Syd had several little songs on the go that we sang to … and I was used to hearing him play acoustic guitar, but this song played with all its Dylanesque resonance, is beautiful.Īt the time, seeing Syd full throttle in a band came as no surprise to me. So, that weekend, as we were driving to London, cruising down the A1, as much as one can in a blue Austin A30 with the indicator switch on the dashboard, I learnt the rest of the song. Dylan was a huge influence on us all at the time. It’ s a move towards a freer and better world away from the one we see in ‘ Song To Woody’, ‘ A Man of Constant Sorrow’, ‘Hard Rains’ and ‘ Don’ t Think Twice’. And, he could ‘ prophesy all kinds of things’.įor me, at this time, the song was about that ‘Freewheelin’, carefree concept we got into. In the simplest terms we learn that Dylan the King sings ‘ bout God and my girl’, ‘ bout what’ s right and what’ s wrong’, about ‘ dreams’ and what ‘ seems’. Syd, with his painterly eye, could always transcend. It’ s also a homage to ‘ Dylan’, who Syd identifies himself with, ‘ Cause I’m Mr. Like him, it’s full of humour, ‘a bit satirical’, he writes, ‘ Quiet while I make like cat’, ‘ my gut and my wallet are fat’, ‘ buy all my discs and a hat’, hilarious. So, when he sent me this verse it didn’t seem that unusual at the first. Typically, it just made me laugh.
This letter came late January/early February 1965.īefore I knew Syd, I had been listening to Dylan and a range of folk, blues and rock which we discovered we were both into. He was at Camberwell Art School and now that he had settled into Stanhope Gardens, he wanted to take some of his paintings there.
Jenny tells us this fascinating story about the background and the letter: “By 1965 Syd or ‘Rog’, as he’d sign himself, was writing to me two or three times a week. It starts off “I got the Bob Dylan blues and the Bob Dylan shoes and my hair an’ my clothes in a mess but you know I just couldn’t care less”. The letter (right), from Syd to Jenny, documents the origins of Bob Dylan Blues:” I have written a song about Bob Dylan. the jacket was cool… the satin trousers from Granny’s, where else? at that time. Jenny comments: “this pic Syd took of me in v. This is a photo of his then girl friend Jenny Spires, taken by Syd himself. The rhyming of “dreams” and “seems” occurs in ‘Talking World War III Blues’ and “war in the cold” comes from ‘Masters Of War.’ The song title is akin to what was used on ‘Freewheelin’, with Dylan’ s own name in not one but two song titles of the album – quite an achievement for a new artist: ‘Bob Dylan’s Blues’and ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream.’ When Syd sings “the wind you can blow it” it is a common reference from several of Dylan’s songs, as are the shoes and the hat references. The music itself is in the style of waltz tempo ‘Chimes of Freedom’ featuring similar chords.
That last album contains the song ‘ I Shall Be Free #10’ and the lyric, ‘ I’m a poet I know it, hope I don’ t blow it.’ Syd, as always a clever collage artist, picked bits and pieces from all these albums to write a very personal parody of, and in the style of, Bob Dylan. Soon Freewheelin’ sat at Number One in the charts, and during 1964 ‘The Times They Are A’ Changin’ followed with, in November that year, ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan’. ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ was released in USA in May 1963, but in UK only in November. Three years later, this is the location where Syd would triumph in ‘Games for May’– little did he know…
‘We arrived at the South Bank and he said, “Look, it’ s the me and you from every town.” Each town sent one Syd Barrett, the first time I’d seen people like him,’ recalled Libby. Girl friend Libby Gausden remembers how, as a birthday present, she was taken to see Bob Dylan with Syd in May 1964, in London. It was thought lost until it turned up after 30 years in a tape collection at home by David Gilmour, and was released on ‘The Best of Syd Barrett’ in 2001. The song is similar to ‘Effervescing Elephant’ in that it reflects the creativity of a young Syd Barrett with its humour and word play. The song Bob Dylan Blues is a very early song by Syd Barrett, written early in 1965 but not recorded until during the February 1970 sessions for the album ‘Barrett’. And I’m free as a bird on the wingWell I sings about dreams