No Direction Home

Martin Scorsese's docu-film No Direction Home, celebrating, commemorating and reminiscing on almost 50 years in the music business for Bob Dylan showed over two nights on BBC, accompanied by a handful of other shorter films about the legend that refused to be labeled. Blood On The Tracks and Blonde On Blonde have been favourites of mine (and millions of others) since I first started appreciating music, but I never knew half the history of the man before this week! Telling of the early days and a move from Minnesota to Greenwich Village in 1961, we learn about his heroes and motivations, with comments from the man himself, who speaks very lucidly about events as if they were yesterday. The film flits between the years superbly showing the highs and the lows in equal measure - with some priceless footage of Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez and a host of other pioneers from folk, to blues, to rock and roll. Not to mention a heap of stuff, familiar and not so, of Mr Zimmerman himself - including footage of nights in Northern British towns playing to hundreds of booing "fans". And then, of course, you have the wealth of beautiful black and white photography that helped create an icon (a lot of which were taken by Andy Warhol). Everything about the guy in the 60s screamed of intelligence and effortless cool, and there is a good argument here that he was as important as John Lennon and Elvis, if not more so, in changing the world with music. He never wanted to be called a Folk singer and he never wanted to be called a Protest singer, he just wanted to be Bob Dylan, and thank God. The best moment for me in the 3 hour plus film was beat poet Allan Ginsberg chocking back the tears when remembering the first time he heard A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall. He led a generation back then, whether he intended to or not, just a shame there is nothing that remotely comes close to his genius in our own. Great stuff. Kx