Hi Bob,

I've decided to create a section on my site where I can write letters to you. You needn't write back though, it's ok. Please be assured I'm neither in love with you nor an entirely obsessed fan so you can call off the hounds. I just find you are on my mind a lot because you have been such an important part of my life. I'm sure there must be musicians you feel like that about yourself and maybe wrote to, I dunno. Someone told me you like to walk where Neil Young grew up, to soak up his vibe.. Maybe it's kind of the same thing, writing to someone. And of course you did go see Woody. We all need to be told how much we are appreciated. We all need to be told we are loved. We all need to be thanked and told how precious and priceless we are. And I do believe as much as needing to hear those things, we need to tell those things to those we feel them for, whomever they may be. I don't know how you are 'self-esteem' wise but I hope whatever way you are your self esteem will benefit from knowing that you (though you must be sick of hearing from 'grown-ups how you saved their lives) saved the lives of many children in the 70s. Even as far away as Ireland. A place where at that time children were nothing. I hope that moves you to know. For it is only a most loving soul (Muhammad Ali is the only other in my life time) who can reach across the world and claim the hearts of beaten down toddlers and children and young adolescents living in a theocratic society which is utterly corrupt, wherein children have no rights and which says they must hate themselves. You breathed life into many slumped children with your voice. And owned them. And showed them God, and life, and gave them expression. I'm one of those children and I wouldn't be alive if not for you so you are very important to me and I want to thank you constantly. I apologise if such a desire is off the wall. But no one rescues the souls of children. Certainly not back then. And I don't know if you knew you were doing it. And if not.. You should. The prophets say "the fatherless, the motherless, the widow, the orphan". You have pled for them even without knowing you were. You have no idea how generous your soul is. 70s Ireland was a hellish place for children Sir. I was born in dec 1966. If you (which I plead you might consider) read The Ferns Report, The Ryan Report, The Murphy Report,and The Cloyne Report you will see what I mean. It was hellish all round. Spiritually bereft and under siege. The devil was running our church and our country was outwardly manifesting our vomitous spiritual illness as war, so the church quietly got on with being corrupt, along with the so called 'Free State', the great incarcerator of children, in plain sight, because the war was taking all the attention. In the air of our 70s/80s childhoods hung the stench of the H-Blocks and the suppressed grief of our grandparents and their parents. The starving deaths of cool looking long-haired men who should have been in bands, or making love with women who would have done anything on earth just to be next to their beautiful skin. Instead they were choosing to die. For an Ireland they didn't know raped it's children. At home and at church. We kids wanted England. We hated Ireland. It was a fantasy these poor young men had. Even though I was only a child I used to think "go home baby man, to your sisters and your mother and your woman. Don't keep Ireland alive. They're killing us kids down here. We haven't a hope. Even Christ is held hostage. We need England". That's why first thing any of us 70s kids did was fuck off to England soon as we hit 17, as I did myself. If not for England a whole lotta Irish people would have died or ended up in the nut house. Did you know that Dean Jonathan Swift (gulliver's Travels) left all his money to build the first nut house in Ireland but said in the will that in fact he would advise a wall just be built around the whole country?) By the way it's still a bit fifty-fifty here. Still a bit 'squinting windows'. It won't be until all of us over 35 are dead that the theocracy and it's effects on Irish DNA will be gone. Our young people love themselves. They're going to love each other. The old road is rapidly ageing. Now why do I value you so much? Because I love God. And despite the theocracy I knew God. And you especially, along with Ali, whether you both intended to or not, manifested the reality of the presence of a LIVING God, who could send magical angels who wouldn't even mean to be angels, or know they were angels. You made me know I wasnt imagining things when I saw god beyond religion. And your voice was like a rope you threw to me whenever I was drowning in 'Ireland-isms' which was too achingly often. And still can be (When I'm crushed by Ireland-ism I listen to you singing Blind Willie Mc Tell, or Meet Me In The Morning VERY loud.. What a fucking drummer! Or I Feel A Change Coming On. You believed in Jesus. And consequently, as a child when I was ordered to lie naked on my back and open my body wide on floors, to be stamped on, your voice would come to my mind "God don't make promises that he don't keep". And I wouldn't try to make this happen but on a grassy hill in my mind I would see Jesus on the cross, and he would look into my eyes and his heart would bleed and the blood would run all the way down from his heart, down his robe, down the grassy hill and onto the floor where I was and into my womb and the two of you kept me that way so that I didn't die, nor did my womb burst. Without you both I know I wouldn't have been able to accept my circumstances and live nor keep my womb intact. When I was fourteen I spent some time incarcerated. For stealing. I was a kleptomaniac. Your album Desire was the only thing that kept me alive. It was all I listened to. We were allowed to listen to two songs after each meal on the record player in the sitting room. The sound of your voice, not even the words sometimes, as I said, was my only rope. Like the blood of Jesus had been when I was on the floor. Your voice was the same strength giver. They kindly got a guitar teacher in to teach me as they saw I only cared about music and specifically you. There was nothing else in life that interested me or made me want to live. I asked her to teach me To Ramona. That was the first song I ever learned to play.
Ramona come closer
Shut softly your watery eyes
The pangs of your sadness shall pass
As your senses will rise
Actually I only learned half of it. I was too moved. I grabbed the book with the picture chords and ran. And broke out of that place as often as I could ( Steve McQueen was nothing on me) and went busking. Learned all the songs from Desire and bellowed One More Cup of Coffee in the streets. Always had to trudge back though as cops would have got me at some point. Punishment for running away was you were 'out of the sitting room'. This meant eating alone and sleeping on the floor outside your cubicle, and no-one talking to you for a week, and you not being allowed into the sitting room, which of course meant no records. No Bob. Sometimes, when they had been particularly humiliated by my ingenious escape abilities they would send me as punishment, to sleep upstairs in the hospice, where lay dying all the old ladies who had been Magdalene girls. It was what was known as 'a residential institution'. In fact it was the very place which gave the name Magdalene Laundries to the female institutions, when in the late 80s the church sold off the land and builders digging found hundreds of hidden graves all marked simply 'Magdalene'. No one knew they were there til then. When I was there my fellow inmates used to say they often saw a ghostly White woman walking the gardens. I never believed them until I heard about the discovery of the graves. The old ladies dying upstairs, moaning in pain and crying out all night in vain for nurses who never came, as I said, had been Magdalene girls. I was instructed not to speak with them in the numerous times I slept with them. To be honest I was so freaked out I couldn't have spoken (for once) anyway. There were curtains between beds too and I was only ever sent up very late at night when the curtains were drawn . I never saw a lady or a staff member. Saw no one. In the morning a staffmember would fetch me before the old ladies woke up. They had spent all their lives in the institution, at least since age thirteen and then stayed as there was no where for them to be valued in 'the outside world'. Which ought not for a millisecond be taken to mean they were valued 'inside'. They slaved all their lives in the vast basement laundries. Cold concrete places with huge White sinks and pink carbolic soap with which they washed the clothes by hand. We did the same ourselves on Wednesday nights with our own clothes so we could see, hear, smell, touch, and taste a small sense of what those ladies had known. A girl was there with us, whose cubicle was next to mine. She was 17. Beautiful delicate girl.
She was pregnant. And happy about it. As were we. We all went through the pregnancy. She had a baby boy. So White he was blue. I never saw a child that colour before nor since. Blue black hair and blue White skin like a little Krishna. We adored him, she adored him, we adored her. I worshipped her. And her beautiful boy. One morning very early we were all woken by her screaming. The nuns had come without warning and were pulling the baby out of her arms. It was '82/83. There was a tug-of-war between the girl, the baby and us all on one side, and the nuns on the other. All of us screaming except the cold nuns who just pursed their lips and got on with their theft. The child was never seen nor heard of again to this day. No record was kept of where he went. No mention of him was made. When she got out the girl wandered the streets for years, bereft. I don't believe she ever recovered and I will never know if he did. You carried us through that time. Your At Budokan album. Particularly the unusually sad and slow version of I Want You.
The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you
Their cracked bells and washed out horns
Blow into my face with scorn
But it's not that way
I wasn't born to lose you
I want you
I want you
I want you
So bad
Honey I want you.
When the guitar teacher got married she asked me to sing at her wedding. Her brother was in a band and after the wedding he came to the institution and gave me a cassette with some music on it which had no lyrics or melody and asked I write something for it as they were looking for a singer and a first single. I wrote on it a song called Take My Hand, which was a ghost singing to a dying old man on a beach, telling him to lie down and send his soul with her to heaven. Odd song for a fourteen year old girl to write.
The band got permission to break me out of the institution every Sunday to go to the recording studio where I sang the song and while I was too young to join the band they did use the song as their first single so that was my break. I knew finally what I could do with my potentially pointless life that no one would have known ever happened. If not for your voice and your spirit and your lifesaving words I would never have known what to do. I'm sure I would have ended up either dead or in jail eventually as I had no ability of any other kind. The calling and certainty of your knowledge of God that sounded in your voice is what kept me alive and gave me strength to carry on, as it did on many occasions with my fellow inmates. Without you I simply do not know what on earth would have become of me. I would not have known God loved me. People rightly say you are a great soul, great writer, great prophet. But it rarely gets said that as a singer you are supreme. You are in fact the greatest 'singer's singer' who ever lived, in my humble opinion. Not even Callas could sing with your passion and your unusual but perfect timing and tuning, not even Marley could touch your spiritual prowess nor the blood of the lamb in your voice. You are THE singer of singers. Were, are, always will be. In the brief meetings we have had, though we have not spoken much I have seen you have the soul of an extraordinarily beautiful child. Yet also the ancient soul of a grandfather. The major quality of your soul is generosity. It really can't have been easy at all for you to be who God made you. To have the many gifts you have and be so unusual yet at the same time just trying to be a music man, and just an ordinary guy. You sacrificed ordinariness. That must have been very lonely. And is a testament to your soul's incredible generosity. What you've given of yourself at God's request is enormous. Neither you nor us will ever over-stand the full extent of it until we are in heaven. My other hero is Ali. For the same reason that he was able to reach into the hearts of abused toddlers and self-despising catholics in Ireland and give us reason to feel God was with us. I read an interview with his daughter who is also a boxer. She was asked does she believe in God. She said "all I have to do to know there is a God is look at my father". Well I feel the same about her father. But also about you. It isn't that either of you are God, or are perfect. In fact I think angels have to be very imperfect, because we couldn't identify with them otherwise so we wouldn't listen. You have been an angel to children. You may not know it. Ali knows he has been as it was a specific intention of his. But I don't think you had any intention other than to be yourself in as much peace as possible.. You poor thing.. You can't have had much peace. Many of us were saved by you as children. May your children and their children and all children associated with you directly or indirectly be blessed forever because of such a father. Not only a father to your children, but to so many more whom you will never know til God brings you home. You're an angel. And I love you. I owe you my life. Everything in it. So.. Now and then I'm going to write to you here on my site just to say hi and talk about mundane stuff like how expensive cardigans are in Ireland as opposed to England, or should I get fake nails, or do they sell those fresh breath gel tab things in America still? Cuz I can't get them in Europe. maybe you might post me some?

Sinead. X

04.11.11 Regarding Rolling Stone Iceland gig review.

Would like to thank R.S enormously for such an encouraging review but must correct one important mistake.
I didn't say Dylan's last album was posthumous. I speak very quietly and quickly and slur (sober I swear) and am Irish, so the reviewer mis-heard me and as I so revere the Rabbi Zimmerman I wish to make clear what I said was a stupid in between songs remark.. While someone was tuning a guitar.. To fill time I said how once I saw a show called cheaters.. Where u can have detectives prove ur lover is cheating and have a live showdown on tv, turning up to catch your love 'in the act'. At the showdown the woman, who was the cheater, got nose to nose against the the angry boyfriend's face and shouted "oh yeah? Well I've been saved by Jesus so fuck you!". I said I've always thought that would be a fantastic name for an album, but one would never get away with it, unless one was Bob Dylan, and it was a posthumous album.
So Bob.. I fear the remark may have offended u as it was written in the review and I would never offend u as u are the boss Rabbi at all times and to be Frank Sir, you could get away with it.. Because u would really mean it. And we all know its true. And u won't ever know I think, how much Jesus u passed around for the good-ment and sustain-ation of God's beautiful people.

01.09.11 open letter to Bob Dylan

Dear Bob,

3 questions..

1..

Please can I sing Licence To Kill with u and Mark Knopfler when you play together in Dublin in October? As Infidels is my favourite album ever and I'm quite a good singer. Even if I do say so my self.

Being selfish and a demanding diva I was hoping u and Mark would play and I would sing... wearing a miniscule army camoflage teeny-keeny... (Not really.. All strictly kosher

2..

Can I be your harmonica? I am asking this because I really want to be your harmonica. But I promise to behave unless u don't. If I can't be good I'll be careful.

3...

In the event my dying wish (see question 2) can't come true, Can u perhaps introduce me to any un-attached Zimmerman men from 44 yrs old on?

You have set an un_reachable standard in me.. For what a man really is.

Am assuming of course that u wud never be interested in one so 'insane' as to write u a love-letter, and assuming u must be well covered with women...

I promise I'm slightly prettier than in the ABC news split screen of before and after.. I was having a bad hair day.

Hugh Heffernan has now offered me a million dollars to do the cover of playboy. Every girl's dream.. This is because I am monumentally gorgeous. Contrary to popular belief based on zero recent 'sightings'.

I will implore the equally 'lurve_starved' ladies of influence at ABC news to sneakily switch photos so u can see me in my ACTUAL sexual gloriousness. So worry not. I'm well fit sir.

Anyway.. Please let me sing wiv u + mark because that album was, is and always will be the full roots of my heart. Kisses from Jesus all over it.

Yeah and Mark's pretty delicious too.. But not as much as u obviously. But if u don't fancy a quick one would u ever ask ol' Mark what he reckons? In the dark I think he could pretend I'm gorgeous... If I put a few bags on my head...

My preference if u are unattainable would be to meet your middle - aged male relatives please.

19.05.11 Happy Birthday To Bob Dylan The Sexiest Man In The Universe.

Dear Zimmy

It’s your gorgeous birthday next week. You’re three years younger than my father (whom I hope never reads this!). That’s a bit of a head-wrecker.

It is a fact that I wish to high heaven that my father’s father had met my mother’s whatever-it-is earlier. Then I would have been old enough to tell you all this in a more delicious setting. My beloved brother Joseph, who introduced me to you, passed an invitation to me from the Mail to write something about you because next Tuesday is your birthday.

I said, ‘But I’m a moron! What will I say?’ He said, ‘You could make it like a letter to Bob. To say the oul’ happy birthday’.

So... Bobby, or R.J or Ray, or Anything...Here is my birthday little thing for you.

Next week when everyone is writing and talking and thinking about your birthday, they’re all gonna go on about the usual stuff.

‘Prophet’.

Blah blah.

‘Voice of a generation.’

Blah blah. Blah blah. Blah blah.

All true I’m sure... But no one ever says: ‘Holy Mother of God! That Dylan fellow is an extremely adjectival sexy adjectival m.a.n. so he is for himself!’

It’s about time all the ladies, and I mean ALL the ladies, need to tell everyone exactly where it’s at concerning the deliciousness of Robert Zimmerman.

Drop. Dead. Gorge. Us.

Yes, sir! THE sexiest man that ever stalked the face of this earth.

‘Tis lucky for you, boyo, that you’re away over there in America. Sure there’s barely a woman in the universe who could keep her mitts off you! Thanks be to God that flights are not cheap here in Ireland or you’d be wise to run. And also to follow Ghaddafi’s example by employing fake Bob Dylans, so no-one will know which one is actually you. Incidentally, should you decide you want to follow Ghaddafi’s example by employing all-female body guards, I hope you will consider me. Please don’t ask for a reference though. I wouldn’t come up looking very good.

I once worked with a lady who’d once worked with you. She said you’re just crazy about the ladies. I took her in my arms and danced with delight. Hurray!

This means I’m not the only person on earth who thinks you’re a ride. Despite your main feature being sexeliciousness, you’re also not a bad oul’ sayer of songs. And by the way, there’s something the 13-year-old me wants to say to you: Thank you for making Christian music sexy. Poor God. Until you made Slow Train Coming, he was suicidal. From listening to terrible religious music.

I mean, have you ever seen Irish dancing? It’s the un-sexiest thing one could see. We only dance from the knee down. Keeping everything else tight as a board. Arms stiff at our sides. For fear we might slip into the world of sensuality.

People say, and I hope it’s not so, that you didn’t ‘stand by’ Slow Train Coming. I don’t know what they mean exactly. And I don’t even care. Either way you could never have known what it was like in Ireland before that album tore down the walls which separated God and sex. You couldn’t have known the effect the record would have. And that’s appropriate. Why should you know?

I was 13 the year it came out. Joe, my brother, brought it home.

I was just beginning to wonder what kind of person I wanted to be. And what kind of woman I wanted to be. And what kind of artist I wanted to be. There weren’t many options open to a female like me. I would either die or go to jail if I continued along the path that was given me.

But when I heard you singing those songs on Slow Train Coming, and when I saw the drawing of the train on the sleeve, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

So Rabbi, from you I know I gotta serve somebody. I know I’m a precious angel. I know God believes in me. I know I’m gonna change my way of thinking. I know I’m gonna make myself a different set of rules. I know I’m gonna put my best foot forward, stop being influenced by fools.

I saw you at Slane when I was like 16. I couldn’t believe I would actually see you in the flesh. I had a boyfriend at the time. Only reason we were together was we were both obsessed with you. Sadly we never did really anything but talk about you! Of course I could never have dreamed of telling him you were way sexier than him. Am I bad? I certainly hope so.

Santana played before you. When you came on you had on Oompa Loompa orange make-up. So it wasn’t only musically or spritually that you were ahead of your time. You foresaw fake tan! And the dreaded RTE make-up department. [C’mon, Ryan, man, let’s just come out and admit it, they’ve not been the Mae West over the years. Though I do grant you they’re not as woeful as TV3 - I’m forever tweeting Vincent Browne’s show over the make-up. They have him looking like Bob at Slane.]

I think you also had on loads of black khol eyeliner. Very strange sight. Gorgeous nonetheless, obviously. But strange.

Then I briefly actually met you twice. Backstage at two festivals, there were loads of us playing. I must have seduced your manager with sexual bribes, I can’t remember, but there I was in your dressing room. Just you and your tour manager.

You asked would I like a drink. I said yes, and though I can’t stomach alcohol I sipped away and pretended I wasn’t supressing the desire to let you have a look at what I ate for lunch. You did a lot of pacing up and down. I remember thinking ‘Holy mother of the divine lord Krishna, who could perform after drinking this?’

The third and final time our paths crossed was on that infamous evening at your tribute concert in Madison Square Garden, an evening which heaved with consequence. In the week or so before that show I had done an incendiary acapella version of a Bob Marley (the other ‘Bob’) song called War on Saturday Night Live. I changed some words and made it about child abuse instead of racism. And at the end of the song I tore up a picture of the then Pope, JP2. No smirking please, Bob - when mentioning ‘the incident’ one must always look very serious.

Then, soon after that, I went shopping to find an outfit for your upcoming show. The decision I made was so wrong - a turquoise jacket and skirt suit which should have been worn by a very old woman...and with a hideous gold thing on the jacket. Unforgiveable. I look at the footage of the show now and I am appalled. What was I thinking? Perhaps I should have slipped you a note before the show, explaining ‘the incident’ to you, but in the terror of my image in my dressing room mirror I guess I forgot.

So I walked on stage that night and half the audience cheered and the other half booed. Was it the Saturday Night Live fallout or had I just totally made the wrong wardrobe choice?

Seriously though, backstage afterwards, you looked at me confused as if to ask me what I had done to upset people so much. Instead of singing I Believe in You, as planned, I had screamed out the Bob Marley song instead. But it felt appropriate for me to scream while I had the chance. And I knew, if you understood, you wouldn’t mind that I used the stage you gave me to stand for the God you also gave me. I hope your questions from that night have since been answered for you by the various revelations concerning the spiritual condition of the catholic church. In God’s wide world. If I had simply sung I Believe in You that night my voice would have been drowned in the noise of the opposing spiritual forces in the room.

I had to do what I did in Madison Square Garden. Even if it meant being treated like a mental case for years after.

The God I believed in was the one you brought off the pages of scriptures into my life. Not the one those bored black-and-white-wearing priests droned on about whilst flicking bits of dust off their altars in the middle of the consecration of the Host.

Even if they showed me to the door. And said don’t come back no more cuz I didn’t be like they’d like me to. Even if I walked out on my own. A thousand miles from home, I didn’t feel alone. Cuz I believe in you.

I believe in you, even through the tears and the laughter. I believe in you even though we be apart. I believe in you even on the morning after. Though the earth may shake me, though my friends forsake me, this feeling’s still here in my heart.

Don’t let me stray too far. Keep me where you are. So I will always be renewed. And Lord, what you’ve given me today is worth more than I could pay. And no matter what they say, I believe in you...

But, I digress, Bob. I only meant to tell you you’re gorgeous. So have seventy kisses for yourself on Tuesday.

Sinead