, sometimes not; Robert Johnson's '32-20' typifies the latter type, where the only moral sentiment expressed is outrage with the prospective victim's suspicious ways (the implication being she deserves it).

Frankly, if Cobain had attached a 'moral' to 'Polly' it would have weakened the effect considerably - besides being technically very difficult due to the first-person singular narration, which all unfolds inside the perpetrator's head. Cobain trusted his listener to draw the correct moral inference from a line like '[you] want some help, [I'll] please myself'; indeed, a lot of his songs (e.g., 'Teen Spirit') trade on the ambiguity where he subverts the normal expectation that the listener will identify with the singer. Also, his songs often centre on the theme of emotional numbness and its concomitant detachment. 'Polly' might be the most extreme manifestation but it's a legitimate extrapolation of that theme: 'this is what happens when it takes a psychopathic form...'

In short, the song is artistically valid, albeit extremely disquieting.

Regarding Delia
"The most extreme deviation from the facts occurs in Johnny Cash’s version
where the killer ties Delia to a chair and shoots her with his “sub-mo-chine.”
http://murderbygasslight.blogspot.com/2 ... round.html

The point I was trying to make is that although Bob has many songs that depict violence, I think he presents them in a more responsible
way than Cobain represented Polly in a first person voice only. Using the example of Delia, Bob's version, if I'm reading it correctly, uses
a grieving 2nd person voice along with the 1st person voice of the murderer. That's why I doubt Bob's comment "that kid has heart"
was prompted by his listening to Polly alone and not by Cobain's whole body of work. Really, it doesn't make sense for a man of Bob's
intelligence and experience to make a comment like that based on one song.

http://expectingrain.com/dok/who/g/greendelia.html

Beyond Here Lies Nothing, to me, a love song. I see nothing sinister about it, no hint of violence in it, perhaps a touch of despair,
and yet, the official music video depicts not love, but violence, a seedy parasitic relationship and morbid degradation.
Did Bob approve? Did he have any control of the video? Who knows? I would suggest he didn't.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TbmP2vXeQs

An interesting discussion by ER members on the Beyond Here Lies Nothin official music video
http://www.expectingrain.com/discussion ... =6&t=38982

http://blogs.reuters.com/fanfare/2009/0 ... -violence/

.. Bob might have said something like that
- in a moment of near coerced leading, but
the 'Quote' itself, i think - 'Manufactured' ..
.. and almost CERTAINLY the context and reference.

the full anecdote says Dylan went to a Nirvana live show (anyone who's read Clinton "Douchebag" Heylin's book about Dylan day to day life (not Behind the Shades, I can't remember that book title) knows how many live shows he used to go in disguise to) and that Polly was Cobain's "bravest song" and that "that kid has heart."

The plot thickens!

^ .. the preceeding informations define what i meant
by 'Manufactured' ... which does NOT insinuate 'Invention'.
- AND .. i would say, now - the more we are learning about
the (possibilities of) context and sequence - our own instincts
ring TRUER than the original whittled (NOT by Irishbob) quote. ..
..as a matter of fact - i'm most thankful to Irishbob for starting this thread
- i hope it may continue long past the constraints of a Bob involvement with Kurt
... that we might explore Kurt Cobain and his Music and it's impact and echoing remains