On his 1990 album "Rhythm Of The Saints," Paul Simon sings a song about being born at the right time. The song is not about Bob Dylan but the sentiment could not be more applicable, if anybody was born at the right time then it was certainly him.

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24th 1941 into a middle class Jewish background in the small mining town of Hibbing Minn. he would go on to become the most influential recording artist of the twentieth (and possibly the twenty-first) century. By the time he was twenty-five Dylan had changed the face of popular music forever. He had released no fewer than seven albums - several of which have stood the test of time as classics, he had toured the world as both a folk singer and a rock god and he had created a mystique around himself that continues right up until the present day.

After a much publicised and probably exaggerated motorcycle accident Dylan went into semi-retirement in the late sixties and early seventies, returning to the public arena in 1974 and releasing a whole new batch of ground-breaking material. A well-documented embracement of Christianity was followed by a bleak period in the eighties that saw album sales slump and the quality of live performances deteriorate as rumours of alcohol abuse abounded. Nevertheless, Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and entered the nineties with a lower profile and a decidedly different approach to his recording career.

By the middle of the decade many were writing Dylan off as a washed-up has-been, but he stunned his doubters in 1997 by releasing an album of sheer brilliance and followed it four years later with an even better one. As Dylan approaches his sixty-fifth birthday (at the time of writing) he continues to be one of the hardest working musicians around, clocking up an average of one hundred and fifty concerts a year, even though he no longer plays guitar possibly due to arthritis and his voice is a croaky shadow of the potent instrument that captivated generations.

Bob Dylan has mesmerised, captivated and enthralled millions for over forty years, while at the same time causing many more to shrug their shoulders and wonder what all the fuss is about. He has never been a huge seller of records, but those who do buy his albums remain fiercely loyal and continue to attend his sold-out concerts in droves. And those records are the thing, almost fifty in an astonishingly prolific career.

Warehouse Eyes is an attempt to examine each of Bob Dylan's official albums in some detail, how they came into being, the songs they contain and what the reaction to them was. A true genius like Dylan only comes along once in a lifetime, I'm just grateful that he came along in mine.

May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
And may you stay forever young


Forever Young - Bob Dylan
(From the 1974 album Planet Waves)