Focus on the work of Bob Dylan ahead of legendary US singer-songwriter's Edinburgh gigs

Dylan is to perform at the city's Usher Hall on November 5th and 6th, as part of his three year 'Rough and Rowdy Ways' tour, promoting the 2020 album of that name.

He last appeared in the city in 2009 at the Edinburgh Playhouse.

But his first appearance came on May 20, 1966, at the ABC Theatre in Lothian Road - just four days before his 25th birthday.

American photographer Barry Feinsten famously took several memorable images of the fashionably-attired and rake-like Dylan striding down Princes Street.

Distinguished writer and critic Michael Gray saw Dylan at the Odeon Cinema in Liverpool just six days earlier, during a tour in which fans expressed outrage at the famous folkie appearing on stage with The Hawks, later The Band, plugging in and 'going electric'.

Gray has gone on to become the world's leading authority on Dylan's work and published his pioneering critical study, 'Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan', in 1972 - decades before the Blowin' in the Wind singer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

That groundbreaking book, updated across the years, represented the first time the artistic impact of Dylan's work had been fully explored.

Gray is to appear at the Customs House on the Mill Dam in South Shields on Friday, September 27, where he will give a talk, entitled 'Bob Dylan's Greatest Rejected Album Tracks'.

He will be discussing, and playing, his choice of the greatest tracks Dylan left off his own albums – not out-take versions of album tracks, but whole songs recorded at sessions and then rejected altogether.

The 130-minute talk will include audio and footage in two halves with an interval.Birkenhead-born Gray, who now lives in south-west France, is no stranger to the venue, having performed there in 2000 and 2004.

He also has North East roots, his father’s side of the family were from South Shields, North Shields, Sunderland and East Boldon.

Mr Gray, a regular speaker on North American college campuses and in the UK and Ireland at arts theatres, arts centres and festivals, first saw Dylan live at the Liverpool Odeon in May 1966 and finally met him backstage at a show in London in 1978 - in the company of Jack Nicholson and Bianca Jagger.

He said: "I first started giving talks about Dylan’s work at arts centres and arts festivals in 2000, because the publisher of the huge 'Song & Dance Man III' (2000) was sending me to bookshops and just paying my expenses.

"One day in May I turned up at a chain store in Manchester and outside it said 'Tonight: Michael Gray talks on Bob Dylan, £3 admission', and I thought - 'what, wait a minute: someone else is being paid for me to talk without being paid?'

"So I thought that if people liked my work enough to pay to hear me talk, I’ll do it not in bookshops but in proper venues. So I did.

"My first gig at the Customs House was on November 29, 2000. My second was March 10, 2004 - so I’ll be back just 20 years later this September."

Mr Gray's previous career in the music business also included a spell as Head of Press at United Artists Records in London and as a manager for Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty.Dylan's links to Tyneside date back to his appearance at Newcastle City Hall in 1965, and the now-demolished Odeon Cinema the following year.

Performances from both concerts appear in D. A. Pennebaker's documentary 'Don't Look Back' in 1967 and Martin Scorcese's 'No Direction Home' in 2004.

There's also a memorable scene in Pennebaker's documentary where Dylan can be seen walking along Pudding Chare in Newcastle and admiring the guitars in Jeavons music shop. "We don't have guitars like that in the States, man", he's heard to say.

Dylan, who also performed at St James' Park in 1984 (with Lindisfarne as one of the support acts) and on several occasions at the city's Telewest Arena from 1998 to the late 2000s, even endorsed Newcastle Brown Ale on his Theme Time Radio Hour show.Tickets for Mr Gray's performance cost from £15 and are available at the Customs House website.

Tickets for Dylan's Usher Hall appearances are available at https://www.usherhall.co.uk/