Monday, June 28, somewhere west of Milan

I'm riding on a train going West. No, honestly, I am! Don't you just hate it when writers writing about Bob Dylan write in Bob Dylan lines? And yet sometimes you just can't help it. So sod it, here I am, riding on a train, going West, from Milan to Marseilles. The long distance train's rolling through the rain . . . no, no, stop! It isn't raining at all. It's hot. The sun is . . . blistering. It's not stopped being blistering since I landed in Athens the best part of a week ago. I'm in the process of seeing seven shows on the latest leg of the Never Ending Tour, from Athens to Toulouse, hundreds of Greek, Italian and French miles down rock'n'roll, Bob Dylan style. I did think of writing a day by day account of what went on, but . . . well, sometimes, you know .

The shows have been really good. First Athens was good. Greek photographers were allowed to take pictures for two songs. Bob threw his harmonica into the crowd at the end of the show. The band soundchecked Series Of Dreams, John Jackson singing, before both shows. Second Athens Bob played Shooting Star just after a shooting star had shot across the sky - honest! He's looking clean and healthy. He's stopped drinking, completely - not even a glass of beer - and is almost smart, although the bottoms of his new stage trousers, with silver studs cascading down the seams, have been clumsily, slightly ridiculously rolled up instead of being properly shortened. It could be in affectionate homage to J. Alfred Prufrock. Then again, Suzi Pullen's still on the case.

I see Bob, briefly, backstage in Athens. I'm sitting by myself at a table and he comes out - rare event! - of his dressing room to sniff the air, and the food, and just look around for a few minutes. He walks right behind me and stops . . .

Oh, look, I don't want to dwell on this gossipy stuff. Funny thing is that I'd almost bought him a little present earlier in the day. I'd seen this book in a shop in Omonia Square. It was a volume of lyrics to Om Kalsoum's songs - Egyptian words, rendered in Greek - but it also had a bunch of scratchy, blurry photos of Om Kalsoum, on stage, off stage, that I thought Bob might like to look at. But for some reason I didn't buy it. Later, I wished I had. There was Bob, standing right next to me, sniffing the warm Greek air. wearing a nice green denim jacket and light brown 1964-style suede boots, and there was I, empty-handed . . .

In Naples, a couple of nights later, Bob's playing in a circus tent, a big top. It's a neat setting but a pretty thin crowd. The three Italian shows haven't, it seems, sold very well. True, they haven't been very well publicised, but it could be that the frequency with which Bob Dylan has been coming around recently is beginning to take its toll on his audiences' enthusiasm. It's inevitable, really, isn't it, and somewhat disconcerting a truth for us all. The Italian promoter stands to lose a lot of money on these shows. Bob doesn't come cheap and when the promoter discovers that only around 1,000 tickets have been sold for each of the Naples, Pisa and Milan shows, the morose fellow declares that it's positively the last time he'll be bringing Bob to Italy. So desperate is he to shift some more tickets that two days before the Naples show, he faxes Greece, pleading with Bob to do some press interviews to help whip up some punter enthusiasm. Astonishingly, the following day, three incredulous Italian journalists get phone calls from Bob, who's willing to talk about anything they want him to talk about.

Hmmm. Maybe I should fax through to tell him that Telegraph subscriptions are tailing off disastrously and that it would really be helpful if he could give me a call and talk about anything he wants to, and I want to, for, oh, a couple of days or so . . .

In Naples, Bob sings I Believe In You with extraordinary passion, and lets Mr Tambourine Man go dancing on for ages at the end, searching for its swirling essence in minor cadences, harmonica chiming amid magical guitar mayhem. Naples is a great show. One of the 10 best shows I've seen. Maybe one of the six best. Four best? Do you play this silly game too? Barcelona 1984 is elbowing Meadowlands '86 for the lead while one of the early 1988 Jones Beach shows tries to push its way through on the rails and here comes Paris 1990 with a late run . . .

In Pisa, the following night, I'm running a little late, but not too late. I swerve sweetly into the historic Piazza dei Cavalieri, and there's that unmistakable figure, head tilted slightly skywards, shoulders slightly hunched, knees bent, perfectly defined muscles rippling in his bare arms and legs . . .

The statue's been there for three hundred-odd years. There's no sign of Bob. That's probably because the show's been shifted to the Campo Sportivo, a couple of miles away. It's the local athletics track and it's a balmy Sunday evening out for the locals. The interviews have helped, perhaps, but there can't be more than 1,400 people here, if that. The promoter's looking ever more gloomy.

Speaking of gloom, I find myself wondering if a potentially blubsome Bob might be moved to play some "thinking of Suze" songs - Tomorrow Is A Long Time, perhaps - for was it not the artistic promises of Pisa that Suze Rotolo preferred to being with Bob all those years ago? He doesn't, of course. He sings Lay Lady Lay, just like he did on Nashville Skyline. Lay Lady Lay, Bob. I remember you playing that song in Barcelona in 1984 . . .

The next night, the crowd in Milan are just fantastic, wildly enthusiastic, 100 per cent committed, just great, and suddenly, there's Bob with the greatest opening sequence of songs I've probably ever seen - bam, bam, bam, bam, bam - Stuck Inside Of Mobile! Wow. Waaaooow!!! It's terrific, impassioned, spine-tingling. It's the archetypal version! He's feeding off the crowd's frenzy and in turn the crowd are going crazier and crazier. It's quite extraordinary, it's totally wild and then, after the fourth, or maybe the fifth, song, the magic suddenly, mysteriously dissolves, and the Milan show becomes like any other of these shows. Good. Really good. But, oh my, those first 20 minutes . . .

That was last night. Today, the train I'm riding rocks and reels and rolls on, smoking down the tracks (well, OK, not exactly smoking), taking me, and all of my well taken care of memories, to France.

Monday, June 28, Marseilles

"We lived an adventurous life, without complications. We screwed women. We drank. We ate. Nothing else. At first, Dylan was really surprised at it all, but soon it seemed he liked it. The whole came to mean something to him, especially Marseilles. He even wanted to write a song about the place. I told him not to. Structurally, it couldn't work. As we often slept in the same bed because he was afraid to sleep alone, I could hear him trying to find a rhyme for "Marseilles". I told him to think of something else."

Dylan had arrived at the house of painter David Oppenheim, whose work was used on the back cover of Blood On The Tracks, in early May, 1975, "completely despairing, isolated, lost, confused . . . he was having problems with his wife. She was supposed to have come with him but she hadn't arrived. He phoned her every day." He spent six weeks with Oppenheim, and then he went home, as alone as he'd been the night he arrived, but somehow different, changed, renewed.

Eighty-four years earlier, a young woman arrived early at the Hospital of the Immaculate Conception in Marseilles, to visit her brother. He wasn't yet awake, so she stood by his bed, watching him as he slept, wondering how anyone could go on living and yet look so near to death . . .

"His right arm was now completely useless and paralysis was beginning to gain his left; a slight nervous twitch was perceptible in his leg, and his left eye was never more than half open. In no position could his wracked body find ease or rest. Then a new and agonising treatment was tried, which seemed a senseless torture for an unfortunate man who could, in any case, not recover. Yet the treatment served to fill the day and to fan his waning hope. Each morning an electric apparatus was brought into his ward and the operator set to work on his right arm for a quarter of an hour. During the treatment, his hand made certain nervous, spasmodic movements, galvanised automatically into activity by the electricity, but when the current was switched off, it fell back again into helpless immobility. All he then felt was violent pain in the arm and hand, but no more capacity for movement. Nevertheless, he would endure anything in the hope of staving off the threat of total paralysis, for he still dreamed of recovering enough to make a journey. He would look out of the window at the clear, beautiful sky above Marseilles, and in his imagination see the Mediterranean, with all the drunken ships ready to set their magic, swirling sails for distant lands. But there was no ship waiting for him."

It's a warm, slightly humid, early evening in Marseilles. I walk down to the waterfront of the old port for supper. Spying a small Moroccan restaurant, I dip my head inside. Apart from a couple who're dining by candlelight, looking out on to the water, I'm the only customer. I choose a low-level Moroccan table and order a couscous. While I'm waiting for it, I look around at the North African furnishings and decorations, all warm red tapestries and brightly polished brasswork, and somewhere I think I hear music playing. Then the familiar sounds of an unmistakable voice begin to swirl mysteriously around the room.

The waiter brings me sweet mint tea. "Om Kalsoum," I smile. He's totally astonished. "You know?" he gasps. "How you know?" I tell him about Bob Dylan and about a tape that a friend made for me years ago of Om Kalsoum recordings. Om Kalsoum sings a verse, a line, of poetry in her amazing, unique voice and the audience break into rapturous applause. Bob Dylan is the only Western singer who elicits a similar response from his audience, inspiring spontaneous applause for the way he sings a line, or even a phrase. Bob Dylan. Om Kalsoum. Couscous.

Does it ever strike you when you're doing something, in some sort of situation, that if Bob was here, he'd really love it? Me too. Especially tonight. He's probably holed up in his swish hotel somewhere on the seafront, but I bet he'd really love it here. I mean, he likes couscous, and he loves Om Kalsoum. And it's so quiet in here - no-one to stare at, or pester, him. Except me, of course.

"He was, by now, taking almost no food. All his limbs were paralysed and lay motionless beside his trunk, like dead branches still hanging to a tree, itself not yet quite dead. His face had the chiselled immobility of marble, and in that face - indeed in all the body - the eyes alone still seemed to live. Sometimes, in this state, he became a voyant, a prophet. Without losing consciousness, he had the most marvellous visions. He saw columns of amethyst, angels in marble and wood, countries of indescribable beauty . . ."

On November 10, 1891, Arthur Rimbaud died, here in Marseilles, less than three weeks after his 37th birthday. I wonder if Bob remembers that. I wonder if he remembers the days he spent here in 1975. David Oppenheim will never forget them:

"I had imagined him to be secure . . . but emptiness was written all over his face. To have someone like him right in front of you, so powerful in his irresistible artist's capriciousness, so intelligent, so handsome. I was almost in love with this man."

Tuesday, June 29, Marseilles

There's not much of a crowd in the Palais Des Sports, and it's stiflingly hot in the cavernous building. This is because the air-conditioning system has been turned off. There's never any air-conditioning where Bob Dylan is - not in concert halls, nor hotel rooms, nor tour buses. It's bad for his voice he says.

He tries out My Back Pages, but can't find the key and it stumbles and stutters. It's one of my very favourite songs. It always has been. "Good and bad, I define these terms". "In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand at the mongrel dogs who teach". Very Arthur Rimbaud, Bob.

During Maggie's Farm, Dylan gets visibly annoyed with John Jackson. Jackson is wibbling away in between each verse of the song and for once Bob seems to be waiting for him to stop before he starts to play himself. But Jackson doesn't stop, and Dylan gets more and more tetchy. Eventually, he drops his arms completely from his guitar, stands, does nothing, turns around, huffs with displeasure, glares. GLARES.

Not too long ago there was a discussion on the radio in Marseilles about Bob Dylan. The chairman/DJ was wondering about Dylan - about him being yesterday's hero, about his voice being shot, the usual stuff. Then in chimed Yves Bigot (you remember him, of course) in Bob's defence. Bigot couldn't take any more. Dylan was/is great, always, ever, the best. Last year, he says, in Reims, I saw one of the very greatest shows I've ever seen anywhere by anyone. You know something? he adds; Bob Dylan was playing jazz. Jazz!

Now let's leave the show aside, but pick up the jazz thing. Bigot may be incredibly perceptive and I missed it, but while I didn't hear jazz in Reims in 1992, I certainly do hear it in these shows in 1993. The spaces in the songs are given over to free-form guitar improvisation, ex tempore solos that sometimes intertwine, or that sometimes clash and clatter and clang, but that always go off exploring, searching for something that's not written down, that's never been rehearsed, that's never been played before and that will never be played again.

"You know that solo you played yesterday?" Dylan once asked John Jackson on stage. "You played it different. Well, play it again, the same but different. The same, but different." Sure, Bob.

And so it has emerged in these shows, that Bob Dylan is forming something that is jazz, though clearly it is very different from any jazz you ever heard, in the spaces between the verses of his songs, by allowing his hands to wander up and down his fretboard with far more technical expertise than you would ever have imagined a few months ago. It's not Eric Clapton/ Robbie Robertson-type expertise. Dylan plays guitar like he plays piano. It's a unique style; it sounds like him and no-one else. Just like his drawings, you know? By certain standards, they're inexpert. And yet they're typically, recognisably, impressively him. He's in the process of redefining the electric guitar's part in rock'n'roll music, and he's doing it live, now, and I wonder how many people are aware of that. Are the band aware of it? Do they really recognise what Bob Dylan is doing night after night? Or do they think it's just a weird, wacky, sometimes wonderful craziness for which they get paid well and which takes them all around the world for as long as Bob wants them to be with him?

"Jazz? It's more like classical improvisation - variations on themes being worked out, worked around, worked over. I can see how Bob has been impressed by the classical music that he's been listening to. It's had an effect on him. It's unmistakable . . ."

So begins the post-concert analysis in a scruffy back street cafe just around the corner from the Hospital of the Immaculate Conception. It's very late, nearly 2am, but it's a warm night, and this seems to be the only place in Marseilles that's still open. It's another coincidence, of course, that we find ourselves sitting staring at one of the few Bob Dylan concert posters that have been pasted up in the town, and Bob Dylan's favourite New Zealand 1986 image is staring back at us as we eat. The real, 1993 Bob, meanwhile, is at this very moment in his un-air-conditioned bus, barrelling towards Toulouse, leaving Marseilles, and whatever memories and ghosts may dwell therein, to eat his dust.

Wednesday, June 30, sort of on the way to Toulouse

A couple of hours' drive West from Marseilles, through the famous Camargue country, is a small seaside settlement named after two boat-dwelling, miracle-working saints, both (somewhat confusingly) called Marie. Les Saintes-Maries de la Mer has played a small but interesting enough part in the Bob Dylan story for it to be worth visiting, sort of on the way to Toulouse.

"We arrived at Saintes-Marie de la Mer at six in the morning. By seven we were in a bar with Manitas de Plata. It seemed that he owned the place and he was playing the guitar, playing it well. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was seven o'clock in the morning and there were already 100 people watching him - his family, his friends and me and Bob. A few hours later we met Manitas in the street with a couple of girls. At that time I looked rather like a gypsy, with my long hair. He said to me, Hi, don't I know you? So I replied, And this bloke with me - don't you know him? Manitas, who's quite smart, knew that "this bloke" was something or someone important. I said, He wants you to teach him to play the guitar . . ."

That was David Oppenheim again. Manitas and his family and friends (and David Oppenheim and Bob) had come to Saintes-Marie in May 1975 for the great gypsy festival. Each year, gypsies from all over the world arrive in the sleepy little town to celebrate their dark-skinned patron saint, whose statue is kept in the dark vault of the church of the two Maries, draped in cloth of gold. Now, in June 1993, I come to the same church, to the same vault, to stand before the same idol that Bob Dylan had stood before some 18 years before, trying to imagine what he must have been thinking and feeling back then. There he was, "completely despairing, isolated, lost . . . in all his weaknesses . . . with emptiness written over his face", standing in front of the black madonna, the patron saint of the gypsies, whose name, strangely, is St Sara, and whose statue is borne down to the seashore by the gypsies each year on her festival day, which is, strangely, May 24 . . .

There's no doubt that Bob Dylan's time in the South of France had a profound effect on him, and on the future direction his life was to take:

"I was just sitting in a field overlooking some vineyards; the sky was pink, the sun was going down, and the moon was sapphire; and I recall getting a ride into town with a man with a donkey cart, and I was sitting on this donkey cart, bouncing around on the road there, and that's when it flashed on me that I was gonna go back to America and get serious and do what it is that I do, because by that time people didn't know what it was that I did . . . Only the people that see our show know what it is that I do, the rest of the people just have to imagine it."

And so to Toulouse, where there's a fine Hattie Carroll with some wonderful harmonica, an almost great, but still slightly flawed, Born In Time, and then, finally - finally for the show, and finally for me - It Ain't Me Babe. It's great, but then Bob starts dancing. It begins with the familiar hip wiggle, then the bent-knee shake - you know, the standard good-mood crowd-pleasing shape-throwing shenanigans - but then he hops and skips forward, in front of the monitors, laughing and wiggling and shaking and bopping and then almost duck-walking his way backwards. I've never seen anything like it! It's bizarre! Ridiculous! Crazy! Funny! Wild! Only the people who saw the show know what it is that he did, the rest of you will just have to imagine it. Unless, of course, there's a video . . .

Then there he was, gone. At the end of each of the last shows that I've seen, the brief, chilling thought always crosses my mind that it just might be my last ever Bob Dylan show. Who knows what might happen to him, or to me, in the meantime. So it's a moment that I cherish and savour and always keep close, until the next first show, and then the last last show becomes just a little bit less important. Do you know what I mean? The tour, of course, goes on, and I, alas, go home, back to reality, back to Romford, back to work, back to The Telegraph. But oh, these have been some shows this year. I was lucky to be there. I've had my fun. I'm content. Really I am.

Monday, July 5, Romford

The Wanted Man fax machine chatters. It's a letter from my friend Dominique, with whom I travelled for the last few days of my tour, from Marseilles to Saintes-Maries to Toulouse. Because of business commitments, Dominique wouldn't, he told me, go to the shows in Barcelona or to Vitoria, even though he doesn't live too far away. The fax machine stops chattering. I read the letter:

"Dear John, On a last minute decision, I went to Vitoria. The show was marvellous. The crowd was very nice, lots of young Spanish, nice and quiet before the show, very warm and enthusiastic during it. And they knew all the words to the songs!

Some songs were again extraordinary: Tangled, River Flow, Tomorrow Night, Cat's, I&I. On all those I can't imagine Bob doing much better, any time, any where. Honest.

Another version of Born In Time, extremely beautiful instrumentally.

The absolute highlight came with a truly marvellous Boots Of Spanish Leather - long, committed, passionate, beautiful guitar work.

It Ain't Me Babe: how does he manage it? Being at the same time funny and playful with the crowd, and yet carrying across the message of the song so heavily, every line in his face showing how wide is the ocean that will forever be between being Bob Dylan and being the listener.

It was nice to spend a few hours with you. I wish the road would have been a little longer. Next time.

Dominique.

So you see? Everything I'm saying, you can say it just as good.

Next time.