A walk through Paddington Square

Of the many legends that circulate about Bob Dylan, one of the most successful among us was the one that said that Dylan spent a season living in a windmill in Formentera, in 1967, when he was recovering from the famous motorbike accident in Woodstock and was composing the songs for John Wesley Harding. Legend had it that Dylan played chess at the Fonda Pepe and read St. Augustine’s Confessions. I remember once talking about it with Mateo Mas – who knew everything or almost everything about Dylan – and Mateo told me that it was very strange that Dylan had been in Formentera in 1967. For a start, no biography of Dylan – and there were many – gave any account of that visit. And besides, no one had ever seen a photo of Dylan in Formentera. Later it was confirmed what Mateo had suspected: Dylan had never been to Formentera. And it was all a beautiful daydream of Pío Tur, who became Minister of Culture under the PP.

But there were more legends. Another legend said that Dylan came to Mallorca in 1964 to visit Robert Graves, whom he had admired ever since he had read The White Goddess. This legend had less force than the previous one, but it also circulated among some circles of Dylanians. In its favour, it was not implausible (Dylan had been to a village in Greece in 1964) and he would not be the first musician to make a pilgrimage to Deià in search of Robert Graves (Robert Wyatt and Daevid Allen did so in the early 1960s, Kevin Ayers a little later). But this legend was soon disproved by Robert Graves’ own family: Bob Dylan was never in Deià.

What is possible is that Dylan and Robert Graves met at some point in the 1960s. In fact, Dylan stated as much in his Chronicles, and also commented that he and Robert Graves took a “brisk” stroll through Paddington Square. According to Dylan, he was keen to ask the poet about some of the themes of The White Goddess, but he had already completely forgotten about the book that day (incidentally, it is quite rare for a mind as sharp as Dylan’s to forget anything). And it gets more complicated because Dylan said in an interview that he met Robert Graves at the home of the poet Rory McEwen. According to this other version – which we should place in January 1963 – Dylan was singing Hollis Brown when Robert Graves got up and went to chat with other musicians who were playing on the floor that night. But in this version, Dylan says he didn’t know who the guy was and only later was told that he was the poet Robert Graves (who didn’t talk to him).

Which of these versions is true – the one about the walk in Paddington Square or the one about the meeting in the flat of the poet Rory McEwen? Which is true and which is not? Did they ever meet or not? I fear we will never know.