Expecting Rain

I remember an evening back in the early nineties; I had just bought H61 and was listening to Desolation Row for the very first time. It was a different music experience than any other I’d ever had. I knew other Dylan songs of course; rolling stone and heaven’s door and all those other songs that everyone knows. But this was different. It was the perfect bridge between poetry and melody. It was magic. Since then I’ve been hooked. Do you have one moment or one song that made the difference for you?
And have you bought all the albums? I have to admit I still haven’t purchased Empire Burlesque, Knocked out Loaded, Down in the Groove and a couple of the live albums. I’ll get around to it one of these days though..

Interesting you used the words "Moment of clarity"

Now I'm not the type of person who thinks Mr D is some kind of prophet, demi God or anything like that...at the end of the day he's just a man born at the right moment in time who for periods in his life has been able to milk the Muse better then most.

However i did have as close to a religious experience as I've ever had whilst listening to the Bobster.

I was 19 and although I'd heard the likes of Mr tambourine and maybe blowing in the wind before I didn't really know anything else about the man untill one fine sunny day I was about to cycle to my parents house and I grabbed a couple of tapes that a friend of mine had left on the coffee table to play in my walkman.

I slipped one of the nameless tapes into the player and low and behold Mr tambourine came on. It wasn't my favourite tune in the world ( still isn't) but I thought I'd just let it play and see what was on next.

What happened next was one of the wierdest moments in my life...as Tambourine faded and the opening bars of the next song kicked in, the World and everthing in it seemed to stop...I was still riding my bike but I was absolutley inside and all over this song that was playing through my headphones...I was peddling across busy roads at high speed but i was completley lost in the world this voice was describing..it was as though he was singing only to me...a voice from the past letting my know that he'd once felt and experienced the same thoughts and feelings i was experiencing at the time ( I'd just broken up from a 2 year "Romeo and Juliet "relationship).

I've dabbled in drugs ( Nothing excessive or Major) and i can honestly say i've never felt higher in my life then during those 3-4 minutes...i felt part of something more, understood...appreciated, and the absolute master of my own destiny....it was a crossroads in my life and I'm pretty sure and content that I choose the right path.

It's strange though...the song was "It's all over now baby blue" and now i hardly play it...either because I no longer appreciate it or because once upon a time I played it to death.

Still "Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you" and "Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,Crying like a fire in the sun"

Brilliant, just brilliant...and I hope never to know why that is...why ruin the mystery.

i can recall the very first time i felt the magic. it was actually in the very first song i ever heard of his...hurricane. the words, his delivery and his music just reduced me to jelly. right after that i got everything i could lay my hands on. i can remember very well since i only got into him 2 years ago, when i was 15......i seriously don't know how i survived without dylan....i mean, i thought i knew poetry -yeah right! i'm even critical of byron now! to quote the man himself from chronicles "it was like busting out of jail". the very next song was blowin in the wind -blew me away. then it was just like a woman, which was beautiful i really felt like crying -sorry if that sounds like exaggeration, but i was really, really moved.

then got the essential collection and dylan became th love of my life. i now have every single album except empire burleseque, under the red sky, mtv unplugged and dylan (can't find it in the uk.grrr.) will get them soon though!

The Dylan "magic moment" occured for me when i first heard the soft, sad guitar intro to "Simple Twist Of Fate"....absolutely sublime... From that moment, whenever i had any money i would race out to buy more Dylan, i still do for that matter!

ha ha! when i was buying dylan, i literally spent all my money on him...didn't buy any other music for 2 years!

So much to choose from lady Byron...hell..i may even take the plunge this Weekend and pick up a copy of Empire Burlesque...live dangerously!

"Blood in my eyes" is my song of the moment but i do wish he'd get his arse in gear and bring out a new album.

I first heard dylan at the bobfest singing: 'It's all right ma, I'm only bleeding' from that moment I've been a real fan. (I was 8 years old). That voice, that guitarplaying and that beautiful mouthharp.... and then 'Girl of the north country'... beautifull!!

Yea,me too,the first dylan song wich really attracted me was hurricane

I don't really recall a particular song that made me fall for Bob, I just remember that while I was in High School, his words got me through alot of confusion and misunderstandings. He seem to speak a language I could understand more so than anyone around me. So, he was my refuge from, what I considered, a f#$@@ed world around me.

After, I got over my alternative, "punk", music stage, when I came back to Bob after a particularly bad and messy break up, it was Simple Twist of Fate, and Meet Me in the Morning that made realize what a chump I had been by leaving him in the first place.

We have been back together ever since

oh and i can recall the exact moment that i fell in love with him....during the sesion where i heard all those listed above, i head Lay Lady Lay. and my heart was officially broken. that voice did odd things to me. and that was BEFORE i saw a picture of him.
but i cannot stress ENOUGH that its his genius that i love. (although he is also the most beautiful man i have seen)

ooh claudette, you were a punk! how cool! lucky for you that in those days it was original and cool....these days its just "another teenage punk, more fake suicide slittings on wrists, more sylvia plath and mettalic...ho hum".

looking back, i don't how i survived the dylan onslaught..each new week, having my mind blown away constantly because he's written so much. it's a wonder i'm still here, brain intact.

The first time i heard dylan is probaly the one of the most amazing moments, but the other was when i first heard "Hard rains gonna fall"
WOW i was siting on the sitting room floor and i was just blown away i had never realy heard this kind of music one that makes you stand up and listen, hear right through your stumoch and heart this is what is REALY happening out there.

it was a very powerful moment, and i felt quite heart broken cose its what life is like, cruel and nasty.

I heard of Bob Dylan before I heard him. My older sister brought home a Peter Paul & Mary album--their songs were all over the radio--and told me about this guy who wrote some of their songs named Dylan. This must have been late 1962 or early 1963. I was already crazy for music, obsessed with AM radio (all there really was at the time). I listened to the teen ballads, Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, Drifters, whatever was on the radio. I remember Elvis going in the Army a few years before, but his songs appeared now and then. Mostly it was r&b vocal groups, a few rock & rollers, and Brill Building pop.

Joan Baez rose from the folk music boom into more popular consciousness, the Kingston Trio were big (I loved Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley, although I couldn't quite understand why he had to die, and why that was worth singing about), and Peter, Paul & Mary wore suits, sang sweetly and smiled for the cameras. My sister loved this song Blowing in the Wind, and so did I. It was on the radio. The nuns at her Catholic school liked it, too. Then Joan Baez must have recorded a song or two, because her records started appearing, and I liked them.

Then in mid 1963 or so, my sister brought home Freewheeling. I was eager to hear it, and shocked when I did. My first "moment of clarity" with Bob was painful. It sounded terrible, like he was just screeching to make intentionally bad music. Now, when I listen to Girl From the North Country on that record, it sounds like one of Bob's sweetest, gentlest vocals. Then, it sounded to me like he was horribly constipated or something.

But the songs kept coming, and I mostly liked the songs, especially if Joan Baez or Judy Collins or Peter, Paul & Mary sang them. Even the Beach Boys did a version of the Times They Are A-Changin that I liked (Having a Party with the Beach Boys was the album, or some name close to that, a kind of faux-hootenanny live record). I heard Bob's Times on the radio--abrasive, but I liked it okay.

Then came Another Side and It Ain't Me Babe, and I liked Bob's version best, although I did like the Turtles, too. I also started to get into his humor on Motorpscyho Nightmare and I Shall Be Free No. 10.

Then The Byrds hit, and a lot started changing. The Byrds challenged the British Invasion groups that ruled top 40 radio (and my life, pretty much), and I was floored by them--the sound of the rickenbackers, their proto-hippie image, the harmonies, and especially the songs. Chimes of Freedom is still one of my favorite tunes in their arrangement.

So this was 1964 into 1965, and Bob came out with Bringing It All Back Home. At this point, I'd gotten used to his voice, and rock was giving a new context for that primitive blues/country style singing. I loved Mr. Tambourine Man, even though I'd heard the Byrds first. It was one of the first songs that made me really think about words. The earlier protest songs made me think to a degree, but they are a lot more immediate and obvious. At the time, I had a morning paper route, and I'd walk or bike through my sleeping neighborhood thinking about what a jingle-jangle morning might be, and how I might fade into my own parade, if things should come to that. Things felt different at this point--Viet Nam was in the news all the time, students were not just demonstrating for Civil Rights in the South but protesting on their own campuses, Kennedy was dead, Martin Luther King seemed like the only audible voice of hope, and my parents thought the Beatles and Rolling Stones were filthy, primitive louts, except when Paul sang 'til There Was You from The Music Man.

Tambourine Man got a lot of airplay for Bob, and you'd hear Subterranean Homesick Blues on occasion as well. I had the album, and spent a lot of time laughing at Bob Dylan's 115th Dream, On The Road Again, and other side one songs, mostly avoiding the darker side 2 except for Tambourine Man. I must have listened to the album 2-3 times a day, would sing it to myself on the paper route. I was just turning 11 years old.

A few months after my birthday, in the early summer, my mother was driving a car full of kids to the town beach. I was in the front seat. Since my dad wasn't in the car, my mom let me tune to WMEX 1510 AM, with Arnie Woo-Woo Ginsberg, my favorite dj. Within a minute or so, Arnie was announcing that he'd just gotten his copy of the new Bob Dylan single just released that day, and was about to play it. He warned listeners that it was a little longer than usual, then let it play.

It was the greatest thing I'd ever heard. No experience of art has hit me so deeply and so immediately. I completely identified with the voice, the words, the brawny majesty in the music. I thought Bob was asking me how I felt. I wondered how he even knew to ask. I wanted someone to ask. He was the first. I already felt somewhat alienated from my parents and peers (another tale), on my own, completely unknown. I was on the cusp of rejecting Catholicism and the only middle class life I knew, in favor of what I had little idea except that it would be real and it would be me.

"Is that song that awful Bob Dylan?" my mom asked. She always made a little face when she said his name, like she just smelled sour milk.

"Yeah, it's wicked," I said. There was no higher rating than wicked at the time.

"I don't know how you can stand to listen to that," she said but didn't change the station. My younger siblings weren't paying much attention, but I was spellbound until the last note. I could feel something changing right there, seeing the distance between my mother and myself in the moment and far into the future, knowing that I would follow the thing I heard in the song, and the opening it created in my imagination, at any and every cost. It sounds kind of silly, I know, especially because I was 11 years old, but this is the truest account I can give. I felt my moment in history, and my experienc of history, defined right there and then, with a single hearing of this song.

Now I'm 51. I've done a lot of stuff, made a lot of art, experienced a lot more art, read tons of philosophy and religion, done most of the drugs, and nothing has surpassed that experience of Like A Rolling Stone in terms of transformative power. I'm still trying to catch up with the impact, trying to understand how imagination reaches into time and changes it.

Not sure if it's clarity, but it certainly was a moment.

A Brilliant story Albert....thanks for sharing

It's difficult to say if there was a defining moment for me but off the top of my head i regularly get that feeling of awe whenever i hear the version of Visions Of Johanna from biogragh and the lines "beauty walkes a razors edge, someday i'll make it mine" from Shelter From The Storm. it's easy to take lyrics like that for granted because he's Bob Dylan but when you get the shivers up the spine........ you can't argue with that.

Great post Albert.

Here's my story, it was about the same timeframe.

I was over at the house of a friend of mine in the early 60's, a guy who was hip to the music scene. So he says hey check out this new guy Bob Dylan. I said something like -- sounds familiar, I've heard the name. So he pulls out Dylan's first album, the only one out at the time, and plays it. I liked it, especially House of the Rising Sun and Talkin' New York. I was rather struck by the picture on the album cover, he looked like a young kid but sounded much older.

I thought his voice was pretty rough and he only wrote two of those songs and most likely didn't have much of a future. My friend insisted that this guy was for real and was gonna turn out to be really good. I didn't believe it, although I was somewhat "intrigued".

Not long afterwards I heard A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall and then The Times They are A-Changin' and that was when I finally became a Dylan fan.

I later saw my friend and said something like -- Yeah you were right about that Dylan.

I kinda wish I had a story like Albert’s, a story from when it all began, when Bob was just a kid (yeah yeah – a CUTE kid, lady B ). Unfortunately I wasn’t even born at the time, but I can feel that 60s atmosphere - the troubles as well as the free love stuff, in his songs. Timeless as they were, however, I can feel a lot of the current atmosphere too.

great stories here folks....i know exactly what you mean zimmerframe....

I bought my first Dylan albums in '95 or 96', when I was 15 or 16 y.o. The two albums were Biograph and Bootleg Series 1-3. I played these albums constantly. Two tracks stood out as the ones I played the most. Moonshiner and Every Grain of Sand.
What I think was so special about these songs was that they made me see parts of the world that I had not experienced myself.
Moonshiner is a sad song about a drunkard. The song is not written by Dylan, but his version makes you think that nobody else can sing it. I had never seen the bad sides of alcohol and poverty when I first heard this song, but Dylan made it possible to step into this world.
I have never had faith in any religion, but Every Grain Of Sand, made me understand how a religous person feels about his faith, much better than the bible or any priest can show me. I still believe religion is the devil's work (I know I am being self-contradictary) but Every Grain of Sand changed my perspective on religion drastically.
These two songs are still among my favorite songs. The lyrics and his vocal performance are outstanding! If I am in the right mood, I can really get moved by these songs.

Since I left my country and the people I love in 2003, I never felt quite the same. Lord know I payed some dues getting thru. Tangled up in blue.

I know it ended up bringing me more dept and experience that I could ever have had if I had stayed in Paris. I would have never loved Dylan so much, for example. I know that the words "You say you're looking for womeone who's never weak but always strong. To love you and defend defent weither you are right or wrong. Someone to open each and every door." would have never struck me so much as it had If I hadn't move to South Africa.
My french friends don't understand me, because they do not understand nothing about nothing. All they know is their little Paris. But I know Hibbing and I know New York for I have visited it in my dreams. I know the world. I try to keep my eyes closed because when I open my eyes all I can see is my stupid school uniform; these stupid things that they are trying to teach us, all this useless and pointless knowledge; the people who call me freak at school because I read books and dig peotry and music and not sport, and you can't even sense if they got any insides, all these pretty people in their ribbons and bows; these people behind heir desks that ain't got any talent and make all the rules for those that got talent, I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.
Yes Ma, what about the ones that ain't got any talent but think they do
And think they're foolin' you
The ones who jump on the wagon
Just for a while 'cause they know it's in style
To get their kicks, get out of it quick
And make all kinds of money and chicks
And you yell to yourself and you throw down yer hat
Sayin', "Christ do I gotta be like that
Ain't there no one here that knows where I'm at
Ain't there no one here that knows how I feel
Good God Almighty
THAT STUFF AIN'T REAL

In The liner notes of The Times Theyr Are A-Changing, Dylan writes:
all pictures, posters an' the like
that're painted for me
ah but I turned
an' the nex' time I looked
the gloves of garbage
had clobbered the canvas
leavin' truckloads of trash
clutterin' the colors
with a blindin' sting
forcin' me t' once again
slam the shutters of my eyes
but also me to wonderin'
when they'll open
much much stronger
than anyone whose own eyes're
aimed over here at mine
"when will he open up his eyes?"
"who him? doncha know? he's a crazy man
he never opens up his eyes"
"but he'll surely miss the world go by"
"nah! he lives in his own world"
"my my then he really must be a crazy man"
"yeah he's a crazy man"

an' so on spangled streets
an' country roads
I hear sleigh bells
jingle jangle
virgin girls
far into the field
sing an' laugh
with flickerin' voices
softly fadin'
I stop an' smile
an' rest awhile
watchin' the candles
of sundown dim
unnoticed
unnoticed for my eyes're closed"

Day after day, alone on the hill, the man with the foolish grin is standing perfectly still. Nobody wants to know him, they can see he's just a fool.
When I see or hear those lines I think so much about myself that it's making me sad, it's making me mean. And I know that there's something I wanna be saying, that somebody someplace oughta be earing.
When I think about my life I think "Masters Of War", I think "It's Alright Ma" But I also think "Seven Day" and "I shall be realeased" because even tho the rules of the roads have been lodged, it's only people game that I have to dodge and it's alright ma because in seven somthing (It might be days it might be weeks, it might be lifes but I really don't wanna know), she'll be coming and I shall be released. I'm looking for Isis just to tell her I love her.

I so don't give a shit about these people who don't understand what I'm about. They're not like us, they don't dig poetr. All I can feel about them is sadness. The more you know the more you suffer, if I was a bit dumber and a little less love crazy i'd be happy to be with them.

I remember one day at school, it was raining like in the song and we went to seek refuge in the hall of the school. We spent the day there because the teachers didn't want to get wet on the way to their classrooms.
As the 1500 students gathered in the hall and began to play ball games and have great discussions about the girls in their futile porn magasines and the recent sport results, I sat on a corner and put my Highway 61 Revisited in my discman. It was the Highway out of here.
I drove directly to "Queen Jane Approximately", I'll call it america.
The melancoly in the words of Dylan struck me. I had to call the ambulance: I got lucky but it was an accident.
I Felt so out of that whole thing
"Now when all of the flower ladies want back what they have lent you
And the smell of their roses does not remain
And all of your children start to resent you"
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Do I really understand the meaning of these lines? No, I dont. But I wanted to cry everytime I heard that the smell of their flowers did not remain. Mines don't smell anymore either
"Now when all the clowns that you have commissioned
Have died in battle or in vain
And you're sick of all this repetition
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?"
I am so sick of this repetition, this boring and monotone everyday life. Uniform, square haircut, I hate it, I hate it all. I hate it to think that the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools/ Them that never done nothing but lie and deceive.
"Now when all the bandits that you turned your other cheek to
All lay down their bandanas and complain
And you want somebody you don't have to speak to
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?"
I do, can I come to see you, Queen Jane?

Some guys who where standing around like furnitures came to me and tried to make my life more miserable. I ignored them, I felt like crying. I felt like tearing this x shirt apart, burn this mathematic books, disconnect these cables and run away very far. There's a feeling I get when I look to the west and my spirit is crying for leaving.
Sometimes I wish that my friends and family would have a thought for me. I always try to smile for them but they can't see the sadness in my eyes. No one can.
I try to program myself no to think too much : I have to make life funny because it isn't.
But I can't, I just can't. I hear Bob singin' Forever Young and I want to cry. Everyday I want to cry. The sight of everything makes me want to bury myself in the ground, in my bed, in music, in love.

This world is not made for people who are still alive.

"may you always be happy, may your wishes all come true."
I'd like to say that i'm much younger now than before, but i'm not, i'm just wiser, and i'm tired.

And like it or not, you may call me an obsessive fan, you may coll me tommy, you may call me ray, you may call me anything. I am
Tangled Up in Bob
It levels my head and eases my mind.

well said. I know exactly how you feel.

i hate to admit it but i have tears in my eyes every time i hear "bob dylans dream" off freewheelin! for some reason that song gets me.

man, i cried so much when i listened to bob for the first time. and the only other artists who have done that are keats and shakespeare.

thanks for that broots, that was really interesting. are you french originally then? i used to be very good at speaking french, i'm going to brush up some more over summer.
i know how you feel broots. all the othere people just doing their stuff, and you're the only one in the special world of dylan and poetry. i feel EXACTLY the same way sometimes....but i'm learning not to let it affect me anymore. you could say that reading krishnamurti hepled alot -you should check him out, i have a feeling you'd like him.....

GuiltyUndertaker,

I's have to agree with you about Every Grain of Sand. There is somthing very powerful about that song (that version in particular).

Another truely great song on that bootleg disc is Blind Willie McTell. [/quote]

I resently had another dylan listening experance, i just bought freewheelin' on vynel, saw it in a charity shop window and thought hmmmm.... if i don't buy it someone eles will have it and that wont do.

it was realy a sound experance, this is MY first vynel i'v heard bob on my mums vynels but its not quite the same as playing your own.

I'm not quite sure how to explain it, his voice sounded more throaty more alive as if he was there in the room, my mum said to me then "this is how we heard dylan" and man i have to say it sounds alot better, more warm.

I was also thinking of other amazing experances and one that poped into mind, is the very last song on live 66 ( like a rolling stone) this moment can still be capture but only at curtain times when say your angree and your playing it very LOUD.

It just makes you feel alot better, i'm sure you have all had the same expericance with this version of this song, it just hits the spot!!

In the early '60s there were lots of Bob songs on the radio. They were sung by Sonny and Cher, the Birds, Peter Paul and Mary, Johnny Cash--everybody but Bob. The general public (including me) thought that Bob Dylan was a good songwriter, but that his recordings were only of interest as demos.

The moment of clarity came when "Like A Rolling Stone" hit the radio.