Bob Dylan …. the cottage in the woods …. a host called Marcus …. and a bit of musical history

So, as Monty Python once said “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition”, which is the lead into the first of a series of stories which effortlessly connects Bob Dylan, a Welsh cottage and a remarkable host called Marcus.

One of the ponds, 2023

We had left the city for a short break in Wales meeting up with our Josh and Polly and had chosen the holiday cottage, Llwyn Glass in Cwm-Cewydd in the heart of Snowdonia.

The place is remote, accessed by one of those twisty private roads, which seem to offer a surprise around each bend.  Surprises there were but they were nice ones, including heaps of quails wandering across the road, a ford,  and stunning views as we progressed towards Marcus and the cottage.

Bob Dylan in Wales, 2023

That story of the cottage and the place is for tomorrow. 

For now it is a poster of Bob Dylan advertising his famous 1966 performance in Manchester when he broke with his earlier work and went “electric”.

The poster was a present to Marcus from one his daughters, and as we shared favourite tracks the conversation turned to the moment in the concert shortly after Dylan began his electric stuff when a man in the audience shouted out “Judas”.

It would be eight years later that I came across the man who shouted it out, and as stories go it turns out I was working next to him. 

I have to confess I only half believed him, until I came across a newspaper story by Andy Kershaw years later which confirmed the account. ***

Mr. Kershaw had gone looking for him and sure enough it was my ex-colleague.

All of which allowed Marcus to smile and mutter, “I know a man who knew the man who called Bob Dylan “Judas”.

Bob Dylan in Manchester, 1966

And I guess for ever after when ever he passes that poster a little bit of Manchester in 1966 will pop into his head, along with of course, “I know a man who knew the man who called Bob Dylan “Judas”.

Chickens at Llwyn Glass, 2023

Marcus owns Llwyn Glass which is set in a remote spot surrounded by woodland, and which was reclaimed from a ruin thirty odd years ago by a scrap merchant from my bit of south east London which offers up more links and more stories.

Marcus has renovated the cottage, restored the channels that allow water from a spring to fill a series of ponds which in turn supply water to the house.

The story of that renovation is for another day, and with it will come Gwilym the farmer next door, a search for the history of the cottage and a little bit of Marcus’s plans which he maintains are about acting as a custodian for the property and the surrounding land.

And yes, there are chickens, lots of trees and  the cottage can be booked through Booking.com.*

Location; Cwm-Cewydd

Pictures, Llwyn Glass, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Booking.com,

Happy birthday Mr. Zimmerman …….. listening to Bob Dylan for the first time …… and that radio programme

Now, with all the hype on the radio this week I had assumed that today was Bob Dylan’s birthday, but no that is a week away.

The Times They Are A- Changin', 1964

Still it didn’t stop the Today programme this morning broadcasting some of his songs which were accompanied by reflections from a collection of celebrities on what those songs meant to them.

All of which will be followed up this afternoon by “It Ain’t Me Your Looking For: Bob Dylan at 80”.*

There are five episodes in the series and the first  is “Learn Your Song Well (1941-1964)”.

And it is the one that will most resonant for me, because it was in June 1964 that I bought two of his LPs.

These were “The Freewheelin Bob Dyan” and “The Times They Are A-Changin'”, and while a year separated their release, I know I got them together.

They sit along side four other LPs bought between 1964 and 1966, and another which came out three years later.

I was 15, fired by the injustices I saw around me, and in particular the news stories from the USA of Dr. King, the Freedom Riders and the campaigns for voter registration.

And the songs off those two LPs spoke directly to me, focusing as they did in part on the discrimination, poverty and the power of the Establishment to seemingly do what they wanted.  

There are lighter and more personal songs which also chimed in with an adolescent, but it was the political ones that took me over.

Of these it was, and perhaps still is, “A Hard Rains -A-Gonna Fall", about the unthinkable landscape of a post nuclear war, which was “written during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when those who allowed themselves to think of the possible results were chilled by the imminence of oblivion. ‘Every line in it’ says Dylan ‘is actually the start of a whole song.  But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put it all I could into this one’”.**

From Dylan I went on to some of his contemporaries like Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs, and from there via Peter Seeger Joan Baez, and Buffy St Marie onto English folk music.

I also weathered the electric conversion, muttered darkly at his move away from the early stuff but kept buying the LPs because electric or not they were great music and powerful songs.

Unlike a colleague of mine who at concert in Manchester in 1966, shouted out “Judas” during one of Dylan’s electric songs.  I have to confess I only half believed him, until I came across a newspaper story which confirmed the account.***

All of which I guess is pretty much as close as I will ever come to Bob Dylan, other than the seven LPs and eight CDs I have of his work.

So, I shall be listening to the Radio 4 programme, later today at 13.45, and maybe thinking about him next Monday on his birthday.

Pictures, the LP  covers, “The Times They Are A-Changin'”,1964, “The Freewheelin Bob Dyan”, 1963, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

“It Ain’t Me Your Looking For: Bob Dylan at 80”, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000w4ny

**Nat Hentoff, sleave notes, “The Freewheelin Bob Dyan”, 1963

***Bob Dylan: How I found the man who shouted 'Judas', Andy Kershaw, The Independent, July 17th, 2013, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/bob-dylan-how-i-found-man-who-shouted-judas-314340.html