Bob Dylan Live: Docklands Arena London 12th May 2002

This show is from 2002 when I went down the road in my home town to see Bob Dylan play another show at the now long defunct London Docklands Arena on May 12th when he was touring the UK on another leg of his Never Ending Tour. It was around nine months after his Love & Theft album which was released on September 11th 2001, and the show features a number of songs from it which I was hearing him perform live for the very first time.

So the first night with Bob down at the London Docklands Arena had been a good one but what would the second one hold in store? When I woke up the following morning I was pretty tired from the night before. The excitement of seeing Bob again, along with the mild stress of taking along Duncan “Dunc” Hutson, where all the usual thoughts manifest of whether or not a first timer to Bob is going to enjoy themselves or simply think the whole thing is a load of old bollox had taken their toll. The consequence of this was that I felt every inch of my 40 years of age when I finally hauled myself out of bed. The late night walk back to Canary Wharf through the rain the night before had also put me through my paces, as well as the drinking both during and after the concert by way of three plastic bottles of Carlsberg followed by a late night pint of very tasty Grolsch. So all in all my energy levels were not at their greatest.

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Bob Dylan Live: Docklands Arena London 11th May 2002

This show is from 2002 when I went down the road in my home town to see Bob Dylan play a show at the now long defunct London Docklands Arena on May 11th when he was touring the UK on another leg of his Never Ending Tour. It was around nine months after his Love & Theft album which was released on September 11th 2001, and the show features a number of songs from it which I was hearing him perform live for the very first time.

It’s now well over a month since Bob Dylan’s two shows in Docklands, May 11^th & 12^th 2002. The time between seeing the man and writing my thoughts down is getting longer as the years go by, which makes me ask, are the fires still burning when it comes to Bob? Well yes, I have to say they are. After seeing the shows I had always intended to write something, and I guess it has just been laziness which has stopped me from doing so. The inspiration has been there though, make no mistake about that. Make no mistake partner or else we’ll just have to go round the back and settle this thing with a pair of shooters. All it has needed is the final push for me to sit for a few hours and set it all down.

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Bob Dylan Live: Stirling Castle Part Two 13th July 2001

This show is from July 2001 when I went on the road up to Scotland from London to attend a show by Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan given in the grounds of Stirling Castle and who by that point was over 12 years into his Never Ending Tour. This is the Part Two of the story.

By 7 or so the sound check was over, with Bob and the boys now probably back stage having a snack or even a light meal before the show, plates of Scottish smoked salmon, maybe haggis. Things were running late, it said on the tickets the gates to the castle would open at 6.30 but we were already way past that and they still remained firmly shut. No one seemed to mind however, the setting was great, the vibe nice and peaceful, so no one was getting unduly excited or agitated that still not much was happening. We began to move forwards at around 7.15 with people on high alert for any possible queue jumpers who might just try to barge in as we slowly made our way towards the castle gates. There was none of that thankfully, which meant that in a stop start kind of way we slowly got closer and closer to the inside of the castle, a steady but sure advance to get within those walls. Finally we reached the castle gates and it was with more than a degree of high excitement that we handed over our tickets to let the stewards tear off the stubs. We were in! Now it was simply a question of taking a brisk walk up the steep incline into the castle grounds before a mad dash in order to find the best place possible to see the show.

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Bob Dylan Live: Stirling Castle Part One 13th July 2001

Really hadn’t thought I would want to write about Bob’s Stirling Castle show in July 2001. After writing up the five September 2000 shows I hadn’t done anything since then with regard to words on Bob for months and I didn’t think in the build up to Stirling the fires would be re-ignited either. However after seeing him I realised I was wrong, way wrong, that the energy was there to make me want to sit and put down on paper my impressions of the whole damn trip.

September 2000 had been special for me after all. Five Bob Dylan shows in five different cities over a period of about a week or 10 days and getting into more than one or two scrapes into the bargain. That brilliant feeling of arriving in a new town or city with the knowledge I was there to see Bob Dylan play live that evening was simply unbeatable, unbelievable and unrepeatable!!! A privilege that can only happen if you are lucky enough to have the liberty, plus a little bit of cash. This time it was different. There was only one show I was going to for a start and it also happened to be a hell of a long way from London, up in the grounds of Stirling Castle and within spitting distance of the Highlands of Scotland.

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Bob Dylan Live: London Wembley Arena 6th October 2000

This show is from October 2000 when I went on the road in the UK to attend 5 shows by Colombia recording artist Bob Dylan who by that point was over 10 years into his Never Ending Tour.

Well I got see Bob at Wembley but it was a close run thing, really was a close run thing. I was due to meet Madeleine and Ngawang, a Swedish-Tibetan couple with whom I was going, outside Wembley Park tube station at 7pm in order to give them their tickets for the show on arrival, but massive problems on the tube meant that I didn’t get to Wembley Park until 7.15 because everything was running late. There was no sign of them but I wasn’t too worried about that because it was pretty clear everyone going to the show by tube was in the same boat as far as being delayed was concerned and that it would only be a matter of time before they appeared.

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Bob Dylan Live: Portsmouth Guildhall 25th September 2000

This show is from September 2000 when I went on the road in the UK to attend 5 shows by Colombia recording artist Bob Dylan who by that point was over 10 years into his Never Ending Tour.

It was raining all day on Monday, which was the day I was due to go and see Bob Dylan in Portsmouth. I had to go to work at Wisdom Books in the morning, the small book distribution company I was co-director of, along with my colleagues Duncan “Dunc” Huston and Lee Richards. By two I was out of the office and on the road to get to my fourth Bob Dylan show within a week, after already having seen him at the Birmingham NEC, Sheffield Arena and Cardiff International Arena. I left with plenty of time to spare because I had no idea what to expect in terms of traffic on the way from London down to the south coast of England where Portsmouth was located. The M25 turned out to be pretty clear, a fluke no doubt, and within an hour I had reached the other side of Heathrow to take the junction for the A3 now heading due south. I had decided the A3 was a better way to get to Portsmouth rather than the M3 down to Southampton and then swinging across along the coast road. Dunno why, intuition I guess.

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Bob Dylan Live: Cardiff International Arena 23rd September 2000

This show is from September 2000 when I went on the road in the UK to attend 5 shows by Colombia recording artist Bob Dylan who by that point was over 10 years into his Never Ending Tour.

After Sheffield I had to get down to South Wales the next day to see Bob Dylan at the Cardiff International Arena with my old friend Huw Jones who came from the same place as me, namely Penarth, a pleasant town on the western edge of Cardiff and overlooking the Bristol Channel. Unlike me Huw had never really left, apart from a few years down in Swansea doing an apprenticeship in stained glass window making. In fact it had been in Swansea when I had first got to know him, way back in the early 80s when I was studying at the University of Swansea and from where in 1983 I emerged with a 2:1 BA Hons degree in History, something which at the time I was quite rightly extremely proud of. Huw was not studying at the university of course, but had been doing his stained glass apprenticeship down in Swansea Bay and living in a cold bedsit located in an area of town called Morriston. He used to come to the Students Union coffee lounge and play the pinball machines there night after night, and where I have to say he got to be a bit of a wizard. Due to his almost continuous presence it was not long before I started to hang out with him, along with a guy called Rik Dixon who was from Norwich and a fellow student of mine in the university. Over the course of the next few years the three of us had more than one or two high old times together, when more often than not we were under the influence of weed, hash and other assorted psychedelic drugs. But all that I guess, is a different story!

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