it was The Times They Are A Changin' on a schools programme, but to be honest he didn't really start to stick until my very late teens, when the UK greatest hits; Budokan; and Street Legal spoke to me, followed by Blood on The Tracks, and I read one of Michael Gray's book etc.

The first time I saw him live was Earls' Court 1980 [edit: must have been 81 in fact ?]--though in all truth none of the gigs I have seen was that good.

Not someone I listen to every day-but someone whose work I'd hate to have missed out on.

Times They Are A-Changin' too. Although it could have been something from Freewheelin'.

Just listening to Donovan talking about "Bobby" on Five Live right now.

It reminded me that those who consider themselves mates of Dylan will inevitably call him "Bobby". It's kind of a folk rock variant of the actors' luvvie syndrome.

While always vaguely aware of him, the 1st song that I saw, courtesy of the late Vincent Hanley's MT USA on RTE, was Sweetheart Like You from Infidels. My curiosity was piqued, but I suppose it wasn't til I went to college that I really got into him.
Masters of War blew my 18 year old head clean off....

I'd heard Dylan before 1985, but he didn't make much of an impression on me. I was vaguely aware of Blowin' In The Wind and The Times They Are A-Changin' but they didn't exactly rock my world. I'd seen him interviewed and thought he was dry, witty, cool; but his music didn't do a great deal for me.

I was on a Geography trip in 1985, to Stoke-On-Trent. We were waiting to assemble back on the coach at the end of a day spent looking at coal and glass. The driver had the radio on, and It's All Over Now, Baby Blue came on. For the first time, I thought this guy could really sing. I've never looked back.

I didn't really get Dylan until my early 30s, when Uncut published two collections of Dylan covers as cover mounts. It was the songs that led me to Dylan himself.

Before that I had the idea that he was somehow 'difficult' and hadn't really beeen receptive. Now the only artist who outweighs him in my music collection is Richard Thompson, and tonight I will be at the Union Chapel in Islington* to see Thea Gilmore perform Dylan songs.

*Can anyone recommend anywhere to eat near Upper Street? I haven't been there before, and I'm just looking for somewhere for pizza or a plate of pasta but they seem thin on the ground.

so I'll leave it to you bright sparks to work out which of his songs meant most to me.

My love of Bob Dylan's music has been a slow burn... every few years I'd go through a Bobphase and listen to nothing else and then I'd not play his records for ages.

was

tomorrow is a long time

from the double greatest hits , it came to the family via a record club

after hearing that poetry you don't look back

When? Who knows? What? Easy. It Ain't Me Babe courtesy of Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash. My grandfather adored Country music and his copy of Orange Blossom Special was one of the most played cassettes in his tiny two-up-two-down terraced house. It came out in 1965 - the year I was born. When he actually bought it is another matter but I do know it was always there. Cash and Marty Robbins, Jim Reeves and Patsy? They're a part of my childhood. Some kids had lullabies. I had songs about Reno, stetsons - both black and white, kids who should definitely have listened to their mothers and not taken their guns to town and a guy called Big John who my grandfather swore blind worked up the road at Tower Colliery.
The first time I heard Dylan singing It Ain't Me Babe I wondered who was singing the Johnny Cash song. "Leave at your own chosen speed". I love that line. Can't hear it without thinking about the old man sitting there with his tired yet sparkling eyes. He'd probably had a bugger of a day and then he'd have to deal with me and my brother raising hell. To keep us quiet he'd press play on that old tape machine and out would boom It Ain't Me Babe and we'd all end up singing along. After all these years not much has changed. My kids were singing along to it earlier tonight - although my five year old thinks it's about "the pig from the movie".
So, that's how I got into Dylan. Courtesy of my grandfather and Johnny Cash. Two fine and much missed men.
By the way, I still prefer Cash's version.

It is 1978. I am starting to listen to music, and the inkie music press go apeshit because BOB DYLAN IS COMING TO EARLS COURT !!!!!! And there is a new album. Oh aye, think I, let's listen to this. First single : Baby Stop Crying. Is that it ? Is Your Love In Vain ? New Pony, ferchrissake ? Meh. (Not that Meh was invented yet.)

The Street Legal album is all I hear of him (you forget how little he used to be played on Radio One), until one day Jimmy Saville's old record club hits 1970, and here is Bob Dylan singing Lay Lady lay. Eh? Did he used to sing like that ? Blimey, he must have been running mad with the cancer sticks.

Only later, when finally borrow Bringing It All Back Home from the library does the penny start to drop.

I got hooked by the Bobster thanks to his "Infidels" LP, which , although not his greatest, did the trick for me. Having now amassed almost all of his Cds ( although I refuse to get the the Christmas album , on the grounds of sanity ), I still get nostalgic everytime I hear " Sweetheart like you "

I heard Dylan has been lost to the dusty corners of my mind. However, the time I became a disciple is as clear as a bell.
I was 15 and after browsing the racks of a small market stall for Neil Young gems I was faced with the blurry shot of Dylan staring at me from Blonde On Blonde. It was a double vinyl. It was value for money. It was mine.
I got it home and played it endlessly from beginning to end. The other day I found an A4 plain note pad from that time and I had written the complete words to Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands out in my best capital letters to fill one side.
It's still my favourite Dylan album although many have come very close to toppling it.

Loudon Wainwright III - Talking New Bob Dylan

The musical interlude from The Young Ones in 1982. I was 14 and this perked my interest as Jools Holland and Stewart Copeland were part of it and instantly recognisable. There's a young Rowland Rivron in there somewhere too. Thought it was a really interesting track and went down to Our Price the following Saturday and spent my paper round money on Bringing It All Back Home. Next week I bought Greatest Hits Vol 1.

Something to thank Rik Mayall for.

heard lots of Dylan but it was Hurricane that really converted me. Then I bought Before The Flood which intoduced me to The Band which really changed my life. P.S I like Street Legal which must be the best example of an album improved by the remix.

buying Highway 61 Revisited on a whim - Like a Rolling Stone I knew but had never really sunk into it enough. I was listening to it again recently and the line - 'you never turned around to see the jugglers and clowns when they all did tricks for you' just made my jaw drop. There's so much in that when you look for it - the implication of the scorn displayed by turning the back on people who were supposed to entertain them.

Anyway, the thing that really got me was the line from the title track - 'Abe said 'Man you must be putting me on' God said 'no'. Abe say 'what'. '.

For some reason it stuck in my head for weeks and weeks and kept making me smile. Bring It All Back Home came next, then No Direction Home came out and then I was lost forever!

Not sure really - probably "Like A Rolling Stone" being on the radio when I was a wee man. Few years later, from a family friend who owned "Another Side...", I got hooked on that for a while.

Even later, my big bro bought the old "Greatest Hits" and I got even hooked-er.

Then, sometime in late adolescence, I devoured "Bringing it...", "Highway..." and "Blonde..." with great gusto - even now, some of the most thrilling music I've ever heard.

Side 2 of "Bringing..." - one of the most extraordinary sequences of songs and performances on any album, I think.

..remember this sort of thing.

I suspect my first experience of Dylan was singing "Blowing In The Wind" at infant school in the late 1970s. If not, it was probably Peter, Paul & Mary's cover or Mr Tambourine Man by the Byrds.

As with a few others I know I'd heard Blowin' In The Wind, but I couldn't tell you the first time. I was also aware of Lay Lady Lay.

The first Dylan song I really liked was The Byrds' version of Mr Tambourine Man.

The first thing I ever listened to on a record player was Highway 61 so obviously Like A Rolling Stone. A guy I got to know around the age of 15 / 16 was a huge Dylan fan. He insisted that I borrow Highway 61, which to be honest I did somewhat reluctantly. However the rest is history.

It was the album Desire. Hurricane and Joey grabbed me immediately and what about that crazy gypsy violin by Scarlett?
Truly a moment that changed my life.

My introduction to Bob was somewhat unorthdox. I must have been 13 at the time and was watching a tape of Fantasy Football with Baddiel and Skinner that I had taped from the night before. At the end there was a montage for the Chelsea Man U Cup Final that was happening the next day. For some reason the song they chose was Mr Tambourine Man. I think looking back it was The Byrds version but the melody really stuck with me.

When my old man told me it was by Bob Dylan originally I checked through his vinyl collection and found he only had "Another Side of Bob Dylan". To my disappointment it wasn't on there so stupidly I didn't bother to play it and it would be another 6 years before I made a concious decision to listen to him. You really take for granted how easy it is to access music now.

Even then it wasn't the most typical of introductions. As a student at the end of the 1990s there was a dirge of decent "guitar" music (for want of a better description) and so I had been drawn into the murky world of dance music. I remember it was a friends 21st and I hadn't got him anything. A quick trip to HMV was required where they were heavily marketing a CD series called Millenium which was supposedly a collection of the greatest songs of the last Millenium. For some reason I bought it for him. When I got it home I realised it had that song from Fantasy Football on which has stuck with me somewhere in the back of my mind. I gave it a listen and noticed it also had Like a Rolling Stone by that man that wrote the other song. Having listended to both songs over and over for a good couple of hours I was back down HMV and had purchased the Biograph 3Cd box set which was on offer at the time. That CD was my listening of choice for the last 6 months at uni and has led on to so much more over the last 10 years.

I know Bob means a lot to so many people. For me he saved me from dance music. Without Bob I may still be driving around in a pimped up Nova playing "Hard House Banging Hits Volume 9"!!

Happy Birthday Bob. I am forever grateful!!!

B-side of an Aztec Camera single. That got me hooked, never looked back.

singing Blowing In The Wind at school made me aware of him and I got the accompanying lecture about his importance, and since it was told to me by a teacher I didn't really care...
But in -82 when I was fifteen, I spent the summer in England. I had very little pocket money so I only bought a few singles. But in a tiny closet of a record shop in Torquay I saw Freewheelin and was struck by a desire to own it, I don't know why.
And as it was really cheap, I bought it. Couldn't play it until I got back to Sweden again three weeks later, only to be welcomed by my brother sheepishly confessing to killing my stereo.
I didn't get a new one for another couple of weeks when my mother finally came back from her holiday abroad. By that time my expectations should have been impossible to live up to, but from the very first moment I played the album I fell in love.
I still am, with all of his incarnations.

I remember this pretty well. I was around mid-teens and it was when Nicky Campbell had the 10 - 12 Radio One slot, handing over to Whispering Bob at midnight. I used to listen to NC's show a fair bit but had never heard Bob Harris.

Anyway, I'd had a totally crap day at school, a miserable evening at home and by the time I got into bed and turned on the radio, I had missed Campbells' show and instead encountered the mellifluous one, gently burbling away about something or other. I was in no mood for some old hippy so was about to switch it off when he dropped 'Tangled Up In Blue'. Bam! That intro, the flinty, rough-edged voice, the way the drums kicked in on the chorus and the voice would soar wildly around and damn, the STORY - well. It was a complete revelation.

Next day at school, I told a mate who had abandoned his Pet Shop Boys obsession for all things blues-related about my Damascene conversion and he obligingly came up with a few cassette copies of things - "Highway 61", "Bringing It All Back Home" and a rough bootleg of "Albert Hall 1966". Few weeks later, I hung out at his place one weekend and we watched 'Don't Look Back'. And that was that.

Like Patrick says above, I've drifted in and out of Bob phases, sinking deep into the canon at times to the exclusion of pretty much all else. I saw him, with that mate, in Hammersmith early 90s, it was shit. But he's part of everything now, and I listen to something by the old goat pretty much most weeks and yet still, to clumsily paraphrase "I still can't remember all the best things he said"...

... thought to myself.:

"What the hell is this? "

"This sounds mental!"

"What a voice"

"I want to hear that again"

And that was the beginning for me

Big sis came back from uni Easter 1976, I was 15, and as usual she had a stack of records borrowed from the cool kids. One was "More Greatest Hits" and I took it up to my room and stuck it on. Track 1, "Watchin' the River Flow" - pleasant, but nothing more. Track 2, "Don't Think Twice" - wow. By the time it got to "Stuck Inside of Mobile" at the end of the first side I was hooked. And remain so - though there have been periods of cooling, I always come back to Bob.

An obvious one to reel you in to Dylan: but I had honestly never heard it before it came on the radio in the car one day when I was about 23 or 24.

Before that, I only knew Dylan through my parents' records: I quite liked Blood On The Tracks, but couldn't get into Self Portrait or John Wesley Harding. And somehow I had never been intrigued enough to look into him any further.

But Like A Rolling Stone just hit me like nothing else, and I was hooked after that.

I'm sixteen years old, in the winter of my first year of Sixth Form, with the ability to enjoy 'Free Periods' and the chance to wear my own clothes at school. Mufti Day Everyday! My music collection at the time consists of most of The Beatles albums, and various mish-mashes of other stuff. I'm aware of Dylan through songs like 'Mr. Tambourine Man' (though like many, I'm introduced to it via The Byrds) and 'Blowin' In The Wind'.

One day I purposely go into my local Record Emporium to pick up a copy of his Greatest Hits. Some people may think this is a bad way to aquaint oneself with a new artist, but I disagree. It was an album that only included material that was written and recorded up to and including 'Blonde on Blonde' (though I wasn't aware of this at the time). I remember the album was in a sale, and I remember listening to it five times in a row when I got home. It began (expectantly) with 'BITW', but it was the second song that grabbed me, with it's opening couplet 'Go away from my window and leave at your own chosen speed/I'm not the one you want, babe, I'm not the one you need'. From that moment, I was hooked, lined, and sunken. The next port of call was to buy the Holy Mid-Sixties Trilogy of 'Bringing It All Back Home', 'Highway 61 Revisted' and 'Blonde on Blonde' and then work my way through the rest 2 or 3 albums at a time.

Question: Is his 80s output really as bad as I'm lead to believe?

Like many, a vague awareness of Dylan through my pre-teen years as the man with the funny voice who played guitar. Blowing in the Wind, Tambourine Man, Hard Rain etc in cover versions mainly.

But the real awakening, and realisation that this might be a bit special, was the Bangla Desh concert film which I saw with Mike Hurst and Tony Williams at the Birkenhead Gaumont in 1972 or 73 i suppose. Dressed entirely in denim, looking cool as a (hep)cat, sticking to pretty straight versions of the 'hits' - wow!

First album was Desire, and from there I worked back through the BringingHighwayBlonde period, then caught up with Planet Waves and BOTT. Street Legal, then lost interest through the God years.

Saw him for the one and only time at Blackbushe, a tiny dot in the distance. But that's a whole other story.

I was in my final year in school and the kid that sat beside me in Maths told me about a Dylan album he had bought on holidays the previous year. He loved it and brought in a copy for me. It was Empire Burlesque - one of Bob's rum 80's efforts.

I loved it. Opening with the magnificent Tight Connection to My Heart (still one of my favourite Dylan songs) and finishing with the brooding Dark Eyes, I absolutely loved it. Even more so when i learnt (in Q magazine, I think) that parts of the lyrics of 'Tight Connection' had been lifted from a Star Trek episode. Clearly Dylan's influences haven't always been as high-brow as Japanese literature and Arthur Rimbaud!

It was the late 80s so when I hear that Dylan had a newer record out I went out and bought it. It was Down in the Groove - perhaps the worst of his rum 80's efforts. It's fair to say that I didn't like it as much as Empire Burlesque. Although, saying that, it did have Silvio, Ugliest Girl in the World and Death is Not the End so I'm able to look back on it with an element of fondness.

Anyway, Oh Mercy quickly followed and, coupled with the Travelling Wilburys records that were out at the same time, I had lots of new Bob material to absorb. I never looked back. Actually, that's kinda true - I've always been far more interested in the new Bob records than the older ones. I mean, I have the old ones but I don't listen to Blonde on Blonde half as much as I listen to Modern Times. I just don't 'get' them the way I do the newer material. Don't know why. If I had to live with just one Bob Dylan song, it'd be Working Man BLues 2. I genuinely think that's his finest moment.

Saying all that, I have a very soft spot for the late 60s/early 70s material. I avoided the likes of New Morning, Self Portrait, Nashville Skyline and John Wesley Harding for years because I thought they were supposed to be rubbish but I was delighted by them when I finally got around to them. yes - even parts of Self Portrait.

Funnily enough, although I've filled out the collection in recent years - including the Christian albums, Shot of Love and even Christmas in My Heart, I've never bought Empire Burlesque. I lost that old cassette years ago and never bothered to replace it. I heard Tight Connection a while ago and I still loved it but I'm not sure that the rest of it would stand up to close scrutiny. I'd rather live with the versions of the songs that I remember my 17 year old listening to in 1989 than actually hear what's on the record. I expect they would sound very different.

Oh - I've seen Bob four times. First time was about 10 years ago in Kilkenny. It was one of his good nights. So good that I persevered for another three gigs over the following 5 years. Big mistake. I think it's probably safe to say that I'm out of the Bob Dylan gig-attending game now.

Still - Happy Birthday Bob.

Thanks to my hippy teacher in my very first school. I didn't make any connection at that time. It would be years later when a high school friend played me his new copy of 'Blood On the Tracks' that the synapses kicked in.

with Fluff running down the top 20 on a Sunday afternoon, listening in my Dad's parked car. Stuff like Let's Hang On (Four Seasons) and Pretty Woman (Roy Orbison) and probably the latest hits by the Kinks, the Hollies, the Animals. In among this lot was Rainy Day Women, seriously strange stuff for a 9-year-old.

Bob was just everywhere in the sixties and seventies, but it took me even longer to get him. But get him I did, eventually. What a great man.

Summer of 1965 in Toronto.

Me, an 11-year-old kid sitting on the front lawn, listening to my portable radio when this... thing came on.

I had no idea what was going on -my mind was still trying to make sense of the fairy-tale "once upon a time" opening- but I hung on for dear life and by the time I made it to the end, some six minutes later, I wanted to take the ride again. And again.

I sat for the rest of the day, radio to my ear, hoping and praying the might play this opus again.

There was no other way to hear it, of course. You simply HAD to wait for some radio station to drop the needle again.

And wait I did. When you ain't got nothing, you got, nothing to lose.

...this thread is another reminder about how difficult it was to hear some things or track them down once heard.

I can remember patiently waiting for months or years to hear a song I liked come on the radio again. Or to hear who sung/performed said song. It is almost unbelievable now isn't it?

'Don't think twice it's alright' on Radio Caroline North.
Couldn't believe it was the same composer that did 'Blowin' In The Wind' for Peter, Paul and Mary.
Started to listen more when I realised Lennon was copying the voice on 'I'm A Loser' (Beatles for Sale)

I must admit I can't exactly remember where I first heard him though a guy in our youth club crowd was mad about his music so probably from 1964/65. I definitely remember hearing Times they are a-Changing and Maggie's Farm from '65 probably on luxembourg or a pirate radio station.

I remember seeing the Subterranean Homesick Blues clip in the first post many times - maybe Top of the Pops?

'Knockin on Heaven's Door' was the single off the soundtrack and I was about 8 or 9 when it was a hit. Spooked me then, and now. The Bobcast was great.

I was given a secondhand pre-recorded compilation cassette which had The Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man" on it. For years afterwards I was tortured periodically by a recording of the six-year-old me singing it for my Nan. (Typically, now that I would appreciate the recording for its historic value, I've discovered that it got thrown out when the tape got wrapped round the capstan and snapped. I could have fixed that. Ho hum.)

As for the man himself, while it's probable that he cropped up on Jimmy Savile or Alan Freeman's Radio 1 shows, the first time I'm conscious of hearing him was when BBC-2 screened "Dont Look Back" circa 1985. It could even possibly have been one of those Hepworth/Ellen-fronted "Rock Around The Clock" things they'd occasionally do (or was there only ever one and my memory is playing up? They also did a jazz all-nighter which I remember Dad moaning about, because it meant changing the tape at some ungodly hour.) Anyway, we'd recently got our first video recorder and Dad taped it. I was mesmerised by "Subterranean Homesick Blues," but wasn't impressed by how Dylan presented himself. He seemed surly, hostile and generally "not a nice man" to this 9-year-old. Of course, what I didn't realise then was that he was stoned off his tits throughout practically the whole film.

With a 3-hour VHS tape costing just under a tenner, Dad kept "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and taped over the rest of the film with "Fawlty Towers." The tape finally got the boot a year or two ago.

About ten years ago, a colleague asked me if I could dub "Renaldo and Clara" from his Betamax originals to VHS for him. He told me he'd actually gone out and rented a machine specially, after hearing that Channel 4 were due to show it (again circa 1985.)

Sat on my aunt and uncle's settee after 3hrs of 43 a-side, 'jumpers for goalposts' football with my cousins and the young residents of a Derbyshire village, my uncle played his Bobness prior to Sunday dinner.

Having been down the pub with my dad whilst we'd been having a kick around, several pints of real ale meant my uncle played the first couple of verses of The Times They Are A-changin' at Apocalypse Now volume.

Even after my mother and aunt had demanded it be turned down, I sat transfixed. Aged 16, I knew this was the real deal. Indie and the chart music of the day were immediately irrelevant.

Thanks Bob

I was on my way back from Australia, doing the south east Asia thing. As well as numerous T-shirt emporiums, Bali had a number of music shops selling patently pirated cassettes of western releases at ridiculously cheap prices. What's more you could listen to them in the shop before buying. And here, for some reason, I picked up my first Dylan album, the recently released "Oh Mercy". I loved its swamp-like production values and wistful songs, possibly because I already was a fan of Lanois productions on U2, but I knew next to nothing else about Dylan at the time. That cassette got serious rotation on my Walkman for weeks afterwards on the trail home, and for years beyond until replaced with a CD. Only the other night I got it out and listened right through spellbound, finishing with the magical "Shooting Star". Beautiful stuff.

Years later I thought, so who is this Dylan then? And then I went about listening to everything else, and now I'm sure he has the highest count of albums by any artist in my collection. Happy Birthday to the Bobster!
J.

The amount of stories on here about people having a kind of "revelation" moment where they get a whiff of Dylan and just HAVE to get more of it.

I would wager that was a quality of a lot of the "great" artists, the "canon" (Beatles, Stones, Bowie, Hendrix, whatever): a kind of otherworldliness that hooks you in and forces you to investigate further.

Twenty years ago I saw Dylan in concert for the first time. The worst gig I've ever been to, by a long shot. Seemingly drunken ramblings of songs rendered without rhyme or scansion, no awareness of the audience; just shockingly awful on every level.

I went back to see him five times over the next sixteen years. I can't imagine doing that for anyone else.

of senior school. We finished early after we had done our exams. We effectively had about 10 weeks summer holiday. Most of the time was spent at a friends house smoking joints and listening to bringing it all back home and Songs of Leonard Cohen. I vividly remember the scratches on Masters of War and whenever I hear the digitised version these days it is not the same. Although I loved that album didn't really get into him in a big way until Desire which got played to death the year it came out.

The album was right, the song I was thinking of was Its alright ma. This now confuses me as I do remember Masters of War from around this same time but only remember my mate have Bringing it all back home and not Freewheelin.