Guest Monday of the morning of Europe 1, Robert Martin, who rubbed shoulders with Bob Dylan in 1975, evokes on the occasion of the singer's 80th birthday the complex relationship he has always maintained with the celebrity.
The story of the ten days spent by his side traveling the south of France was published by Ptyx editions in 2018.
INTERVIEW
His voice is recognizable among all. Bob Dylan celebrates his 80th birthday on Monday. The man with 600 songs and millions of albums sold celebrates at the same time his 60-year career. A career that began in January 1961, when Bob Dylan landed in New York after having fallen in love with the master of folk Woody Guthrie, with whom he ended up befriending. His admiration is so great that he even dedicates a song to him in his first album. It is one of the twenty titles which are honored in a new double vinyl, reissued for the 80 years of the star by Diggers Factory and called
Essential Works
. We find there the first masterpieces of the singer.
His innovative style, his political texts, his nasal voice - as much adulated as it has been criticized - have contributed to the legend of the man who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.
Master of the "protest song", Bob Dylan has never ceased, through his compositions, to denounce injustices and conflicts, as with the famous
The Times they are a-Changin '
which evokes social inequalities and inertia of the powerful.
The Frenchman who spent ten days with Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan's birthday is also an opportunity
to immerse yourself in
Robert Martin's astonishing story,
Ten days with Bob Dylan,
published by Ptyx in 2018, and which recounts the vacation spent by chance by this Frenchman with the star, in 1975, in the south of France. "You had to know David Oppenheim, who is a great painter and who had drawn the cover of
Bloods on the Tracks
, and to whom Bob was to come visit", tells Robert Martin on Europe 1.
At the time, Robert Martin was a fine arts student, and a friend suggested that he go meet this painter, in his house in Haute-Savoie.
"The fact that I'm a little bit of an electrician interested David, who offered me a salary to install electricity in his house."
This is how he found himself working for the painter, when the singer ended up disembarking, in the middle of the night.
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"All of a sudden, in front of me: Bob Dylan!"
"We had been waiting for them for several hours already, drinking glasses. And then, all of a sudden, we hear the noise of a car, doors slamming. At that moment, David leaves. I don't know. not why, but he goes to the back of the house and I find myself all alone. And then, I hear the door open. In front of me: Bob Dylan! ", recalls our guest.
From there, begins an improbable journey that will lead the small band of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer to Corsica, via Marseille. "In ten days, he has only been recognized twice," laughs Robert Martin. Very uncomfortable with his celebrity, Bob Dylan even refuses to play guitar on a beach one evening. "He told us about the difficulties he had with this crazy celebrity. He says it besides, he almost went crazy and so he was very happy to go absolutely unnoticed."