“Why do you like Bob Dylan so much?” Faith, who I suppose I should refer to as my future girlfriend, once asked me.
“Beatles’ fans never get asked that question.”
“That’s because it’s obvious,” she said.
Perhaps because of her question, I decided to put some thought into my thirty-three-year relationship with Dylan’s music, which Faith sometimes referred to as an obsession and other times as a love affair, but which I’ve always simply considered a matter of taste.
I was twelve years old when I heard my first Dylan song, “Tombstone Blues” from Highway 61 Revisited. My parents had a friend, Clive Hampton, who they’d met at Long Acre. Clive was different than my parents’ other friends, and not just because he was single. He was easily the best tennis player at the club, with the consisten
