Editorial: Bob Dylan's Nobel prize an inspiring and well-deserved slow train coming

Andrew Austin, Editor Hawke's Bay Today.

I saw Bob Dylan, the newly crowned Nobel literature laureate, when he toured New Zealand recently.

I travelled to Hamilton with excitement in my heart and an image burned into my brain about what I expected him to look and sound like.

Well, to be frank, what I saw and heard disappointed me, or did it?

I can remember an old editor of mine, a die-hard Dylan fan, telling me that Dylan in concert was not worth the money as he basically was a statue behind a mike. However, he waxed lyrical that it was worth the trip as, after all, it was Dylan in concert.

So, my expectations were not high to begin with, but what I encountered was woeful and probably not worth the 100 plus bucks I paid for the ticket if it had not been Dylan.

Firstly, I could not testify under oath that it was Dylan as I never actually saw anything more than an old figure under a hat. There was no big screen to assuage my scepticism, so I will never truly know.

Secondly, the songs were not as I remembered. I cannot remember how many times the teenaged me played Blowing in the Wind on my little cassette player, but it would probably stretch into the several hundreds.

I am not sure if it was exhaustion at being on an "endless tour" or that he had limited his vocal range to preserve his voice, but every single song that Mr Robert Zimmerman sang sounded exactly the same. Same melody, same tune and, unfortunately, same anything.

But, here is the weird thing, I still walked out of the auditorium exhilarated at seeing the great Bob Dylan live.

So, when I woke up and heard about Mr Dylan's Nobel prize, I felt inspired.

Literary genius, be it written, spoken or sung, is always worth celebrating.
After all, life is ... like a rolling stone.