Bob Dylan: A long way to Russia

Bob Dylan on the recording of the album "Highway 61 Revisited", New York, 1965. Photo: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty images

On March 31, 2017, the legend of American rock music, singer, poet and laureate of the Nobel Prize Bob Dylan released a new, 38th album- “Triplicate” . This triple record is an excursion to American pop music, folk rock and blues-from Frank Sinatra to Saya Cowlman. Dylan presented part of his retro program at concerts a world tour, held in the spring and summer of 2017 in dozens of Europe and America. But - not in Russia. Is it by chance? Producer and writer Alexander Kushnir shares his personal memories of the difficult relations of the musician and our country.

Until recently, Dylan in Russia was almost unknown - his discs were dusting on the shelves, and the books in libraries. Experienced wholesalers took his records reluctantly, gruffly saying under his breath that "still no one buys." Like, Dilan's voice is nasal, his texts are complex for our “irregular country”, and the music is covered with the archive dust of the sixties. No, it will definitely not work here.

Concert distributors were also distinguished by a similar skepticism. To become Russian promoter of the cult singer actually meant two things: the honorary status of a person with a delicate taste and one hundred percent bankruptcy after the concert. One of the owners of the large concert hall admitted to me the other day that to bring the Nobel Prize laureate to Moscow in 2017 - “commercial suicide”. Like, the artist’s fees are high, and tickets will diverge with difficulty. This is a real problem of “expectations and result”, and it has a thirty -year story.

The “great white miracle”, as his colleagues-bonniks called him, first ended up in Russia back in the mid-eighties-at the Komsomol festival in Luzhniki, where he was met by the grave silence of the stall, filled with briefly cut young people with a shade of hatred in cold lieutenant eyes. They say that after the concert Andrei Makarevich and Boris Grebenshchikov-the spiritual sons of Dylan-were chasing rock legend throughout Moscow, but did not catch up. They say that then the unpredictable Bob visited Voznesensky in Peredelkino, went on an excursion to Yasnaya Polyana and even played a home concert somewhere in Tbilisi. I don't know for sure. They lie, probably.

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