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“It’s quite uncanny” she said as we sat down to watch an unscheduled tribute to a recently departed documentary maker D. A. Pennebaker. ‘Don’t look back’ was the title, dating from 1965, following a young American folksinging sensation called Bob as he toured England.

The uncanniness she said was that she seemed to be looking at the me she’d met when she was just 16. The face, the hair, the frame and the cool nonchalance. That was the me she fell for. It was shocking for me too, seeing my back pages.

But the times they have a-changed me.

11 comments add one below

  • avatar

    Christopher over 4 years ago

    Ah, you're forever young, Neville. And you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, either.

    I really liked "Don't Look Back." And another Pennebaker documentary, "Monterey Pop."

  • avatar

    Neville Hunt over 4 years ago

    Haha! Thanks Christopher.

    Of course, you’re correct, it was called ‘Don’t look back’, not as I had said ‘don’t look now’ which was a Donald Sutherland scary film I seem to remember. I really liked ‘Don’t look back’ as he was so cool and an absolute dead-ringer for me... some years later, as even I’m not as old as Bobby boy! And the British media asked such inane questions of him; I am ashamed of them in retrospect.

  • avatar

    Neville Hunt over 4 years ago

    I’ll check out Monterey Pop too. I still like Dylan, old and new stuff. I particularly love Duquesne Whistle of recent fame and Girl from the North Country from way back on the wonderful Freewheelin’ album, with me on the cover!

  • avatar

    Christopher over 4 years ago

    Everyone asked inane questions of Dylan back then. There's a 1965 press conference that he did, I believe in San Francisco, that could probably be found on YouTube, that was ridiculous. You could tell Dylan didn't suffer fools gladly.

    (And I didn't even notice that you had the title of the movie wrong.)

  • avatar

    Christopher over 4 years ago

    Haha. My fave Dylan albums are "Bringing It All Back Home" and "Highway 61 Revisited."

  • avatar

    Christopher over 4 years ago

    Monterey Pop is a great time capsule for that Summer Of Love festival, the first big rock festival ever. There was one a few weeks before Monterey somewhere in California but it didn't get the attention that Monterey Pop got. So Monterey was technically the second rock festival but it became the prototype for all those that came after it.

  • avatar

    Neville Hunt over 4 years ago

    Thanks Drew.

  • avatar

    Christopher over 4 years ago

    The Pretty Things are vastly underrated, at least here in the States. S.F. Sorrow is an incredible album.

  • avatar

    Christopher over 4 years ago

    Yeah, Parachute is great too. I thought they were one of those bands like Status Quo, that were still revered in the UK even though they were never that big here. But at least Status Quo had a Top 40 hit here in the late 60's. The Pretty Things never had a hit here.

  • avatar

    Neville Hunt over 4 years ago

    I always thought of The Pretty Things as a dirtier version of the Stones... but what did I know? (A. Not a lot!).

  • avatar

    Christopher over 4 years ago

    They did seem like they were trying to rival the Stones in the mid-sixties, rather than trying to be a clone of The Beatles.

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