Bob Dylan Live: The Fleadh, Finsbury Park, June 20th London 2004

The 2004 Fleadh was in Finsbury Park on Sunday June 20th and the headlining act was Bob Dylan. This post describes the experience of going to what was my second Fleadh, the first time being back in 1993 when – you’ve guessed it – Bob was headliner again, supported on that occasion by a good tempered Van Morrison. For the whole of the day I was in the company of an old time associate by the name of The Wizard, a self-proclained Tantric master from Hertfordshire.

In Fleadh 93 there had been a memorable Bob and Van duet on Van’s One Irish Rover from his critically acclaimed mid 80s album No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, as well as a stunning opener to Bob’s set in the form of Hard Times from Good As I’ve Been to You the album which had got the whole thing going for me in the first place as far as having Bob in my life was concerned. That particular Fleadh occurred during the time between 1992s Good As I’ve Been to You and World Gone Wrong released in 1994. These were Bob’s two albums of traditional folk and blues covers, coming during a period when everyone thought his pen had run dry and that he might never produce an album of original material ever again. Things would change quite radically in that regard however with the release of Time Out of Mind in 1997, a work which saw Bob enjoy major critical rehabilitation and served as the platform for what are now the later years of his long career. A platform consolidated by 2001’s warmly received Love and Theft which, believe it or not, came out on 9/11. Since then as far as this new millennium is concerned, Bob has yet to look back.

When I woke up on the Sunday morning the weather looked like it was going to be changeable, with fast moving clouds rolling across the sky having more than a hint of dark about them and I realised that we would be lucky if we were going to avoid any rain during the course of the day. This time around I would not be going to The Fleadh with Marc Murphy but with Ronan Dale, otherwise known as the Wizard, a Buddhist tantric practitioner from Hemel Hempstead whom I had known for many years. He was a long standing customer of Wisdom Books, the small company specialising in the distribution of books on Buddhism which I was co-director of and helped run on a daily basis in the form of being office manager, not that such a thing added up to very much. Over the years the Wizard had spent thousands of pounds with Wisdom on books, pretty much ever since its foundation in 1989, probably over 10 grand, and that was even when his generous customer discounts were factored into the equation. There was no doubt the Wizard’s council house in Hemel which he shared with his dad, must have been packed to the rafters with vast amounts of Buddhist material he had collected over the years, particularly anything to do with the esoteric tantric teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, which just so happened to be his particular bag.

As arranged I met up with the Wizard outside Walthamstow tube station at 11 am on the Sunday morning. We had spoken together on the phone earlier in the week and had agreed that Walthamstow was the best place for us to rendezvous because it had advantages for both of us. For me it was just a ten minute drive from my house in Woodford, and for the Wizard it was familiar territory because Wisdom Books had been located at 402 Hoe Street in Walthamstow for 10 years between 1989 and 1999, a place which he hadvisited many times and therefore knew the route from Hemel like the back of his left hand. The Wizard was waiting for me outside the tube station when I got there at just gone 11. In his early 50s he looked, quite frankly, like he had just crawled out of a brown paper bag, sporting a three day stubble with his frizzled grey hair which was on the edge of becoming wild and disordered.

Over a smelly looking pair of jeans he wore an old lumberjack shirt and on his feet were a rank pair of trainers. The reason for wearing them, he quickly explained, was because it might get muddy in the park later on if the weather didn’t behave itself, which was fair enough I guess. If they got fucked up he then could just throw them away, although I doubted if he would be able to bring himself to do even that. At his feet the Wizard had an old plastic bag out of which poked the top of a two litre bottle of water, also in the bag was a bunch of his homemade cheese and pickle sandwiches plus a pack of close to sell by date mini pork pies. All in all it looked like something which was going to be quite heavy for him to carry around The Fleadh all day, but he told me he did not mind doing that at all, just so long as he avoided getting ripped off at the various food stalls that were going to be doing business inside the event. Similar to the Wizard, I had also made sandwiches and they were in a small rucksack slung over my shoulder, along with some healthy sized chunks of my mum’s homemade fruit cake which I’d picked up from my recent visit to Harpenden for Sunday dinner with my folks.

Despite his appearance it was good to see the Wizard again, and also for us to finally get to go and see Bob together. During the course of his visits to Wisdom Books we had spoken about him many times because the Wizard was an obsessive collector of Bob bootlegs, having amassed many tapes and CDs of literally hundreds of Bob shows over the years, most of them bought mail order from a bootleg dealer based in Walsall in the West Midlands. We had in fact arranged to go and see Bob together back in September 2000 when I had bought tickets for us to see him at the Portsmouth Guildhall, but at the last minute the Wizard had pulled out citing pressures of work and the fact that the show was on a Monday night. Since he had already paid me for his ticket, we agreed that I would sell it on his behalf once I got down there, despite the fact I thought his excuse for not going to the show was a pretty lame one. Once I had done this I would pay him back the face value of the ticket, something like 30 quid, and then keep for myself whatever extra cash I might make out of the deal. It all seemed like quite a good idea at the time because the two Portsmouth Guildhall shows had sold out in a matter of hours, and so I was very confident of making a killing.

As fate would have it, circumstances conspired against me in quite a big way because on the day of the show in Portsmouth it pissed down non-stop, in almost dare I say it Biblical proportions, so much so that no one was prepared to hang around the Guildhall for any longer than was absolutely necessary. Since the main place to sell any spare tickets was in the general area outside the venue, the territory for me to make my pitch was swiped away from beneath my feet, something from which I quite simply never recovered. After a series of dodgy and painful encounters with a bunch of ticket touts and a couple of failed attempts to sell the Wizard’s ticket to any approaching fans making their way to the entrance as quickly as possible through the driving rain, I threw in the lousy dog headed deal and decided not to bother to sell it at all. Things had got to the stage where it felt better hanging on to it rather than selling it to a tout lizard for only a fiver, which was what they offered me, when on a perfect day I’m sure I would have been able to get close to a 100 quid.

Just as I kind of suspected he would, the Wizard went ape after I later posted the unsold ticket back to him as proof that I hadn’t sold it and quietly pocketed the bread. He was so suspicious over the whole episode, my failure to sell his damn bloody ticket, that it soured things between us for some considerable period of time. It was a little bit disappointing to me that he was so hacked off over it, because under the circumstances I had done my best to get rid of it but unfortunately came up short through no fault of my own. I thought that the Wizard, being a self-proclaimed tantric adept who, if he was to be believed, had reached quite a high level of realisation, would have known how to roll with the punches, but it seemed in that regard I was mistaken. Finally, after about six months, I mailed him a couple of books I had picked up cheap through Wisdom as some kind of compensation, even though in actual fact I didn’t owe him a single penny. One of them was a newly revised edition of Clinton Heylin’s Behind the Shades, his acclaimed if know it all biography of Bob, and the other was Troubadour by Andrew Muir, an amusing collection of accounts of him following Bob through the 90s on his Never Ending Tour. This gesture put things back on track between us, so much so that when I told him earlier in the year that Bob would be headlining The Fleadh in June, the Wizard was only too happy for me to get a ticket for him and also to send payment for it in advance.

On the tube to Finsbury Park I naturally gave the Wizard a blow by blow account of Bob’s show in Cardiff a couple of nights before, that at its best I had just stood there in the middle of an ecstatic Welsh crowd with my eyes closed, taking in the life giving power of the top quality electric noise Bob and the boys were coming up with. By the time we got to the entrance of The Fleadh just after 11.30 there were already a healthy number of people hanging around, despite the fact the festival was not due to kick off until 12 noon. I had in fact been viewing the day with some degree of trepidation because of course the only real reason for me going was to see Bob, but as main headliner he would obviously not be on stage until last, which was a good 8 or 9 hours away. This left us with a hell of a lot of time to get through and although there were two stages, the main Fleadh stage and the Borderline stage which was in a tent known as The Big Top, I was still worried that the whole thing might soon degenerate into something which was little more than an endurance test, especially if the weather turned nasty and it began to piss down with rain.

If it had not been for the fact I was going to The Fleadh with the Wizard, I wouldn’t have bothered turning up at Finsbury Park until at least 4 or 5 in the afternoon. Doing it that way would have left me with plenty of time to catch some of the main acts, all leading up to Bob’s appearance mid-evening, and I would also still be feeling reasonably fresh. The Wizard however was determined to get maximum value from his £38.50 ticket and that translated into him trying to see as much as possible right from the beginning of The Fleadh until the very end. It was probably true to say that at the best of times the Wizard was extremely tight, being ultra cautious with his bread, all of which was compounded by the fact he was at present strapped for cash due to his work as a supply teacher drying up and with the long summer school holidays ahead of him.

Once inside The Fleadh the first place we made for was the official merchandise stall in order to buy a programme, as it was going to be necessary to get one in order to see what times artists were performing and what stages they were on during the course of the day. We would need to sit down and work our way through the listings, see who was playing when and where, what was going to be worth catching and what was not. When we got to the merchandise stall it quickly became obvious the Wizard was expecting me to fork out the 5 quid to buy a programme, so whilst I joined the queue he hung back pretending to look busy all of a sudden. As I stood there waiting, I was able to cast my eye over what the stall had to offer in the way of Bob merchandise, still most definitely having it in mind to pick up one of those rather fine looking sheriff badges I had seen on sale at the Cardiff show the other night.

There was a somewhat limited selection of Bob merchandise for sale however, not half as much as what you would get at one of his own concerts and unfortunately there were no sheriff badges on display, which was a bit of a bummer to say the least. Nevertheless a pretty cool looking Bob Dylan key ring did catch my eye so I asked to take a closer at it when it was my turn to buy a programme. It was in the shape of the Bob Dylan Eye of Integrity, the more or less official Bob Dylan logo emblazoned on the stage back drop black curtain which can be seen at every show he plays. The key ring felt good resting in the palm of my hand, it was cut into an interestingly spiky shape and before I knew what was happening I handed over twelve quid, five being for the programme and seven for the Bob Dylan Eye of Integrity key ring. Nice one! I have to say that I was extremely happy because on reflection it would serve a practical purpose as well since I would be able to put my keys on it, whilst the sheriff’s badge might well have been more limited in application. “Now jus’ what were you doggone boys up to out on Billy Tramper’s ranch the other night?”

After the merchandise stall, from which I emerged basking in the glow of my surprise purchase, we made our way to the grassy area in front of the main stage so that we could sit down and look through the programme. The weather was now looking quite promising, nice and bright, and once we had found a decent place to sit it was rather pleasant watching Finsbury Park slowly begin to fill up as a steady stream of people made their way in through the gates. All along the sides of the park were the food stalls which the Wizard was so determined to avoid and they were selling everything from Indian curries, Chinese and Thai noodles, hot dogs, burgers, chips, fried chicken, roast pork in either baps or baguettes, cakes, sandwiches and sweets to name but just a few. There were also a number of bars selling alcohol, quite a lot of bars in fact, and since The Fleadh was essentially an Irish festival it was more than likely that a fair amount of booze was going to be consumed over the next few hours. Signs and logos for Irish brands such as Guinness, Harp, Caffreys and Murphys were very prominent, along with bog standard English lagers such as the woeful Carling Black Label.

The Wizard studied the programme I had bought and picked out a number of artists he wanted to see, the majority of whom would be playing on the Borderline stage in The Big Top. I was impressed by his obvious familiarity with so many of the acts on the bill, it seemed like he had an opinion on virtually all of them. I was therefore only too happy to follow his lead as he underlined what he wanted to see and crossed out what he didn’t. The Wizard was actually a prolific collector of a wide range of artists and he certainly did not just limit himself only to what Bob produced, not a bit of it. He was part of a network of people in the Hemel Hempstead and St. Albans area of Hertfordshire in which music was constantly being exchanged, most of it illegally in the form of bootlegs, and he also made pretty good use of his local library where he was able to request them to order CDs which he could then borrow to take home and copy. All in all the Wizard had accumulated thousands of CDs and tapes over the years, which along with his vast library of books on Buddhism, meant that he had various storage issues to contend with in the small council house he shared with his dad, especially since they didn’t have a garage. As far as the programme went, it had to be said that as far as I was concerned the only artists I wanted to see apart from Bob were Christy Moore and Counting Crows, so I was more than happy to fall in with the Wizard’s schedule which was quickly beginning to take shape as he continued to study and scribble on the copy I had bought for us.

As we sat there and casually watched the first acts take to the main stage, I listened to the Wizard tell me about the grief he experienced by way of being a supply teacher in Hemel Hempstead. He made it sound bad enough that no sane person would ever wish to contemplate taking it up, cataloguing in bitter detail a whole series of incidents involving aggressive pupils and their even more aggressive parents who would often come very close to assaulting school staff over perceived injustices inflicted on their children. He painted a very bleak picture indeed, it made me feel somewhat relieved that I had not followed through on the second thoughts I’d once had over staying at Wisdom Books in the mid 90s. If I had thrown in the towel at that point, virtually my only option would have been to try to get some teaching qualifications and thus finally make use of my 2:1 BA Hons degree in History which I had got from Swansea University back in 1983, something  which at the time I was quite rightly extremely proud of. But after listening to the Wizard I doubted if I would have been able to last more than five minutes in front of a class full of kids so it was probably just as well I’d stayed at Wisdom Books, even if I had slowly but surely gone precisely nowhere in terms of having any kind of meaningful career.

Similarly negative views were expressed by the Wizard on a whole range of other subjects, particularly when he talked about Buddhism and the contemporary Buddhist scene in the West. This was something which he had intimate knowledge of, having been a serious practitioner for the best part of the last 25 years, during the course of which he had received countless teachings and been on loads of meditation retreats. The Wizard’s particular area of interest were the esoteric tantric Buddhist teachings of Tibet, ones which appeared to be full of magic and mystery, taught and explained by masters whose traditions stretched back many centuries in unbroken lineages from that snowy land beyond the Himalayas. In the past, especially when it had been confined to Tibet, the sacred knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism had been passed down from master to disciple under conditions of the utmost secrecy. On the part of the student it had involved the undertaking of many religious vows and commitments, often through participation in long, complex rituals and initiations. Over the last 30 or 40 years things had radically changed in that regard however, due in no small part to the invasion of Tibet in the early 1950s by the Chinese Communists and the subsequent decimation of Tibetan Buddhism during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, undertaken by cadres of Chairman Mao’s Red Army. It had resulted in many of Tibet’s greatest masters taking flight into exile, including of course His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and many of them had subsequently been very successful in establishing Tibetan Buddhist centres and monasteries both in India and the West.

Taking advantage of this unique opportunity, the Wizard himself had received over the years a great many of these esoteric Tibetan Buddhist initiations, the ultimate aim of which was nothing less than complete spiritual enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. An enlightenment bringing liberation from all forms of suffering, the discontinuation of the karmic wheel of cause and effect, which according to the teachings of all Buddhist traditions was the source of our problems. The main difficulty which the Wizard was now encountering in his spiritual path was to do with gaining access to the man who had been his main Tibetan Buddhist teacher for at least the last 20 years or so. This master was based in Italy where he had established a community many years ago, gradually becoming more and more well known to an audience of people hungry to find deeper meaning in their lives. According to the Wizard, his master now attracted a large number of wealthy students who made great demands on his time and attention. This had resulted in long term students and those who were less well off, students such as the Wizard in other words, being pushed further and further to the edge of the master’s inner circle, and it was apparent to me as I listened to him that the Wizard was beginning to feel the chill.

On top of all this the Wizard had recently heard that his master was now in the process of relocating to an island off the coast of Venezuala in South America and establishing a community there. If that did indeed come to pass he would be more or less completely cut out of the deal, because being able to participate in such kind of an undertaking would require spending serious amounts of bread and as far as the Wizard was concerned it was bread he simply did not have. Therefore his chances were pretty much zilch in regard to being able to go over to join the master and his disciples in this newly proposed great adventure. It was clear to me that the Wizard was bitter over how the cards had fallen, that he was pig sick over the fact his own spiritual development might now remain stunted for some considerable number of lifetimes due to the stream of spiritual transmissions and instructions received direct from his master drying up.

The problems which the Wizard was encountering were in fact not that uncommon as far as the Tibetan Buddhist scene in the West was concerned, where issues of time with masters could be a source of a lot of pain and frustration for people. In many of these spiritual communities what often happened was that there was the development of an inner circle around a teacher, then access for those outside that circle became fiercely guarded by those who were in on the deal. For students who were not part of this inner core there could be a lot of heartache and confusion, as a result of which considerable numbers of people had bummed out of the Tibetan Buddhist scene completely. To my mind, as someone who had serviced the Buddhist community for over 15 years, the whole thing was a process which still had a long way to evolve before it got in tune with how it supposedly might have been 2500 years ago, when The Buddha wandered the plains of North India dispensing his teachings on how to lead your life in the best possible way.

After we had each eaten a round of sandwiches and taken in a few of those opening acts on the main stage we were ready to split for a while. Whilst the Wizard made his way over to The Big Top I hung around outside in order to catch the set of Billy Bragg, something which had produced a look of consternation on the face of the Wizard who didn’t rate him at all. Really wish that I hadn’t bothered to stay because I found Billy Bragg crushingly dull and I was more than a little staggered at just how he had been able to maintain what was by all accounts a very successful career in the music business for so long. Toward the end of his set I had to bail out due to intense boredom and go across to The Big Top to check out how the Wizard was getting on. I just about managed to squeeze into the completely packed tent before the skies opened to give everyone who was not under cover a complete and utter soaking. It took me a good long time to spot the Wizard but there he was, sitting right in the middle of the tent with his two litre plastic bottle of water stood on the ground in front of him.

He and a lot of other people were enjoying the music of a Canadian singer called Laura Viers who sounded pretty good and I suddenly realised just how great it must have been to be talented enough for people to fly you halfway across the world and then pay for you to play. By the time Laura Viers had finished her set the weather had begun to clear again, causing an exodus from The Big Top which enabled me to gingerly pick my way through the people still seated and meet up again with the Wizard. We both acknowledged the quality of the songs we just heard from Laura Viers before the Wizard rolled his eyes and gave me a knowing look when I told him just how bad Billy Bragg had been. We hung around there to chew the fat for a little longer, which mainly entailed me listening to further beefs the Wizard had over the current Buddhist scene he was involved in, along with one or two other things he didn’t like as well.

After a while we slowly made our way out of The Big Top and took a stroll around the food stalls where all manner of stuff was available to buy. Despite the fact I had already eaten most of my sandwiches and also all of my mum’s fruitcake after sharing half of it with the Wizard, I was still feeling pretty hungry and now fancied something hot. Guess it must have been all the fresh air in the park and talking with the Wizard which had given me the extra appetite because all of a sudden I was starving. A stand selling hot roast pork seemed particularly appealing, but I resisted the temptation as I was trying to go for a couple of days without eating meat, which meant I finally bought some vegetarian noodles at 4 quid a tray and I have to say they really hit the spot. The Wizard wasn’t interested in tasting any, far less in buying something for himself because he still had sandwiches in his bag plus a couple of mini pork pies and his big bottle of water, so I just wolfed down those noodles on my own and enjoyed every single one of them. 

The rain had now eased off so we made our way back to the main stage area which was now getting pretty busy because Irish singer Christy Moore had arrived on stage and was already going down a storm with the crowd. The former member of Planxty proceeded to deliver what I have to say was an excellent set of evocative Celtic folk rock which had a bit of an edge to it in a most decidedly Republican kind of way. There were quite a few Irish flags waving in the air and much joyful dancing, along with the unmistakable signs that people were now beginning to get seriously pissed due to all the alcohol available for sale. Christy Moore left the stage to wild cheers from the crowd and next up then were The Charlatans. For some reason the Wizard and I felt that it might be worth going further into the mix of things in order for us to get into a good position to see them play their set.

This turned out not to be such a good idea because there soon started to be quite a few plastic bottles being thrown through the air over the heads of all of us in the crowd, thrown for no better reason than the fact that people were starting to get off their heads and thought it was a good laugh. A couple of the bottles were thrown with such force they burst on landing and it was difficult to know if it was piss, beer or something else inside of them, which didn’t exactly make you feel relaxed. Things were compounded by the fact that it suddenly began to rain again which meant quite a lot of umbrellas went up and that was enough to bring on another serious bout of bottle throwing from the piss heads at the back, being their not so polite way of telling people to put them back down.

By the time The Charlatans came on stage things had got decidedly raucous, feeling to me like it was getting close to being a bit of a sticky situation with no easy exit being immediately apparent. All the discomfort might have been worth it if The Charlatans had turned out to be any good but the sad fact of the matter was they were extremely ordinary, ordinary to the point of being downright awful in fact. It soon became obvious that their lead singer Tim Burgess had little in the way of charisma, whilst what the rest of the group came up with was just a mixture of musical sludge which barely rose above the level of what you might find played in only a half decent pub. Naturally they went down a storm with the less discriminating elements of the crowd but the look on the face of the Wizard left me in no doubt that he was as unimpressed with The Charlatans as I was so we therefore we decided to bite the bullet and get the hell out of there, away from the turgid noise and those flying bottles which were possibly full of piss.

Our early departure from seeing The Charlatans set on the Main Stage meant we walked back to The Big Top where we were able to stand in relative comfort and await the appearance of the American singer and songwriter John Prine. He was one of the acts that the Wizard had been particularly looking forward to see and as the waiting time dragged on the tent became pretty packed. It was clear the vast majority of people there were very committed John Prine fans who were working themselves into quite a considerable state of excitement over his imminent appearance. The Wizard told me that John Prine indeed had a loyal and fanatical cult following in the UK which meant that whenever he made an occasional trip over here from the USA his shows were sold out well in advance. The feverish degree of anticipation had to be sustained for quite some time due to there being a long delay in him taking the stage, but when he eventually appeared he was given an ecstatic reception to which he responded with an excellent set which was as tight as a nut. It was no surprise he went down a storm because he gave us a sustained dose of top quality music, the likes of which you don’t get to hear that often. The Wizard was knocked out by John Prine as well, which meant we were both full of enthusiasm when we left The Big Top to make our way back to the main stage area in what was now the early evening sunshine. We were both looking forward to the arrival of Counting Crows who of course were the main support act for The Fleadh headliner Bob Dylan!

The Wizard and I carefully avoided the numerous people who were staggering around the edges of the large crowd and clearly the worse for wear, with it being blindingly obvious the beer tents were doing more than pretty good business. We made our way slowly but surely further in, finally getting to a position which was about two thirds of the way back from the front of the stage and with a good view since we were standing on a slight incline. If it had been solely down to me I would have continued to go in a bit more, but by this stage in the proceedings the Wizard was beginning to feel tired and he had put his big bottle of water down on the ground as a sign that he would not be moving from where he was for the rest of the evening. For me I knew that for the moment, where we were was fine for the likes of Counting Crows, but when it came to Bob I was going to have to make other arrangements.

When they came on and began their set it soon became apparent that Counting Crows were something of a different proposition live than what they were on record. Since buying the Best Of The Counting Crows from Mr CD in Soho I had got quite into them, but playing live they seemed to overcook things to an almost ridiculous degree. Front man Adam Durvitz proved to be a major irritant to both me and the Wizard with his over the top showman histrionics which stretched out some of their songs to interminable lengths. At the end of the set from Counting Crows which seemed to last ages, both of us just about gave them the benefit of the doubt because they did at least have a reasonable amount of good, catchy songs, which was more than what could have been said about a lot of the other artists we had seen that day, take a bow Billy Bragg and The Charlatans.

The departure from the stage of Counting Crows was the point where the Wizard and I had to take our leave of each other. This self proclaimed tantric wizard from Hemel Hempstead had been my companion pretty much throughout the whole of The Fleadh so far, but he was happy staying where he was in order to see Bob, whilst I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had to get closer to the action, to take the risk of moving further into the festival crowd which was by now in places getting more than a little boisterous. It was a tough decision because I had rather enjoyed the Wizard’s company during the course of the day and I had been pleasantly surprised at how quickly the time had passed since we’d walked through the entrance to The Fleadh over eight hours ago just before midday. It had been good to have at last nearly seen Bob with him, especially after the fiasco over his Portsmouth ticket four years ago in September 2000 which had left a little bit of a bad taste in our mouths. There was no doubt I would have appreciated chatting with him through the course of Bob’s set as well, but I knew that if I had stayed where I was I would have only felt knocked out loaded for not having made the effort to get as close to Bob as I possibly could, so I therefore went in.

Things soon changed considerably once I had left the Wizard and made my way into the thick of it. On the one hand there seemed to be more people who were seriously the worse for wear from having consumed too much alcohol, on the other hand there also now appeared to be a lot of people who had come to The Fleadh primarily to see Bob and I was therefore in amongst his fans. Eventually I found I could only progress so far before hitting a wall of people so compact that it really would have required me to have been pretty seriously fired up and fearless of the consequences to have forced my way through any further. Fired up or fucked up it probably wouldn’t have made much difference. I therefore settled for staying where I was, which in fact was actually pretty good considering the circumstances, but it was a very tightly packed crowd and any false moves by anyone might well indeed have had serious side effects in respect of tipping a few people over. It was a bit of a survival of the fittest situation at this stage of the game, there were a lot of people now crammed together who must have been starting to feel the strain of the day, despite the fact they were all still excited at the prospect of soon being able to see Bob Dylan play live.

There was now a real sense of expectation in the air as daylight began to fade, with all the usual equipment of Bob and the boys being wheeled out onto the stage and put into place. There were of course the usual faces up there, the young Oriental guy was busy tuning guitars, going round flicking on the switches and carefully placing Bob’s Oscar on one of the amps. Then there was also the huge guy with the beard and pony tail who was looking very concentrated and standing to the left hand side of the stage. The longer all this went on, the more the natural light of the day became transformed into the electric darkness of evening as everything edged closer and closer to show time. It was a scene reminiscent of when I had gone to my last Fleadh in 1993, the one when Bob had again been headliner and supported by Van Morrison. It seemed to me this kind of magic only ever happened just before the arrival of Bob Dylan to play his songs on stage right in front of a crowd of thousands. It was worth it in other words, despite the pain which might be required for you to go through in order to get there; that was just the price you had to pay. The huge guy with the beard and the pony tail soon lit a whole stack of Nagchampa incense with a blow torch and put the burning sticks of joss in buckets at the back of the stage. Sure enough that familiar sweet fragrance was soon billowing out in clouds over the front rows of the festival crowd at The Fleadh in a way which made the whole thing feel really quite sensational.

There was no doubt we were now getting very close to show time and whilst my eyes were fixed on the proceedings going on up on the stage my heart was beginning to beat just that little bit faster. Suddenly the huge guy with the beard and the pony tail made that familiar announcement of introduction – “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan!” – before Bob and the boys quickly appeared as if from out of nowhere. They were all dressed in black suits with Bob also wearing a black Stetson hat, however as I looked more closely I realised that there was another figure up there with them. After a moment or two trying to figure out what was going on I realised it was none other than Ronnie Wood from The Rolling Stones. It was great see him there, I knew he and Bob were close friends and since he was coming out with Bob right at the beginning of things there seemed to be a strong possibility that he was going to play the whole show as a new recruit in Bob’s band. It would be the first time since 1996 such a thing would have happened, when Ronnie joined Bob and the boys he had back then to play a 9 song set together at The Prince’s Trust concert in Hyde Park, a set which had included a very rare performance of Bob’s mid 70s Seven Days which Ronnie had covered on his generally well regarded Gimme Some Neck album.

The set got off to a great start as the guys hit the ground running with Down Along the Cove a song in which it seemed Bob and the boys allowed Ronnie time to find his feet in a hugely enjoyable take of this song from John Wesley Harding. It was a version which on this occasion, by way of introduction to the show, rambled on for a good 7 or 8 minutes. Bob cut a mesmerising figure on the right hand side of the stage standing behind his electric piano dressed in black, directing things with full attention and closely watching new guitarist Stu Kimball, just like he had a couple of nights ago when I had seen them in Cardiff. Whilst it was somewhat natural that with Ronnie Wood on stage the sound was not going to be as tight as usual, there was never any chance of things becoming a shambles, far from it, because the band were just way too good for that to ever happen.

In fact it did not seem to be long before the band found its groove now that it had an additional guitarist for the night, who during the course of the set did indeed make himself a necessary and most welcome component. On the whole this meant the set was as coherent and as entertaining as any of the other ones I had seen Bob and the boys perform in their continuing pursuit of the highest standards of musical excellence on their Never Ending Tour. After the superb Down Along the Cove came a perfectly serviceable It’s All Over Now Baby Blue which saw Ron Wood working on his feet to the extent that by the time it got to the end of the song he had taken off the long black coat he was wearing when he had walked on stage. He had simply got down to business, displayed a fine example of work in action as he helped steer the course of the band through songs both new and old, various songs from out of the depths of Bob’s canon such as Lonesome Day Blues, Desolation Row and Maggie’s Farm.

It was around the time of Seeing the Real You at Last, song number six in the set and, by the way, a much better version than when it had opened the Cardiff show just a couple of nights before, that I began to get seriously distracted by a couple of aggressive drunken revellers who had barged their way through the crowd from the back, totally oblivious to the grief they were causing the people who were around them. They were wrestling with each other whilst we were all trying to watch the show, then they were pushing people who complained at them for being such a pair of drunken assholes who were totally screwing things up for everyone. It got to the point where it became difficult to concentrate on Bob, Ron and the rest of the boys, as the stupid pair of bastards kept falling around all over the place and crashing into people. When they slammed into me I was so pissed off I instinctively pushed them back, told them in no uncertain terms that people were there to see Bob and not to be disturbed by them with their pathetic loutish behaviour. Guess it would have been better if I had just kept my mouth shut because they then began getting up close and personal, talking complete and utter nonsense to me, leaning into me with enough force to make it very difficult for me to keep my balance and to stop from falling over. It might well have been the case they were just looking for a little bit of fisticuffs to make their day, so I knew I had to be very careful.

This unfortunate state of affairs went on for quite a while, both of them holding on to each other, swaying against me as well as other people close by and generally causing a most unpleasant experience for everyone. As I stood there trying my best to keep my concentration on what was happening on the stage I began to have bleak visions of things turning very nasty, of the two pissed up thugs beating the shit out of me and then leaving me on the deck in the middle of the crowd covered from head to toe in mud. All the while Bob would be up there on the stage doing his thing with Ronnie Wood and the boys, totally oblivious to what was going on down below. In other words the last thing which would happen was Bob jumping into the crowd to save me. It was completely and utterly useless for me to think that he would provide any form of protection and for a split second it gave me a brief but profound insight into the potential dangers involved in me continuing to carry on seeing him whatever the circumstances, whenever he was back in the country. Put bluntly, if situations such as this one turned out to be bad and led to me getting my teeth kicked in, rammed right down my fucking throat, there really would  be no one else to blame but myself. Certainly it was not going to be Bob’s problem, or Ronnie’s. It made me question when was I going to be able to truly stand alone, let those wild winds of life blast over my face without Bob by my side, especially when it was obvious that in reality he wasn’t by my side at all!

Eventually by the time Highway 61 Revisited came along the drunks had got bored of me and their surroundings, staggering off to inflict their misery somewhere else whilst at the same time managing to aggressively push their way through the crowd by way of doing so. To a certain extent the damage had been done for me as far as getting 100% satisfaction from the show was concerned. Bob’s performances of Positively 4th Street, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum and High Water more or less passed me by, leaving me feeling more than a little bummed out over how such a state of affairs had come to pass. It was only after those selfish pricks had gone that I was able to close my eyes and concentrate on the music, searching hard for some of that life giving power I had seemingly so effortlessly got from Bob and the boys just a couple of nights ago in Cardiff. It was just as well it was now the part of the show that seemed to reap the greatest dividends from having Ron Wood in the band for the night. There was no doubt that he nicely beefed up the sound by adding those characteristic licks, chops and riffs that only a fully paid up member of The Rolling Stones was able to produce when playing on numbers such as Honest with Me and the set closer Summer Days, both of which were pretty tremendous. There was also an added layer of subtlety provided by him for the quietly stunning versions of both Not Dark Yet from Time Out of Mind and Boots of Spanish Leather from the early 60s The Times They Are A Changin’,all of which went a long way to providing me with some form of solace after my encounter with those pissed up idiots.

After the end of Summer Days when Bob, the boys and now Ronnie Wood lined up in The Formation, I was surprised to see they had been on stage for nearly two hours. The stark fact of the matter was a lot of that time for me had been taken up with trying to accommodate the presence of those two drunken assholes, something which in the final analysis I had singularly failed to do whilst retaining any peace of mind. Oh well, it was The Fleadh after all, a festival in which a lot of people had been drinking all day and ending up totally pissed in the process, so what was I expecting exactly? There was a single encore of Like a Rolling Stone then it was all over with Bob and the rest of the boys slowly walking off stage whilst a sea of outstretched arms were waving in the air behind them. Right at the last moment Ron Wood grabbed the microphone from the stand in the centre of the stage and pointing towards Bob said to everyone “The man with the hat! The man with the hat! He should come to these shores more often!” Then he caught up with the rest of the band and put his arm around Bob before they all disappeared behind the back drop curtain with the Eye of Integrity emblazoned on it, no doubt on their way to have some serious fun.

As soon as the show was over the lights from the stage were turned on and shone bright into the crowd as the mass exodus from The Fleadh now began in earnest. Naturally I was feeling pretty tired from all the walking around and standing up in the open air all day, but I was more or less in reasonable shape. Inevitable problems with the tube at Finsbury Park meant I had to get a bus from Manor House to Seven Sisters and then pick up the Victoria Line back to Walthamstow from there before driving back to Woodford. Not too much of an inconvenience if truth be told. At the time of course I had no way of knowing how the Wizard had got on after I left him, but when he called me a couple of days later at Wisdom Books he told me that he had been suitably impressed with Bob’s performance and that along with John Prine his had been the best set of the day. The Wizard then proceeded to tell me that after I had left him to go further into the crowd, he had got to talking with two women who were standing next to him and drinking grappa which they then began to ply him with. By the end of the show the Wizard said that he was completely smashed and instead of catching the Victoria Line back to Walthamstow got on the Piccadilly line, where he promptly fell asleep and ended up going to Heathrow. 

The Wizard said that he eventually got back to Hemel Hempstead in the early hours of Monday morning after just about managing to catch the last tube back to Walthamstow from the centre of town around midnight and where he then slept off the effects of the grappa in the back seat of his car. It all seemed a bit of a far-fetched tale to me, the kind of story which only the Wizard would come up with. Things didn’t really add up, it was all just a bit too convenient how the action with the women happened as soon as I left the scene, and the only conclusion I could draw was that the Wizard was trying to pull a fast one and being rather shameless about it as well. I told him he should have known better than coming up with such bullshit but he just laughed it off in a way which indicated it did not really matter whether I believed him or not. Well, that was the Wizard for you, unpredictable to the very last, and maybe deep down he really did know how to roll with the punches.

Setlist Fleadh Finsbury Park, London 20th June 2004 –

Down Along the Cove
It’s All Over Now Baby Blue
Lonesome Day Blues
Maggie’s Farm
Desolation Row
Seeing the Real You at Last
Positively 4th Street
Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum
High Water
Highway 61 Revisited
Not Dark Yet
Honest with Me
Boots of Spanish Leather
Summer Days
Like a Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan Live: Cardiff International Arena, June 2004

Bob Dylan Live: Gettin’ My Tickets & Bein’ Burglarized