ANOTHER BOB'S BIRTHDAY

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Today would have been Bob Marley's 65th birthday. He was born at Rhoden Hall, Jamaica, on February 6, 1945.

Connections with Dylan? Few. But when John Bauldie and I assembled the material for the book All Across The Telegraph: A Bob Dylan Handbook (which has never been republished since the 1977 Sidgwick & Jackson hardback and 1978 Futura paperback), one of the items was this:

A NOTE ON BOB DYLAN & BOB MARLEY
supplied by Tony Jowett

Stephen Davis' Bob Marley: The Biography (published by Arthur Barker, London, 1983) is worth reading in its own right, but also has an intriguing mention of a Wailers' version of 'Like A Rolling Stone', with words altered by Marley:

"Although few of Bob Dylan's early records reached Jamaica, Bob Marley was very attentive when one of Dylan's mid-1960s AM radio hits came beaming in from Miami. One of the most amazing Wailers' cover versions was the group's take (credited to Bunny & Coxsome) of Bob Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone'. After a spooky blues piano intro, the Soul Brothers slip into a sinister groove that's a mixture of 1965 American folk-rock and early Jamaican rock-steady. Although the chorus is the same as Dylan's, the verse and melody are different: "Nobody told you he was on the street/But that's what happens when you lie and cheat/You have no nights and you have no morning/'Cos time lights come just string without warning/ How does it feel/To be on your own/With no direction home/Like a complete unknown/Like a rolling stone?" It's a sentiment that Bob Marley knew all too well." [page 49]

Various other references [in the same book] establish that Dylan had an important influence on Marley - and Marley, in a succinct quote in his own inimitable patois, acknowledged his admiration for Dylan. Introducing this, the book refers to a Wailers concert at Santa Monica in the summer of 1976, which Dylan attended:

"The show at the Roxy was a particularly brilliant and gem-like performance, in part because Bob Dylan was in the audience and Dylan was a favourite of Bob's. 'Him's really say it clear,' Marley had said of Dylan earlier in the year." [page 153]

It occurs to me now that after catching that Marley concert, the next time Dylan toured was 1978, which is when he regularly featured a reggae version of 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright'.