Bob Dylan 2001-08-20
Bob Dylan: I Know That Face, BBC, Radio 4
Set 1
Memories of the night in 1962 when Bob Dylan, a virtual unknown, dropped into a pub in Foley Street to sing his songs.
The Folk Club at the King & Queen
The King and Queen, 1 Foley St, Paddington, Greater London W1W 6, UK
The pub King and Queen is located in a part of London called Fitzrovia, it is a traditional small English pub.
The young English folk-singer Martin Carthy was also a regular visitor to Collets and he had seen the same magazine. 'There is this guy, Bob Dylan, on the front and a few days later, it was a Friday, I'm singing a song at the King and Queen and I look out into the audience and I see this Sing Out! cover sitting in front of me,' he remembers.' I finished a couple of songs, walked over to him and said, "You're Bob Dylan".' Carthy asked him to sing. 'We carried on with the evening for about 20 minutes and he just looked up at me from the audience and nodded, so I called him up.'
Carthy remembers 'he had fabulous presence and a great sense of comedy', singing three songs including 'a sort of rag-timey thing' and a version of 'Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues' (a dig at McCarthyite America). Then, come the cry of 'last orders, please!' and chucking out time on the stoke of 11, Dylan accompanied Carthy back to a friend's house in Hampstead, where they drank tea and Dylan sang again, including 'The Ballad of Hollis Brown', at Carthy's request. This was the start of a process by which Dylan and the English folk singers learnt from each other, anticipating the transatlantic artistic exchange that would later transpire between the author of 'Like a Rolling Stone' and the Beatles.
Theories have been presented suggesting the event is described in the song American Pie by Don McLean, "The Jester sang for the King and Queen in a coat he borrowed from James Dean".
The Folk Club at the King & Queen
The King and Queen, 1 Foley St, Paddington, Greater London W1W 6, UK
The pub King and Queen is located in a part of London called Fitzrovia, it is a traditional small English pub.
The young English folk-singer Martin Carthy was also a regular visitor to Collets and he had seen the same magazine. 'There is this guy, Bob Dylan, on the front and a few days later, it was a Friday, I'm singing a song at the King and Queen and I look out into the audience and I see this Sing Out! cover sitting in front of me,' he remembers.' I finished a couple of songs, walked over to him and said, "You're Bob Dylan".' Carthy asked him to sing. 'We carried on with the evening for about 20 minutes and he just looked up at me from the audience and nodded, so I called him up.'
Carthy remembers 'he had fabulous presence and a great sense of comedy', singing three songs including 'a sort of rag-timey thing' and a version of 'Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues' (a dig at McCarthyite America). Then, come the cry of 'last orders, please!' and chucking out time on the stoke of 11, Dylan accompanied Carthy back to a friend's house in Hampstead, where they drank tea and Dylan sang again, including 'The Ballad of Hollis Brown', at Carthy's request. This was the start of a process by which Dylan and the English folk singers learnt from each other, anticipating the transatlantic artistic exchange that would later transpire between the author of 'Like a Rolling Stone' and the Beatles.
Theories have been presented suggesting the event is described in the song American Pie by Don McLean, "The Jester sang for the King and Queen in a coat he borrowed from James Dean".
Set 2
Set 3
Comment
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Created At
Thu Dec 24 2015 23:06:06 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
Updated At
Thu Dec 24 2015 23:06:06 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
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