Bob Dylan | northumbrian : light

You don’t need a weatherman …

Posted on August 2, 2018 by northumbrianlight

… to know which way the wind blows – Subterranean Homesick Blues, Bob Dylan, recorded on January 14, 1965. According to english.stackexchange.com, the lyric was the inspiration for the name of the American radical left group the Weathermen, a breakaway from the Students for a Democratic Society. In a 2007 study of legal opinions and briefs that found Bob Dylan was quoted by judges and lawyer more than any other songwriter, “you don’t need a weatherman…” was distinguished as the line most often cited.

I mention this apropos of nothing other than I was at Traigh for their Open over the weekend and, as always, from the high points on the course, you don’t need a weatherman, you can see the weather coming for miles and there was plenty of it.

The view from the 3rd tee

The Clubhouse – the umbrella accurately indicates that the sun was only a passing fancy

Threatening weather

Not immediately apparent, but my bottom half is drenched 😦

The view from the 2nd tee

Looking back to the 2nd tee – Traigh Open 2018 – the essence of Golf in the Wild

While I am going off at tangents, I will make this not particularly original observation – to fully appreciate any music you must hear it in the context of its own time. This track and everything else on Bringing It All Back Home was a shining beacon of originality which inevitably fades with time and the production of more than 50 years worth of subsequent music. Nevertheless, I can still remember the excitement felt by that introverted 14 year-old as this album first emerged from the single speaker of the family Dansette. All the words are still inside my head.

Golf, Golf in the Wild, Northumberland, Photography, Travel, Writing

Like a fire in the sun …

Gallery | Posted on November 27, 2016 by northumbrianlight

Northumberland has been clinging to the wreckage of autumn these last few weeks but its all over now. Despite Black Friday, despite the ever sooner onset of Christmas and the tyranny of things, it has been a quiet few weeks in Beaufront Woodhead. It is also a time of inner conflicts. The desire to play golf set against too damp courses and uninviting weather – the solution – head for the coast. The impatient need to be out on two wheels set against slippery surfaces, biting winds and too much salt on the roads – the solution – sit tight and polish the hardware.

For now, the priority is the much delayed task of writing the follow-up to Golf in the Wild. My modest ambitions for the first version have been met – the production costs have been recovered and 800+ copies shipped. The sequel is progressing at a glacial pace – I am currently researching Loch Eriboll, just a few miles down the road from the return journey’s place of departure, Durness. Eriboll has some fascinating history, not least that in May 1945, this was the location for the surrender of thirty three U-boats, the pride of Germany’s Wolfpack. I could be stuck in these waters for weeks, but no matter, the days are short and the nights long.

In the meantime, this is Northumberland as autumn falls into winter:

Music, North America, Personal, Photography, Writing

Mixing up the Medicine

Gallery | Posted on October 18, 2016 by northumbrianlight

I’m not here, I’m back there – I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. It feels like a personal vindication – I am twelve again. I shout down the stairs to my mum and dad – “I bloody told you so!”

“We will have none of that sort of language in this house!” – it is the voice of my mother echoing down the years. There is no need to respond. I know when their argument has lost its foothold; they change the subject.

In response to Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize, The Irish Times brought together the response of forty Irish authors, poets and scholars to his literary honour. I have long been a consumer of Irish fiction, it is in my head as much as the work of Robert Zimmerman. These reactions from The Irish Times will now provide a future guide to my consumption of Irish literature – those with a churlish or superior response will disappear from my reading wishlist.

But what of those I have already read and admire. What, in particular, would Anne Enright have to say, would I be obliged to never open her books again. I need not have been concerned – not only did she approve, she came up with a one-liner worthy of the man himself – “And once you “get” Dylan, you can’t get away”.

On the day his Nobel Prize was announced, Migrant in Moscow, on Blipfoto, clicked on the tag ‘BobDylan’ and a stream of ‘likes’ came pouring into my mailbox. I had forgotten just how many times I have used his words on Blipfoto. Many of these images have already appeared on WordPress but, I repeat them here in celebration – good on yer Bob!

You see somebody naked
And you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard But you don’t understand
Just what you’ll say When you get home
Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is Do you, Mister Jones?
Ballad of a Thin Man

Black cows in the meadow
Across a broad highway
Black cows in the meadow
Across a broad highway
Though it’s funny, honey
I just don’t feel much like a
Scarecrow today
With apologies to Black Crow Blues – Dylan

And I answer them most mysteriously
“Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?”
Ballad in Plain D

You would not think to look at him that he was famous long ago
For playing electric violin on Desolation Row

Farewell Angelina, the bells on the crown
Are being stolen by bandits
I must follow the sound

… now over 50 years old

I’m not there

When the jelly-faced women all sneeze.<br /> Hear the one with the moustache say Jeez, I can't find my knees.

When the jelly-face women all sneeze.
Hear the one with the moustache say Jeez,
I can’t find my knees.

Rainy Day Flowers #12 & 35 … (or Women)

And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

This wheel’s on fire, rolling down the road.

Visions of Johanna

Posted on January 20, 2016 by northumbrianlight

My internal roadmaps contain a section dedicated to the streets of Manchester in the 1960s. Most of these monochrome memories start from Oxford Road station with its three wooden conoid roofs, a remarkable building for its time with echoes of the Sydney Opera House. Even a self-absorbed teenager noticed such things but when it came to railways, I had previous. An avid trainspotter from the age of eight, what else was there to do, I knew Manchester’s stations intimately: Manchester Central, Piccadilly, Victoria and Exchange – all of them dark, filthy and rundown – hell’s Cathedrals. This was the norm, this was all I knew – smog, steam and rain – the assumption was that this was the way everything ended, Oxford Road included, the station where most of our journeys on clackety closed compartment trains from Altrincham would finish.

Down Station Approach to the left was the Corner House Cinema specialising in ‘adult entertainment’ and to the right, along Oxford Road, was the Family Planning shop, nothing more than a hut beneath the railway bridge. I had no use for either of these services but like forbidden fruit, they intrigued.

The main attractions were the musical instrument shops that lined the south side of Oxford Street, full of guitars and drum kits well beyond our means. At the junction with Portland Street was a sheet music shop, another frequent haunt – we were as likely to buy the sheet music as the vinyl.

St Peter’s Square is dominated by Manchester Central Library, no longer the blackened cake tin of my youth, it roughly marks the point where Oxford Street becomes Peter Street. Less than 200 yards further on is the Free Trade Hall where, on May 17th 1966, Dylan had his confrontation with Judas – “I don’t believe you” …….. “You’re a liar.”

This goes some way to explain an obsession that has not left me. My head is full of disturbing verse, none of it attributable to Wordsworth:

Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles

So when I create an image such as this, inevitably it is Visions of Johanna that conquer my mind:

“Bob Dylan – Visions of Johanna” Director: John Hillcoat

Different faces …

Posted on December 5, 2015 by northumbrianlight

… you would not think to look at him
That he was famous long ago
For playing electric violin
On Desolation Row

There is nothing that connects the above image with the next other than they are both block mounted, both have been yellowing in the attic and both were taken around the same time, in the late 1970s/early 1980s. I would guess they were taken with a Praktica L using one of the many lenses I carried together with my Dad’s Mamiyaflex – humping that lot about was like going to war and not conducive to capturing Cartier-Bresson’s ‘moment decisif’. This tousle-haired snub-nosed cherub is my eldest, Patrick – taking the controls of a helicopter at a Cornish air museum:

And finally, this one has absolutely no connection with the above. On Thursday I made the annual pilgrimage to Birmingham for the Motorcycle Live Show at the NEC. This young lady caught my attention – I cannot imagine why 😉 A modern day Loren, she could only grace the Ducati stand:

As I type this, the wind is blasting around the house, the rain lashing at the window and I fully expect the power to go off at any moment.

Highway 61 Revisited

Posted on August 31, 2015 by northumbrianlight

Highway 61 Revisited was released on 30th August 1965. It is now more than fifty years old and yet, it still sounds as fresh as when I first heard it, hidden away in my bedroom – turn that awful music down Robin – this minute! Except it wasn’t awful and I didn’t – so the rebellion began.

Michael Gray, author of the first critical study of Dylan’s work, Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan, argues that the sixties started with this album. By contrast, Joe Boyd suggests the sixties began in the summer of 1956, ended in October of 1973 and peaked just before dawn on 1st July 1967 (from his memoir, White Bicycles).

I was born too late. My sixties began on 25th April 1969 and ended on 6th October 1973. Regardless of beginnings and endings, it is certain that this album and these songs were an essential part of the mix. I remain eternally grateful for its sound and influence, so this post is a brief tribute:

Everything passes …

Posted on August 5, 2015 by northumbrianlight

… everything changes, just do what you think you should do – To Ramona, Bob Dylan.

More than fifty years separate these images and much has changed in the intervening years, not least me. In the earlier photograph I have adopted a ‘workman-like’ pose in contrast to my usual preference for pulling faces at the camera. In the later image I prefer to hide behind the lens.

The cars from the 1950s are lined up for the Ballachulish Ferry which is now replaced by the bridge, visible in the second image. The hotel remains but the family car has transformed from plain and utilitarian into a sleek object of beauty. In the older image we are gathered around my Dad’s Ford Consul (331 ELG) while the car in front, an ugly-duckling Vauxhall Victor, belonged to my Uncle Ed – they should have kept the Jaguar.

In 1959 we were travelling north to Cullen in Banffshire, a journey that took forever with an overnight stop in Callendar. We used the only section of motorway built in the UK at the time but it did little to reduce journey times – the 8.5 mile Preston Bypass which eventually transformed into part of the M6.

In 2015 I have driven alone to play golf at Traigh near Arisaig, a brief few days away, not feasible in the 1950s. On my return I could not resist the delights of the Dragon’s Tooth Course squeezed between mountains and loch, a few hundred yards from the Ballachulish Hotel. It is a fine test of golf and feels like similar mature courses celebrating their centenaries but in 1959 it did not exist, the fields of Glenn a` Chadias were still being used for grazing cattle. Everything passes, everything changes.

This final image from RMWeb.co.uk shows the ferry in action in 1962 from the other side of the loch, with the Ballachulish Hotel visible in the background. An early implementation of roll-on, roll-off.

Northumberland, Personal, Photography, Writing

It was twenty years ago today …

Gallery | Posted on March 4, 2015 by northumbrianlight

… Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.

Well, much longer than that but, it was twenty years ago today that we moved into our converted farm buildings. Things have changed since those long ago days but, we remain the same 🙂

The first image was our first sight of the buildings which now comprise our home and the second image is Pam standing in what is now our main bedroom:

These images were taken on moving in day, 4th March 1995:

And these were taken this morning – twenty years later, 4th March 2015. Like the man says, things have changed:

Heaven’s door …

Posted on February 27, 2015 by northumbrianlight

One of the joys of Golf in the Wild is the unexpected connections I make. A recent exchange with a fellow golfing/motor racing/railway enthusiast (yes, we exist) whose father also worked for ICI, put me in mind of Trafford Park and my Dad, not that he is ever that far from my thoughts. This picture dates from his early career at ICI, just inside the entrance to the works on Westinghouse Road – he is standing far left among his fellow members of the Works Council; sadly none of the names mean anything to me but the location does.

The door to the immediate left of my Dad opened onto a tiled corridor and up the stairs was the cashiers’ office where I collected my first pay packet – I had a string of holiday jobs on site which included internal postman (the best), toilet floor cleaner (the worst), working in the canteen kitchens and serving in the tuck shop. I had grand plans to use the money to buy a go-kart but was actively discouraged from such ‘dangerous’ ideas. Instead, I saved up for a Mini 850 and promptly went ‘racing in the street’ – the world would have been a safer place had I been confined to a track.

Outside the gates the open moorland that was Trafford Park is still visible. A section of the local goods railway ran parallel to the road and terminated near the entrance to ICI – to the end of the 1950s, Westinghouse Road went no further than these gates. This is an aerial view of the original British Alizarine Co Ltd works taken in 1929, courtesy of Britain from Above (the bottom left of the inserted image marks the location of the gates). The Google Earth view of this area today is utterly changed and ICI gone.

To the rear of the site is the Bridgewater Canal, the first commercial waterway in Britain. On the open moorland opposite the main entrance, men with horse-drawn carts would cut damp dark peat. Dried and soaked in paraffin, it was sold to the housewives of Lancashire and north Cheshire to light their coal fires which fed the long winter smogs. One such horse-drawn cutter was Piccolo Pete (I had always imagined him a ‘Peat’), a regular visitor to our street and my mother an avid consumer of his wares and philosophy – ‘a very intelligent man’. He attributed the severe changes in weather patterns to a spate of nuclear tests – I forget if it was getting hotter, colder or wetter. The fear of climate change is nothing new.

Piccolo Pete, the rag ‘n’ bone men, the Corona lorry, the Kleeneze rep, gypsies with pegs, French men with onion strings, the electric milk float and the occasional tramp – once the world came down our street, now they go knocking on heaven’s door.

It’s Alright Ma …

Posted on September 18, 2014 by northumbrianlight

Travel theme: Merchandise

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

http://vimeo.com/46077549

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

Bob Dylan – It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)