Love minus zero

In Castlecary I caught a program on Dylan on TV and listened how people described him. They showed The Newport Festival, The Madhouse (a Pinteresque play in which Dylan performed the lead role in Britain) and snatches of footage not seen before.
This morning in Birmingham Graham got me onto BBC Music where they feature a lot of Dylan's music and even his own radio programme. http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/bobdylan/tvradio/
He sang: 'My love she speaks in silence...with no ideals of violence... at dime stores and gas stations people talk about situations...the night blows cold and rainy my love sits at my window like a raven with a broken wing...' (from Love Minus Zero). Images flow like water in Bob Dylan's songs and remain in the mindbanks of listeners for a life time. They once asked him how he remembers all his songs and he said, a song walks by itself: it is like a footpath in a field, once you find it again you just walk along the path. But he must have an amazing memory!
When he received an honoury doctorate degree for his contribution to the English language at a university graduation he wrote the song, ' The Locusts sang' describing how he wanted to get out of that stuffy place and how the locusts the dark hills of Dakota were calling him away. He described the pomp and circumstance of the academic occasion as follows: 'when I stepped up to the stage to pick up my degree, the man next to me, his head was exploding, I was praying the pieces wouldn't fall on me!'
He sings about ' Hazel, with your dirty brown hair, I would want to be seen with you anywhere!' and then of another love of his life, ' You angel you, I've got you under my skin'.
When Nola and I were invited onto the creative team of Youth For Christ in Johannesburg (in our young days!) we were asked to produce a night of Dylan's music because it became public knowledge that Dylans was now saved and he produced Gospel albums for Atlantic Records. So we did a lot of research and watched some old movies of him and The Band with Robbie Robertson touring through America and we read interview after interview in music magazines like Rolling Stone in libraries (there was no internet in those days to surf around) and put together a one and a half hour programme that we performed in the Old Rosebank Cinema in Orange Grove that became a church (Reg Bendixon, I think was the pastor's name). YFC posted the following on the Bill Board outside the building: ' Dylan Sat 7pm'
By the time we got there we couldn't get in! The place was jam-packed! In fact the stage was full of teenagers and we hardly had space to stand when performing. They were sitting around our feet. I had special front teeth made for the occassion and wore a curly wig and sunglasses and a white hat, but I couldn't sing with the false teeth over my own teeth, so I did without it.
They had to turn many people away - they all thought it was the real Dylan. At the back of the hall the director of the avant garde Market Theatre, Mannie Mannim, stood there and watched the whole performance. Afterwards he squeezed into the dressing-come-prayer-room and introduced himself and asked if we could come and perform it at his theatre. The rest is history! We performed it for the next two years around the county with our own band, The Road Band, and had tours up and down the country, to Durban, Cape Town, Kimberley! Aje our first born son grew up on stage in a way! He had his own little guitar, cowboy hat and boots. (When I worked for Pacofs as an actor he and Nola also toured with me from town to town and sat on stage while I performed!)
One night a man came backstage in the Market Theatre after a performance with tears streaming down his cheeks saying, ' I want to know this Jesus you are singing about!' We prayed with him. This happened everywhere we performed the show. We didn't make money and hardly covered cost, but we covered a lot of ground and reached a lot of people throughout our country. The show was entitled, ' Forever Young' and here are some of the words I remember:
'May God bless and keep you always, may your wishes all come true, may you always do for others and my others do for you, may you build a stairway to the stars and climb on every wrung, and may you stay for every young!'
When they asked Dylan about his faith when he no longer produced Gospel albums he said, 'I've said everything I wanted to say in those albums! I'm a song writer. I write songs. If you want to know what I believe, just listen to my songs!' At one live concert a few years ago he opened the evening with these words, 'Everyone has a hero. My hero is Jesus Christ!' and then sang ' You gotta serve somebody!'
A good idea would be to listen to his Gospel music and find out what he believes and then make up your own mind. He never minces his words - not even when he explains how to get saved!