Expecting Rain

I'll go first. The 1970s when I discovered my brother's copy of HW61. Haven't looked back since.

I became a fan of Dylan a few years ago. I borrowed Bob Dylans Greatest hits from my mum. I haven't stopped listening to him since.

In 2006, when I was 16, my English teacher played us 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' in connection with a short story we were reading. After that I only listened to him occasionally, though. About 6 months later, when I was 17 and on acid, I watched Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and thought that 'Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again' was the most perfect song ever written (and I still do). After that, I didn't listen to anything but Dylan for several months.

For me it was in the early 70s. But it may have actually been in the late sixties, when i was four or five and all his latest albums were getting played in my house and becoming a part of my genes.

1975. The Elton John album "Captain fantastic and the brown dirt cowboy" came with two booklets -one with lyrics and the other was a scrap book with a cartoon in the back. The cartoon depicted an early Elton performance, and one of the cells (if I remember correctly, it's been 30 years since I last saw it) has Bob Dylan meeting Elton after a song. I showed my Dad and he told me Bob Dylan was a famous musician so I decided to check him out. That was the end of my Elton phase and the beginning of my Dylan phase. Thank you Elton!

December 4, 2006 to be exact

Heard a down stream on a NYC radio station of Modern Times..... then ordered the Greatest Hits albums on Amazon.com

Thunder on the Mountain..... still rolling in my head....

Early '63 in Brighton, when a fellow-student played me a single he'd acquired in the USA of Mixed Up Confusion! (maybe the only copy in England at the time?). Then I went and bought the first album, and the rest is history.

heard positively 4th street on tv. fell in love with the way he was singing it. a few months and albums later (bringing it all back home, blonde on blonde at that time) i walked into my highschool music class, my teacher had something playing. i remember thinking 'wow, this old blues guy can really sing. different, but he really knows what he's doing.' i liked the sound so much i walked up to my teacher and asked him who it was. he said, 'oh, this is my man...bob dylan.' i said 'no way this is bob dylan!' he had to actually take the cd out of the stereo and show me before i believed him. i borrowed the album from him that day, popped it into my cd player, and took a walk around the neighborhood, listening. the music worked off the voice and the voice worked off the lyrics. pure atmosphere. it was amazing. a lovely fall day, one i'll never forget.

I'd heard some of his stuff in high school (I think I bought Blood on the Tracks followed by Hard Rain at the used record store - which is going to get anyone off to a pretty good start). The release of Oh Mercy and seeing him in concert that fall sealed the deal, a bootleg copy of the Halloween '64 concert (my first exposure to some of those songs) and a 1 LP boot from Hammersmith 1990 made a fairly rabid fan out of me.

Heard Like a Rolling Stone on oldies radio many times. Early April, 1989 picked up Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits and Traveling Wilbury's Vol. 1 at Target in Clinton, Iowa on a Sunday afternoon. By the end of the year had several more Dylan CDs including GHII, Basement Tapes, Highway 61, and (brand new) Oh Mercy. Purchased Biograph in March, 1990, stayed home all weekend and listened non-stop. First Dylan concert 8/26/1990 at Iowa State Fair.

Must have been 2005. I was 13 and was lucky enough to catch No Direction Home when it was first shown by the BBC. Been immersing myself in everything Dylan-related ever since.

Late 70s, when my brother bought "Street Legal."

Mid-90s, in my early 20s, my soon-to-be-wife's car had just Blood on the Tracks in the tape deck. That was our soundtrack. Then after Love and Theft came out, I saw Dylan on an awards show playing "Cry a While" in shadow box in that white suit with Charlie and Larry (two of my favorites from my Austin days) and that was it. Still waist deep in it.

July 2006. Saw No Direction Home and couldn't believe the intensity of that skinny little kid singing those amazing poems to hushed audience..... then read Chronicles, and thought, ok, I think he's still on the road, let's check it out. In August went to my first concert, and after the 1st 2 songs I said to my brother who'd gone with me, where can I get THAT voice? So I got Time Out of Mind and Love & Theft and by the time Modern Times came out I'd gotten just about everything, so now Dylan is mostly what I listen to. Can't get enough of it.

In the 80s, with his records from the 60s. My brother had this fantastic C-90 cassette he'd got from somewhere, with Bringing It All Back Home on. The space left over was filled with stuff from Highway 61. Song titles hadn't been written on the inlay card, so we didn't have a clue what the songs were called. It all started there really, for me.

late 80s, early 90s.
My local library had Budokan on cassette and knock out loaded too. Adding the fact that my first show was the infamous Stuttgart '91 'concert' it's a kind of miracle how I became a fan…

About 1965 when a work colleague lent me the first few albums. I liked what I heard.

I bought Slow Train Coming in 1981. I liked it fine. But then bought Biograph in 1986 and became a Dylan fan immediately, mostly due to Tangled Up in Blue, Visions of Johanna, Lay Down your Weary Tune and Every Grain of Sand. I had all of the records within a few years.

Till February 2006, I thought about Dylan as of some (probably dead) ancient country singer. Then I got some Greatest Hits compilation for some unknown reason and some of the songs I liked (I remember particularly Lay, Lady, Lay and You Are My Sunshine with Johnny Cash), but I guess it still was not love. Then a friend of mine told me to listen to Hard Rain...

started buyin into dylan in '65

i realized that satyricon, in flames, at the gates, emperor & my dying bride weren't the only ones who could do music in a powerful way. (i was a sucker of distortion, blastbeats & growls).
sometime when puberty hit me i heard Hurricane. it could have been the traveling wilburys rocking my crib that helped me to appreciate bob's voice. my dad was a sucker for beatles and more hit oriented music. don't get me wrong, beatles is according to me the greatest band there ever was, and i love them too.
i delayed the question "who's that dad, here's the story of the hurricane" but i finally dared broadening my musical taste considerably, finding out all the alternative pop/rock music beyond the metal or the nauseating disney pop by asking, this particular question.
dad lent me:
Bob Dylan - Greatest Hits 1.
believe it or not, i didn't think all that much of the opening song to begin with.
but it grew to be the greatest song of all time. no song has ever grown on me that much, by worlds.
the closer on the original album it appeared on shares the spot "greatest song of all times".

i'm not sure. is it d-row or lars?

today i firmly love a lot of that metal. it's just that i am an almost universal music lover and indie pop means in it's entirety more to me. then comes blues... etc. etc.

rap will always suck (except early RATM).

xmas time in 2004, i was 12 years old, i bought my uncle ( whos a life long dylan fan) the HW61 and Greatest Hits on cd because he only had them on vinyls, on xmas day he played HW61 whilst we were having dinner and i heard LARS for the first time, it was amazing, the best feeling then i heard Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues and fell in love with that song - been an avid fan ever since

I was 12 years old, early summer of 1963, playing the game Life with friends over at a neigbors house. While the other kids continued playing I went into the living room and began dialing around on an old timey three foot high wooden radio. Came across a Canadian radio station that was playing Bill Cosby's routine about The Lone Ranger... then they played Freewheelin's I Shall Be Free... I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever heard.
There weren't any nearby record stores where I lived, but when the family went grocery shopping that weekend I ducked over to the Grey Drug store that had a small record section.
I was very disappointed they didn't have the album, but as luck would have it a young pharmacist came over and asked if he could help. When I told him what I was looking for, he said he could order it for me. Sure enough, the next week it came in.
I loved every song and played it constantly... wore it out pronto on our cheap player, so went back and ordered another one. The odd thing was, the second album had different songs... and the lable was also screwed up, so it took me a while to figure out what songs were different.
Years later, after both those albums had bit the dust and were discarded I learned those early pressings were collectors items, no doubt they would have been worthless due to thier condition, but wish I had kept them as childhood keepsakes anyway.

Wow! I'm really surprised to see so many like me - 2000's!

I've posted this on ER before but happy to tell it again:
Bob Dylan was NOWHERE on my radar screen. I last saw him on TV do the David Letterman 10th anniversary show in NYC in 1990-something, and he mumbled so badly I was sure he was a has-been druggie. Paid absolutely no attention before or since then. Had no idea he went country or Christian. I assumed he just droned along in perpetual mumbles, and I spent my time loving Bruce Springsteen (since I live in New Jersey)

Then one day in 2006, I heard Nettie Moore on internet radio from my computer at work. It stopped me dead in my tracks. "WTF was that?," I thought. So different from all the other stuff out there. So mysterious and mystical. A heartbeat all the way through the song! And a voice like fine wine!

Then I learned it was Bob and that he had a new album out - Modern Times. I bought the album immediately - It completely blew me away. I finally learned what Bob has been up to since 1970, so I've been catching up! I bought a "greatest hits" collection to tide me over, and when TTS came out, it was a complete revelation to me. "Born In Time"????? Mississippi???? Tell Ol' Bill??? Why did I never hear those songs before??????
Then I discovered DylanRadio.com and all hell broke loose! I was forever hooked. And I feel so lucky to be among those who have seen the light. I am reborn!!!!! Hallelujah!!!
Thank you Bob!

Listened to my dad's copy of Blood on the Tracks in high school. Must of been 2005 or so. Still my favorite album.

siruso