Bob Dylan Literally Saved My Life

Nashville Skyline and a Near-Death Experience

Flying across a desolate highway in New Mexico, my friend Paul controls the vehicle while I write and smoke peacefully in the passenger seat. A second later, I turn to my right and see certain death: A thick wave of sand, four miles wide and a hundred feet tall, barreling toward us at top speed. “Paul, look out!”

BOOM: the wave slaps us across the median and onto the wrong side the highway, blinding us completely with a dark red fog. Oncoming traffic misses us by inches. Paul steers back to the right side of the road. My cigarette flies from my hand and starts burning the fast-food wrappers stuffed below the back seat. Parked cars appear in the middle of the road seconds before potential impact, causing us to swerve like drunks. Paul starts to hyperventilate. He has a history of severe panic attacks and a tendency to faint under pressure. His face turns white. “Put on-” he takes another deep breath, a frighteningly deep breath, “Put on- put on ‘Peggy Day.’”

I grab my copy of Nashville Skyline, find “Peggy Day” and let it play. In seconds, I see Paul start to calm and his breathing begin to regulate. By the time the song’s over, we’ve escaped to the other side of the storm.

Paul laughs, “Jesus! ‘Peggy Day’ just saved our lives!”

“No,” I reply plainly. “Bob Dylan just saved our lives.”

As “Lay Lady Lay” eases into the car, in a strange kind of trance, I reflect on the first time I met Dylan’s music.

Bringing It All Back Home

I was sixteen and lovesick, writing poems in my London hotel and looking out at the rain. A radio station was playing, and just as I lit another cigarette, a song I’d never heard emerged from the speakers. Something about the sound affected me viscerally in a way I hadn’t felt before. Then, at the end of the third verse, my life changed forever: The unknown singer spoke lyrics which were identical to the words I’d penned only minutes earlier. It seemed like some kind of mystical assurance that I wasn’t alone in the world. The DJ revealed I’d just heard “Buckets of Rain” from Bob Dylan’s album Blood On The Tracks. That night, I downloaded every Dylan song I could afford.

The one-way love affair grew. Hearing his music, reading his words, seeing him in documentaries: it was like meeting myself for the first time. I felt like we saw the world out of the same blue eyes, only from separate skulls in disparate decades. The people around me agreed. When I broke up with my long-term girlfriend, she said through tears, “You know what one of the worst parts of this is? I’m never going to be able to enjoy Dylan’s music the same way. Every time I hear his voice, I’m going to think about you.”

His songs became shields, incapable of decaying with time. When my heart was broken, Time Out of Mind empathized, and Nashville Skyline nursed me back to health. Highway 61 told me to be myself, and Bringing It All Back Home warned it wouldn’t be easy.

As I struggled to forge my own path, I‘d think about Dylan and The Band’s first electric tour, and the brutal harassment they faced. Bruce Springsteen described Dylan as “the guy who had the guts to take on the whole world, and made me feel like I had them, too.” While I don’t believe I have the guts to take on the whole world, Bob Dylan gave me the courage to be exactly who I am, and just trust that somewhere there’s an audience who will understand.

While Time’s On My Side

Tuesday’s release of “The Basement Tapes Complete” has given me the opportunity to write about the Dylan-of-old without being accused of irrelevance.

Bob Dylan and The Band invented the legendary basement tapes in 1967. By the time Spring had turned into Autumn, 138 songs were recorded. Today, after half a century of waiting, Dylan fans can hear every song from the basement sessions on “The Basement Tapes Complete.”

My Back Pages

I have created this collection, Bob Dylan, in honor of the man and the basement tapes. I will be posting more articles as I listen.

Next: “Some Gems from the Basement Tapes: For Devout Dylan Fans”

Alex Marshi is an American writer and journalist. His bylines include Rolling Stone and Port magazine. If you enjoyed this piece, he’d be awful grateful if you’d share it. Read the rest of “Bob Dylan: His Music, The Band, and the Basement Tapes.”