People who read my posts will know my favourite artist is Bob Dylan. Well people who read my posts are wrong, It’s actually Tom Paxton. There’s no arguing Dylan’s words in my mind cannot be surpassed, but I was asked my for my favourite artist not their work.
It comes across a little in the recent movie “A Complete Unknown” in which Timothee Chalomet did an excellent job of portraying Dylan, that apart from Dylan being a genius, he wasn’t the nicest of people. I must add a caveat though, the amount of fame Dylan encountered was frightening and distanced him from his audience. I know I was shunned By Dylan myself once, when I had a back stage pass at one of his performances. I had made him a gift, but he didn’t want to see me. He stayed away whilst we talked to George Harrison and Geoff Lynn, along with Dylan and Roy Orbison, they were then members of the super group The Traveling Wilburys
Tom Paxton on the other hand is always willing to meet his audience, he comes across as a friendly and loving person. He has a similar background to Dylan in folk and protest songs, but his words don’t quite have the depth, meaning and imagery, but still beautiful nonetheless. One of my treasured possessions is an album Tom signed for me at the Opollo Theatre in London, I was working there with a group of other men including my brother, none of whom would go with me. to the show. Tom sighed the album for me as requested “With Love To Ann” Ann being my wife of course. For all my love of Dylan’s work, Tom Paxton’s song “ When Annie Took Me Home, has deep meaning for me.

“Sat me there in her chair, ran her fingers through my hair talk of Heaven, I’ve been there, when Annie took me home”.

From “When Annie Took Me Home” Tom Paxton.

Dylan,

He walks onto the stage in a sailers hat, with all the elegance of a swaggering cat.

This strange little man with curled hair all tangled, his guitar in hand, his harmonica holder new fangled.

He strums that guitar then the words start to come, all in this strange voice obnoxious to some.

Then to another world I am transported, with dream like images my mind danced and cavorted.

Those early days of protest I think just a game, all designed for attention, and then to gain fame.

Later that music he’d shun and mock. then his true self he’d start to unlock.

Songs of love, dreamscapes and societal wrongs, backed by electronics and with motorpsychic songs.

The old folk guard did reject this new style, for fame to return it took quite a while.

When fame did return it returned with such force, to get out of the limelight he steered a new course.

He found Christianity this curly headed Jewish man, his electric audience abandoned almost to a man.

Time passed on this peculiar new course, his marriage to the beautiful Sara ends in divorce.

The songs that followed full of bitterness and vitriol, I find perversely the most beautiful of all.

   Of course this is only a potted history and only my opinion.

There were of course stages within the stages all too numerous to mention.

All words By Meadowhead Bard, except excerpt from Annie Took Me Home, by Tom Paxton.