Bob Dylan: Superstar in the Streets

In the 1960s a wave of British culture crashed upon the shores of the US.  All over America the sounds of British groups were blasting out of radios and a generation of US teens became swept up in the 'British Invasion'.  It was The Beatles that led the vanguard, but the trans-Atlantic traffic was not just one way.

Dylans 1966 Wolrd Tour would prove to be controversial, it was his first tour after his famous change from playing acoustic folk music to 'going electric'.  During this tour he made his second visit to Liverpool.

On 14th May1966 the bleak cobbled streets of north Liverpool became host to the 'coolest man in the world'.  In a bizarre moment the essence of swinging bohemian sixties style would meet the post-war poverty of Liverpool's urban youth.  He was due to perform that evening at the Liverpool Odeon, where he had first appeared a year previously.

Dylan and the photographer Barry Feinstein spent the afternoon before the gig wandering the austere post-war streets.  Feinstein  hated staged photoshoots and so when he stumbled upon a group of kids playing amongst the urban wasteland he realised had found the perfect photo opportunity.

Chris Hockenhall, a self-confessed 'Dylanologist', says:

 “Dylan and Feinstein just seemed to have stumbled into what amounted to a kids’ playground. It was such a clash of 1960s culture. The kids looked like Victorian street urchins and Dylan looked like a man from Mars with his loud shirt and wild hair – that’s what fascinated me.”

The streets in the photographs are eerily deserted of adults - no doubt because it was the day of the FA Cup Final, Everton vs. Sheffield Wednesday (Everton won 3-2).

It's interesting to note that the musical origins of Dylan and the Beatles seem to be exact opposites of each other.  The Beatles began as 'The Quarrymen' skiffle group, playing american folk music before moving into Rock and Roll whereas Dylan's development was the reverse.

Dylan's school yearbook claimed he: 'wanted to follow Little Richard' but by 1959 Dylan's tastes had changed.  He had given up the electric guitars and taken up banjos and harmonicas and he began digging deep into Woodie Guthrie and folk music.

Dylan seems to have a fondness for Liverpool, one wonders if this is born from his close links with the Beatles (he famously gave them their first joint!).  Only a few years ago whilst in the city Dylan took a history tour and was fascinated by John Lennons childhood bedroom in Mendips.

Perhaps though, Dylan's links with Liverpool are earlier.  A year before he met the Fab Four, Dylan wrote and recorded a song called 'Farewell' (sometimes 'Fare Thee Well').

It's tune and words are taken from 'The Leaving of Liverpool' -  a traditional folk song, well known amongst Liverpool households from the 1880 onwards.

Chris Hockenhull tracked all ten of the children down, all now grown and in their fourties, and recreated the photograph.  Amazingly non of the children remember meeting the bohemian bard.  Their grubby playground of cobblestones and bomb-shattered wastelands were a thousand miles away from the glitz of the swinging sixties.

Yet I wonder, when Dylan stood with those children on the steps of a warehouse in 1966, did he realise that most of them would've probably known the tune - if not the words to his earlier recording?

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