So, I had to decide. Would I stay, or would I go? I was holidaying in Galway at the time, in the beautiful West of Ireland. My summer retreat was way out in the wilds of Connemara, overlooking the Atlantic. It was the summer of 1981, and I had to make a quick decision.

Just a few years earlier, I had, after much reluctance, finally become hooked on Dylan. Street-Legal had lit the fuse. Then, gradually, like so many before and since, I went back to the earlier stuff that had largely passed beneath my radar. In the 60s, I was too young to appreciate Bob. As a kid, I loved Irish traditional music. American folk left me indifferent. It just didn't speak about or to my world, and the world about which it did speak was too far away and too unrelated to my own experience. I had never even heard of Woody Guthrie, and Greenwich Village might as well have been on another planet. Naturally, I was swept up, also, in the Pop frenzy of the time. The very first record I ever bought was 'Tossing and Turning' by The Ivy League (check it out at YouTube!).

Anyhow, when Bob came to Dublin in 1966, the impact on my pre-teen mind was absolutely zero. I have vague memories of the hysteria surrounding The Beatles' visit, several years earlier, but Dylan's arrival simply didn't register with me. Hardly surprising! Nowadays, when I look at the video of the '66 Dublin performance of 'Just Like a Woman', it is, literally, awesome. Back then it would have passed completely and utterly above my 12-years old head!

Some years later, I have a memory of seeing 'John Wesley Harding', 'Nashville Skyline' and 'New Morning' in other people's record collections, but I can't recall ever having popped one of those albums on the turntable. Bob's 'Country Pie' period left me cold. Even the album covers seemed distinctly un-cool. The mid-70s albums also failed to ignite my enthusiasm. At that stage, I was listening mainly to a combination of classical music (Haydn and Wagner were big favourites) and lots of heavyish rock - Rory Gallagher, Thin Lizzy, Rainbow, etc. In my early 20s, I wouldn't have described myself as an avid music fan. The amount of time devoted to music of any kind was far outweighed by that dedicated to books. Most of my spare (and not so spare) cash went on filling shelf after shelf with weighty tomes - philosophy, mainly. I was an undergrad philosophy student in those days.

In the summer of 1978, I was immersed in an M.A. on Ludwig Wittgenstein. I was in England at the time, attending Warwick University. That summer, Bob Dylan's tour was a HUGE story. Even I, hidden away in a stuffy university library frantically trying to demonstrate a specific thread of continuity between the early and late Wittegnstein (I'll spare you the details!!), couldn't fail to register that something was astir.

It never crossed my mind to make my way to Earls Court or Blackbushe. I couldn't afford the time, and anyhow, I wasn't really enamoured of the idea of joining hordes of adoring fans. To this day, I shy away from large crowds, much preferring the company of a few friends, with just the right combination of wine, music and conversation. Generally, crowds are a turn-off for me, especially if they involve being jostled and having to shout in order to be heard. Even now, whenever I put my antipathy aside and venture forth to a Bob concert, I make a conscious effort to screen out my surroundings and focus as much attention as possible on the stage. Afterwards, I try to allow myself sufficient leisure to process the sights and sounds, and file them away for future reference and enjoyment.

But, I digress. Back in the summer of 1978, with all the excitement generated by the Earls Court and Blackbushe concerts, radio stations began to give Street-Legal more airplay than earlier Dylan albums had ever received. In fact, one of the songs that I clearly associate with that summer is 'Baby, Stop Crying' (Bob's last hit single in this part of the world). Other songs on that summer's mental playlist are Blondie's 'Heart of Glass' and 'Rat Trap' by Bob Geldof's Boomtown Rats. There was also a catchy song called '5-7-0-5', by a one-hit group called City Boy. Two on-campus gigs remain vivid among my 1978 memories: the first by The Buzzcocks, and the second by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. I only attended these concerts because (1) they happened to be on campus, and (2) their arrival in my neighbourhood coincided with the completion of two of my M.A. chapters.

Anyhow, the constant exposure to newspaper articles on the '78 Dylan tour, together with the ample airplay afforded Street-Legal on late night student-oriented radio shows, were sufficient to move Bob Dylan from the periphery of my musical attention field to its very centre. I listened to Street-Legal, again and again. Something clicked, and it has been clicking away ever since!

By 1980, I had acquired every Dylan album up to, and including, 'Saved'. I also had the beginnings of a modest bootleg collection (mainly on cassette tapes) and a small library of Dylan-related books and articles. By that stage, I was definitely ready, eager and anxious to see the great man performing live. The chance came the following year, when he was scheduled for a six-night residency at Earls Court, in London. The news reached me as I was enjoying that break on the remote Atlantic coast of Connemara. Within a couple of hours, a few phone calls had secured tickets for the first three Earls Court concerts, and return flights between Dublin and London. I was about to cross the Rubicon (aka the Irish Sea) to attend my first Dylan concert. The fuse, lit by Street-Legal, would ignite a musical fireworks display that continues to dazzle, all these years later.

(to be continued ...)