portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Friday, June 14, 2024

Françoise on Bobby . . . . . . Bobby on Françoise




« Bob Dylan has composed and recorded a lot of marvellous songs – but Just Like A Woman is really moving. When he played his songs for me in a hotel room in 1966 he seemed very shy – and I was very shy too, so we didn’t say anything to each other. At the time, my English was worse than it is today, so I didn’t really understand the words for Just Like a Woman. I only understood, 
“You make love just like a woman/Then you ache just like a woman/But you break just like a little girl,” 
which was moving to me, very sentimental. He was impressed with me – but not by the singer, by the girl, I think. He had a kind of romantic fixation on a photo of me – but I didn’t take it too seriously at that time. Recently, I got two drafts of letters written by him for me – and I finally realized that he was very serious about this fixation when he was very young. It moved me deeply when I read those letters » 
– Françoise Hardy, 2018 (Pitchfork Magazine)

 well can you blame him?

Untitled 2
for françoise hardy
at the seine’s edge
a giant shadow
of notre dame
seeks t grab my foot
sorbonne students
whirl by on thin bicycles
swirlin’ lifelike colors of leather spin
the breese yawns food
far from the bellies
or erhard meetin johnson
piles of lovers
fishing
kissing
lay themselves on their books, boats.
old men
clothed in curly mustaches
float on the benches
blankets of tourist
in bright nylon shirts
with straw hats of ambassadors
(cannot hear nixon’s
dawg bark now)
will sail away
as the sun goes down
the doors of the river are open
i must remember that
i too play the guitar
it’s easy t stand here
more lovers pass
on motorcycles
roped together
from the walls of the water then
i look across t what they call
the right bank
an envy
your
trumpet
player

From The Bob Dylan Centre


The original typescript for the poem is on display in our Columbia Records Gallery. Two years later, Hardy and Dylan finally met in Paris during Dylan’s chaotic 1966 European tour. 

 

Bob Dylan - Just Like a Woman - Take 1



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