Tag Archives: bob dylan

Just another waste of a Tuesday night

Image: Carla Lorca

The angel didn’t come, not that I expected it to, but it didn’t, nevertheless. Angels are undeniably unreliable. Instead, I got an alcoholic Irishman who kept offering me drinks. I told him that I’d have a double gin and prune juice, and the silly paddy asked for one at the bar. They told him that they had prune juice but no gin. Every few minutes somebody came by to chat and I told them to go away because an angel might appear at any moment. They gave condescending looks as if to say, ‘angels never come out on Tuesdays’ which fucked me off because that explained why it hadn’t turned up. I scrolled my phone and Mail Online said that all angels were benefit scroungers anyway. I realised that I’d got my priorities wrong and hoped that the devil might come in its place, but it seemed that even the devil didn’t come out on a Tuesday night. I ordered a taxi and, on the way home, the driver played Bob Dylan songs which must have gone down well with the youngsters. I couldn’t help thinking of a guy I once slept with. ‘Lay, Brady, lay… lay across my big brass bed,’ but then I remembered that it was just a mattress on the floor.

Charlie / You been down to the bottom with a bad man babe

Image: Ted Russell (1961)

I have never been a Bob Dylan fan. Not that I don’t like his music, but he was always from a different era. But there are two tracks that I do like – Lay Lady Lay, and a forgotten single from 1978 called Baby Stop Crying that begins with the marvellous line, “You been down to the bottom with a bad man babe.”

Charlie showed me an image of a young Dylan on his phone. “What a handsome guy he was.”

I am reminded that Dylan may have been extremely attractive, and yes, I would have fallen in love with him, but I had once read that he was rude and obnoxious.

“He doesn’t take his clothes off when he goes to sleep, and the guy doesn’t clean his teeth, horrible breath,” a former staff member had said. And then there was Joni Mitchell who said she hated every moment of sharing the stage with him and blamed this on Dylan’s horrible breath.

I related this to Charlie, and he stared at Dylan with disappointment. “I hope that you realise how lucky you are to have me around.,” he sighed. “Not everybody is perfect like me.”