IT was a dark winter’s evening in New York when we found a bar and escaped from the falling snow. As my husband ordered drinks, we shook the wet from our coats and rubbed warmth into our hands.

The joint, called Caffe Vivaldi, was dimly lit, and apart from us the meagre clientele were all young. Spread between tables, their conversation was strangely subdued. Rather than chat, people were swivelled towards a student playing a grand piano and singing in a nasal twang. Scarcely daring to speak, we slowly realised that everyone else in the room was waiting their chance to perform. After thin applause greeted the first singer, the next took his turn. Wearing a shiny black stove-pipe hat and with a mouth organ around his neck, he was trying to embody a youthful Bob Dylan.

One by one they stepped onto the stage. This was only a few years after 9/11, and yet it might have been Woodstock. Almost to a man – and one woman – these musicians were living in hope of becoming the next Dylan. Needless to say, we found it riveting. The singers, for their part, would glance our way as their session ended, possibly hoping we were talent scouts.

This was in Greenwich Village, where friends had lent us their bijou apartment on West 4th Street for a holiday. The address meant nothing to me, but when we arrived, walking down the middle of the street between banks of ploughed snow, I learned that we were following directly in Dylan’s footsteps. As captured on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, this was where he and his girlfriend Suze Rotolo crunched their way through the snow, looking frozen to the bone.

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As Bob Dylan approaches his 80th birthday, on May 24, I now look back and realise I should have known there was more to this holiday than the Empire State Building and Macy’s. Muslim pilgrims do the Hajj, Christians walk the Camino de Santiago and, as I was soon to discover, Dylan fanatics prowl Bleecker Street, MacDougal Street and Washington Square, catching at the coat-tails of their hero. This, I was informed, is where the would-be star stayed when he arrived penniless in the city; here’s the club where he slept in the basement; that’s the room in which he wrote A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall…

Before I met my husband, I knew more about Bach than Bob. Today, I could sail through Mastermind on the subject of his pre- and post-acoustic lyrics, his illnesses or injuries, from 1961 to the present-day, or his vintage wardrobe of lapelled jackets and snakeskin boots.

Obsessions come in many shapes: golf, trainspotting, marathon running, football. Partners – often but not always women – can lose touch with their other half as they feed their addiction. In this respect the millions of silent sufferers living like me with a Dylan nut are relatively lucky: this is a mania that not only dares to speak its name, it never shuts up. We need not feel excluded.

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So, whenever the morning news gets too dreary, on comes a Dylan playlist to set things right. I’d sing along if I didn’t have a mouthful of muesli. Not that the latest long-form ballad, Murder Most Foul – 17 minutes – about JFK’s assassination, is much good for audience participation. When the gentle plop on the doormat announced its arrival at the height of lockdown, it was conveyed to the CD player with more reverence than a midwife bearing a newborn. It was listened to, and then dissected, with the attention clerics devote to a holy book. Indeed Bobsters, like Bible-bashers, can find a quote to fit any occasion.

And the choice of lyrics continues to grow. That’s the thing about living with Dylan. One version of his songs is not enough. You need it acoustic, electric, accompanied by The Band, or solo with just the bard and his guitar and moothie. There are Basement tapes, the Bootleg Series, and fathomless dodgy recordings from the never-ending tours. Even when I think we’ve heard every conceivable configuration, there are compilations by other singers covering his work, not always in English.

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Nor is it safe to switch on the TV. Expecting a dose of Netflix, I find our evenings highjacked by grainy home videos of performances in low dives. Sometimes you can count the hairs on the neck of the person sitting in front of the lens, yet barely make out the band for the blur. Camera palsy appears to be a frequent affliction in the presence of an idol. But even when he is in sharp focus, Dylan mumbles so softly he seems worried he’ll waken the audience. And then there are the documentaries. For a man of mystery, almost every minute he has spent in public appears to have found its way into the archive.

When his memoir Chronicles was published, you’d have thought Proust’s heir had been found. Unsurprisingly, there was no dissent in our house when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, just bemusement it had taken so long. And although my husband is as staunch an upholder of freedom of expression as President Macron, no criticism of Dylan’s genius is tolerated. Kim Jong-un would be more relaxed at being insulted.

None of Dylan’s peers – not even Tom Waits! – can ever hope to attain the number one slot he allocated to The Bard before he was old enough legally to buy a drink. Even Mozart and Beethoven have to accept demotion. In their case, dying too young was a decidedly bad career move, as compared with Dylan’s ongoing opus.

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Now that’s Dylan is on the cusp of his ninth decade, how much longer he has left doesn’t bear thinking about. For my husband, as for countless others, he has provided the soundtrack of his life.

When the day comes that one of the greatest musicians of our time eventually and unthinkably goes Beyond the Horizon, the effect on a generation who grew up with him will be awful to see. Not so much Forever Young as Desolation Row. In the meantime, his grateful fans rock on. I may not yet be an addict, but I am an increasingly heavy user.

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