I heard Bob Dylan on the radio for the first time when I was in the eighth grade. While flipping through the stations at random, I came across Like A Rolling Stone playing loud and clear. I immediately became a fan. I started collecting everything I could. My father, seeing my new interest, decided it would be a fatherly act to support me. So for my fifteenth birthday he bought me two tickets to a Bob Dylan concert when he passed through Austin. I couldn’t believe it. I was so excited to go, I forgot what a general audience Dylan appeals to. Due to Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, many of Dylan’s fans associated his entire career with some form of drug use. Fortunately, my sister Sarah was thinking clearly at the time. She politely pointed out that my father hated Dylans music and told him how much it would hurt him to see. After some time, my father agreed that it would be better if I went with my sister.
It was the most awesome experience up to that point in my life. We got there relatively early, so I got to see the variety of the audience. People brought their families, bikers, old men with young women, hippies, cowboys, stoners, and just plain average folks like me. The lan Moore Band, some local Red Hot Chili Peppers take-off, opened for him, but they would not get off the stage. They played for over an hour. People were starting to harass them. They threw paper, cigarette butts, and almost anything else they could get their hands on, just to get these people off the stage. They were horrible.
After a while, it hit me that I was about to be in the same room with a man whose fame has spread worldwide. I was so much in shock, I was able to block out the rest of the opening act. Finally, lan Moore left.
The audience had been sitting down the entire time. When lan Moore left, we sat there in an odd, complete silence. The backup band walked out one by one, but the audience remained silent. Then, Bob Dylan stepped into the light. He was wearing an electric blue, metallic shirt. Every light in the house was shining directly on him so that he seemed to shine. The entire audience burst into the loudest standing ovation celebration I have ever heard. The audience was so huge, I could barely hear him for the first few songs.
After a few minutes, I felt this constant tapping on my left arm. I looked over to see that the sixty-year-old man down the way was trying to get his thirty-year-old girlfriend sitting next to me out. Before Dylan came out, I saw her conning a few substances out of the guy in front of her. Her exact wording was, Ive never done it before. But you could tell that was a lie. Or so I thought. Apparently, not less than half an hour later, the drugs had taken their toll. Her boyfriend had kept her in the seat just so he could see Dylan sing.
At that moment, I wanted to be Dylan. I wanted to be the person everyone wanted to see. I wanted to be the kind of man other men would risk their women’s lives to be, just so they could look at my performance. I wanted to be the center of attention. I wanted to have a career like Dylan’s, where I could perform non-stop from the time I turned 20 until I died. I wanted to be the name on every ticket. I wanted to be the face on everybody’s T-shirts. I wanted light, and T-shirts, and the public, and concerts. At that moment, and every moment after, I craved the thrill of the performance.
