AS WITH most things to do with Bob Dylan's early years, history is vague when it comes to documenting his first TV appearances. There's talk from Dylanologists of footage featuring him performing with his cousin's band The Satin Tones on a Wisconsin station in the late 1950s, but the first real run for Dylan in front of TV cameras came in 1963.
That year, he appeared in a BBC play, Madhouse on Castle Street, and on a WBC special on folk songs and singers. He also walked off the set of The Ed Sullivan Show in a huff after some TV dude tried to censor his choice of song. It set a precedent for Dylan's future relationship with TV. He didn't like it and would get on fine without it.
That wouldn't be the case today. Television is the medium which rules the promotional roost for new acts. But there is just no room in the tightly formatted process which rules (and ruins) most music shows for genuine talent and acts who don't play the game. Try to imagine Bob Dylan turning up unannounced some Sunday evening on You're a Star. Actually, try to imagine for a second just how a young Dylan would fare on such a show.
Here's a singer who doesn't make eye contact with his audience. He mumbles and sings with an unique pitch and tone. His material is not the elderly, conservative karaoke standards of his fellow auditionees. The judges would probably be genuinely gobsmacked for the first time in the series. However, they'd probably still reject him because he doesn't conform to a ridiculous, half-baked, bankrupt template of what a star is supposed to be.
Yet after 40 years of dogged twists and turns, Dylan is still a star by any definition of the word. He played two sell-out shows at Dublin's Point last weekend, two more stops on a never-ending tour which has seen Dylan shake, rattle and roll in every possible direction. Dublin was the last halt on the current leg and Dylan heads for home without anyone able to second-guess just where he'll go from here.
When other acts of a similar vintage go on the road, they naturally bring the hits with them. After all, it's what the crowd want to hear and clap along to. But when Dylan sings Every Grain of Sand or It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) in The Point, he's flipping the script right in front of your eyes. There's no other old-timer in the business who is still making it up as he goes along, no other box-office draw who's as unpredictable or essential in how he approaches each song, and certainly no other legend who continues to thrillingly rewrite his back pages in such an intriguing manner.
Few of today's so-called stars will warrant a footnote when the story of popular music is written, but Dylan will probably fill a volume all on his own. Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home documentary shows that Dylan continues to fascinate audiences across the generations (and can even produce good TV). We're still in thrall to the enigma with the mysterious ways who survived the '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s with sanity and honour intact.
When Dylan and his band tear through Highway 61 Revisited and All Along the Watchtower in The Point, the performance is edgy, compulsive and strangely contemporary. These songs may have been written decades ago, but they still work when Dylan turns them upside-down to see what they sound like from another angle. For Dylan, it's no longer a case of bringing it all back home in a familiar style, and that is something to cheer.
