Bob Dylan
In America a few years ago, Dave Stewart, of the Eurhythmics, said to Dylan that the next time he was in London he should drop by his recording studio in Crouch End. Dylan, at a loose end one afternoon, decided to take him up on it and asked a taxi driver to take him to Crouch End Hill. With the bewildering array of streets in the area all named for various permutations of Crouch, End and Hill, the cabbie accidentally dropped him off at the right number but in an adjoining road. "Dylan knocked at the front door and asked the woman who answered if Dave was in. As it happened, her husband was also called Dave, so she said: "No, he's out on a call at the moment", and Bob said he'd wait. Twenty minutes later, Dave - the plumber, not the rock star - returned and asked the missus whether there were any messages. "No", she said, " but Bob Dylan's in the living room having a cup of tea". "It's a sweet image, compounded by the rumour a couple of years later that Dylan had been seen with local estate agents looking for a house in the area. There are worse ways to end up than enjoying a quiet life in suburban London, dispensing advice over the fence to the next door neighbour on how to keep your lawn free of grass clippings ("The answer, my friend, is mowing in the wind"). Maybe, as he contemplates a long and uncertain health treatment, it has even more appeal. As he wrote in one of his most famous couplets, "Ah, but I was so much older then/I'm younger than that now". He's older than that now. From The Sunday Telegraph of June 1 or June 8 1997. |