Celebrating Dylan at 80-Uncut Magazine

Uncut Magazine (Apr 2021) To complement the astonishing Bob Dylan covers CD that comes free with the new issue of Uncut – which is in shops now and available to buy online by clicking here – the magazine itself includes a unique celebration of Bob Dylan at 80. We’ve asked friends, collaborators and admirers – including Paul McCartney, Robbie Robertson, Jackson Browne, Roger McGuinn, Jeff Tweedy, Van Morrison, Graham Nash, Kris Kristofferson, Elton John, Peggy Seeger, Roger Daltrey and Richard Thompson – to share their most memorable Dylan encounter with us.

Spanning six decades, from 1960 to 2020, these remarkable stories shed new light on rock’s most capricious and elusive genius, whose startling transformations from folk hero to electrified renegade and beyond continue to captivate us all. To begin, then, let us return to Minnesota, Dylan’s home state, where an earnest young admirer awaits the arrival of folk royalty…

PEGGY SEEGER: Bob was always around whenever Ewan [MacColl] and I played in Minneapolis, where he was a student at the university. He’d ask us for our autographs. He was always very neat and carried a little briefcase. Two years later, when we went back to Minneapolis, the organiser said, “Remember that little fella who was always attached to you? You know that’s Bob Dylan, right?” You’d be astounded at how far away from the pop scene Ewan and I were, so when Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan it didn’t mean anything to us.

Not long after, he came to the UK and performed at the Singers Club [December 1962]. But nobody could hear him because we didn’t have microphones and his voice wasn’t loud enough. Some peple have since said that he was given the cold shoulder, but I don’t think that’s true. It was just that at that time we were singing pretty much folk songs or highly political songs in our club. Bob Dylan’s songs fell halfway in between. It was a new kind of song.

RAMBLIN’ JACK ELLIOTT: In late 1961, I took a bus out to New Jersey to visit Woody Guthrie in hospital. This kid was there, quite an engaging guy – kinda pudgy and funny-looking, but nice. He told me he had all my recordings. It was Bob. Back in New York City, he’d ask me all about Woody, who I’d known since 1951. I was some years older than Bob and got him into the musicians’ union. At his first paid performance at Gerde’s Folk City, they put up a cardboard sign written in ballpoint pen: “Appearing tonight: Son of Jack Elliott”. So there was some sort of parental relationship going on there, you might say. I used to play harmonica with my guitar, just like Woody did. Bob did the same thing. People used to poke me and say, “He’s imitating you, Jack.” I couldn’t see the resemblance myself, but I suppose his playing was reminiscent of my crazy, whooped-up, distorted blues-style harp.