When he’s not playing sax with the likes of The Soft Machine Legacy, The Tangent or Cipher, Theo Travis is fond of leafing through all kinds of worthy tomes, the latest of which is Bob Dylan's Chronicles.
I was prompted to read it by the huge outpouring of praise from
everywhere on the book, and also having watched the Scorsese documentary No
direction home, which I thought was amazing. Having put away my Bob Dylan
albums years ago and not listened to them for ages - I was suddenly really
interested in him again.
The book gives
an amazing insight into those early years when Bobby Z was just another folky
hanging out in the village and reading everything he could get his hands on and
learning as many songs as he could, and the arty world of Greenwich village in
the late 1950s early 1960s.
How he tells of his life when he was the
"voice of a generation" - a description he clearly thought ludicrous,
is fascinating. It is amazing how sane he kept and how on one hand he was the
centre of popular culture and how involved in the world he was, yet at the same
time how distant he kept.
An astute observer, and huge international star, but always guarding his personal space in a really canny way. Beautifully written, a great insight from behind the great man's eyes and entertaining too.
