Leamington Letters #90: Singing the truth

10/2/2015

Photo credit: Getty Images

An email arrives overnight from Japan. It's my old friend Chris Dark, whom I last saw at a Bob concert in Hammersmith too long ago. He writes:

You’ve probably seen this, given the Bob ‘otaku’* that you are, and I tried posting this to your blog but got defeated by tech along the way. Anyway, it’s a magnificent 35 minute speech at the MusiCares benefit held just before the Grammys. You may want to share with your followers. It reads like a trailer for the next volume of ‘Chronicles’, and, I think, remarkable for its openness.

It's a good idea, because the speech is extraordinary even by Bob's standards; by turns generous and bitter, general and particular, acute and oblique.

It deserves your attention.

* in Japan, a young person who is obsessed with computers or particular aspects of popular culture to the detriment of their social skills.

8 Comments

PhilT

10/2/2015 12:31:40

Thank you. And thanks to your friend. This is amazing stuff. Wouldn't have seen it otherwise.

Rich

10/2/2015 23:42:35

It's true that this reads like a synopsis of Chronicles 2. And if it is, I cannot wait to read the final draft. As a description of what makes him tick, and an definition of what makes him great, this is excellent. He knows his music and he knows himself.

Allan

11/2/2015 03:56:53

Like this guest blogger very much. He seems to know what he's talking about!

DaveC

13/2/2015 02:17:34

Your title goes straight to the heart of it. Bob and the musicians he admires sing the truth. The songs are real, the tradition authentic and without phoniness. Just read it while listening to Shadows in the Night. Sinatra could sing it true, too. But Bob finds truth inside sentimentality, and brings it to the fore. Thanks.

Laurence link

13/2/2015 03:38:06

I think that the interesting part is his generosity to those who 'covered' his songs, including people such as Peter, Paul and Mary and Sonny & Cher. One might expect nods and more to Joan, Jimi and the Dead, even the Byrds, but this was surprising - at least to me. It shouldn't have been, of course, because Bob has embraced and enhanced almost every musical genre, even pop. "Let's do one like Prince!"

16/2/2015 02:51:29

Imagine what it would have been like to be in the audience. The word is the music is being broadcast at some stage. Hope that tHBO (?) also show the speech.

Ellie

16/2/2015 03:04:55

Highlights apparently. But which bits will they cut?

Sean

10/3/2015 10:17:17

I think he made a similar speech in '98 when he was paid $1m to play a corporate gig in Silicon Valley for Applied Materials ;)

Max Smith

European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father, grandfather and orphan. Resident in Warwick, England.

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