GLASTONBURYOFTHEMIND

It’S A SLOW TRAIN COMING THIS ONE. I’N MY ATTEMPT TO MARK THE ROAD TO MODERN TIMES BY GRAPPLING WITH MY OWN SPIRTUAL CONNECTION to Dylan’s music IVE BEEN SERVED A CURVE BALL BY dwight of Pinner (SIR ELTON JOHN AS IS) and his partner in arms Taupin. On the new album, y’see, Taupin is writing words that Bob will take his hat off to. Or at least this Bob fan feels a spiritual connection to . Elton John is on the cover of Mojo this month talking about This new album - Captain and The Kid. The album is autobiographical it traces the years from captain Fantastic 1975 to now, further back than that, actually there is a song on there called Old 67. Anyone who stood for just a minnit in the garden, a garden any garden in the mid 1960s aned felt that moment of connection to like souls all over the world might - as I have - been moved to blub by the the simple lines (so affectingly sung by Elton) “Old 67 what a time we had /what an innocent time/what a time we lost” Him and Bernie Taupin first met in 1967 “we hit it off straight away, he became the brother I always wanted” says Elton. Brothers its that connection, the love men aren’t/ weren’t ” meant” to express, that is half (at least) of what rock n roll is about. (Hence the great Manic Street Preachers quote “all rock n roll is homosexual”) The EJ album is autobiographical but Taupin says he wanted, by dealing with the big themes that affected them, to connect with others. Well he sure succeeded here. But I was thinking - am I just having this reaction because of my personal circumstances? Is Taupin not really a great ? Just someone who was part of something I got into when I was younger and didn’t know the full depth of what music had to offer (Dylan, Velvets, Coltrane, Orchestra Baoba, Talib Kweli and on and on and on) Now - nostalgically back tracking - I am rekindling reconnecting and his deciding to go back and tell the ole ole stories is just an easy sop to wallow in? Is that what is happening? No! And here’s how I know. In Tom Doyle’s Mojo piece Elton reveals how in 1969 - as early in their songwriting brotherly relationship as 1969 just 2 years after they met - Bob Dylan (the brother of brothers, hell, the daddy of daddies) invited Bernie and Elton into his Isle of White dressing room to tell them that he loved a song on the album Tumbleweed Connection. The song title, by these two newly cemented brothers? My Father’s Gun!! (don’t even know it, but I’m gonna have to buy it now!!). This was BOB DYLAN who had just released John Wesley Harding that album with the strange mystical cover. I used to look at the sleeve in the lounge room back there in 47 Windmiil Road, Ballyholme (where the Vikings came in the before time) Bangor (where the ancient Monks abbey surrounded by fields of psylocibin mushrooms became the centre of European learning - this of course long before the inaguration of the resident powerbase North Down Borough council), Co Down (the lower part of the ancient kingdom of Dalriada), Northern Irleand( created arbitrarily by English appartchiks in the early 20s, a funny little Irish joking border where the most Northernly part was in the “south”). A place then in another time, in my other life. The good room, the music room, had the brown carpet with the black patterns and a sheepskin rug. It had the two or 3 bar electric heater and the fading light coming thru the venetian blinds - I was puzzled but transfixed kind of hypnotised looking at that JWH cover. It called to me on some level. But soon enough Elton came along with Rocket Man and Bernie and the nah nah nah nah crocodile wotsits. Then I went to punkdom (met a man called Strummer living in the pain of brotherly loss who was making brothers anew in his band, all over the world) and back - of course - to Bob. And now from Bob to Bernie who writes these words “it’s like rolling a dice in the belly of the blues, and the blues never fade away” the circle is complete. Because on one level at least that line a Bernie’s tells the story of what a large part of Modern Times is “about” more than my effusions ever could. The circular healing power of music, sing out the pain !!