“Dont think twice, it’s alright” – Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Alcohol limits my capabilities right now, but I still want to attempt this. I first heard this song a year or two ago lying in a Melbourne University dorm, my friend Zac next to me, the window open, our adored ‘mega’ cigarette lay burning a hole in the floorboards. We’d been wandering the empty hall, expecting to see others acting the same yet found it to be entirely deserted. Although at one moment Zac and I had to run and hid in an old music room as some dusty janitor scuffled through, we obviously thought it was the devil himself. So later he’s lying next to me and he passes me his headphones as he rolls over to sleep, and this song of Dylan’s is just beginning to play. I’d never really listened to the man at that time to be embarrassingly honest, as now I’m just a stark-raving admirer. The complexity of the guitar I just revel in, with it beings based upon a melody folk musician Paul Clayton taught him. So really, how could their melodic baby not be beautiful. The fast-picked guitar played in the track from ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ is speculated to be played by a different folk musician Bruce Langhorne, although Dylan would play it himself at festivals and alternate recordings. Really I think it just was the song matched the moment, as many songs have the potential to do. I mean, I’d sunk a dozen cigarettes, Melbourne air blew in the room and at around 4am in the morning, the song just blissfully sent me to sleep. Until I woke up when it ended to cast Dylan’s lyrical enchantment over myself just once more. Definitely my favourite song by him, just topping “Not Dark Yet” and “WWIII Blues”. Some YouTuber encapsulated it well;
“Song is typical of a genius who takes a part of your life and tells it back to you in poetry.”