The man who wrote "Forever Young" just turned 70
If Bob Dylan turned 70 yesterday, it means the one time I saw him live in concert was ten years ago. [A decade! It's flown. The baby I left with his grandparents so I could see Dylan perform heads off to middle-school next year...] Ten years ago, Dylan was celebrating his 60th birthday by performing at state fairs (an odd choice of venue for the Greenwich Village poet of the Boomer generation). It was 2001, the same year Madonna was wandering the world on one of her widely publicized mega-tours, a huge show with numerous moving parts, you know, a show full of dancers, choreography, music and fog. And then there was Dylan, playing in Springfield, IL. In August. At the State Fair. It was a crowd of about 10,000. Not quite a full house, but close. The scent of clove cigarettes mingled with the odor of manure. As the sun began to set, we wandered from a draft horse competition to the racetrack where Dylan would be performing. [This was the pre-9/11 world we were living in. ...