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Author Geoff Dyer on Bob Dylan: ‘The songs pour off his records like they’re written in my soul from him to me’

Nobody ’Cept You, a newly released rarity, clocks in at under three minutes but contains multitudes, joining the dots between Dylan and DH Lawrence, and inadvertently echoing the spell the musician continues to cast

Many of us are more interested in Dylan than he could be in anything, even himself A strange song, even by Dylan’s standards, it opens with the reiteration – “Ain’t nothin’ round here to me that’s sacred” – of a sentiment from the middle of an older favourite he played immediately afterwards at the Chicago gig, It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding): “Easy to see without looking too far/ That not much is really sacred.” That’s a kind of public pronouncement; here it’s a rapt declaration of personal malaise, enhanced by a subtlety of vocal modulation which, as the grind of the tour takes hold, will give way to a tendency to yell. “Used to roll in the cemetery Dance and run and sing when I was a child And it never seemed strange, now I just pass mournfully By that place where the bones of life are piled I know somethin’ has changed I’m a stranger here and no one sees me ’cept you, yeah you” Back at the home of the woman he sees working in a topless place where he’s stopped in for a beer – which still strikes me as a rather odd thing to do – she hands him a book of poetry by an Italian poet from the 13th century.

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