…of dividing the world is separating those who can quote Dylan lyrics and those who can’t. Be honest: in which camp would you have placed George Foreman, former heavyweight boxer? But here’s George, interviewed in Dave Zirin’s excellent book about sport and the left, ‘What’s My Name, Fool?’

 “I was awakened by a young Anglo-Saxon boy from Tacoma, Washington, named Richard Kibble…..He would always play me Bob Dylan. I would hear those lyrics, “Well, they’ll stone ya when you’re walking ‘long the street/They’ll stone ya when you’re trying to keep your seat/ They’ll stone ya when you’re walkin’ on the floor/They’ll stone ya when you’re walkin’ to the door….”I hope I didn’t get that wrong…..I had a thing about those Bob Dylan songs, boy. “How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?”

I hope Bob’s seen that. He’d be chuffed, I think. 

…back when I still reviewed books regularly, I wrote about Jerry Wexler’s autobiography, ‘The Rhythm and the Blues’, for the Sunday Times. And a few weeks after the review appeared I received a letter from Wexler himself. I’m looking at it now, because of course I kept it safe. Gerald Wexler invented the phrase “rhythm and blues”. He is responsible for Aretha Franklin’s entire career. He produced Bob Dylan, and ‘Dusty in Memphis’. You wouldn’t throw a letter from Jerry Wexler away.

 “Dear Nick Hornby,” it begins. (Actually, he used a colon instead of a comma at the end of the salutation, but when you co-found Atlantic Records, you can do whatever you like with punctuation.) “Hell yes I read it and enjoyed it. (The unappeasable rage for approbation.)” He went on to wonder whether I was a fan of Frederick Exley’s work (I was – ‘A Fan’s Notes’ was an inspiration for Fever Pitch) and to defend Delaney and Bonnie, about whom I’d been mildly disparaging in the review, in a vain attempt to demonstrate that Wexler’s tastes were not infallible.

 And every now and again he’d write to me about a book I’d written (he was a voracious reader), or to send me an album that he thought had been unjustly overlooked; he would sometimes include a profile that someone had written of him. Jerry died on August 15th, aged ninety-one, and it’s hard to imagine a richer life than the one he lived. I still can’t quite believe that he wrote to me.

As I get older, I appreciate the greatness of Bob Dylan more and more. (This, perhaps, proves that Dylan is, after all, God: my increasing respect contains an echo of the bet-hedging interest in religion that people traditionally discover in their later years. I’m scared that I’ll be met at the Pearly Gates by a Dylanologist who will tell me that I haven’t listened to enough mid-sixties bootlegs, or that I’m too ignorant of the 80s albums, to be let in.) I have always liked his music, but for real Dylan fans, this isn’t good enough: saying that you like his music is, to their strange way of thinking, the same as saying that you don’t like it – there’s not enough wild-eyed zeal in your enjoyment for them.

I’m getting there, though. I saw ‘I’m Not There’ over the holidays, the best film about a musician, or indeed any artist, that I can think of. And I’ve just listened to the soundtrack, all the way through, and even the more ploddingly faithful cover versions (the soundtrack is essentially a very classy tribute album) contain something in them that freshens up the originals, and makes you want to hear them again. One is reminded, though, that one of Dylan’s enormous strengths is his conviction: many of his best songs are long, and wordy, and yet he never once lets his grip go. I love Cat Power, and her version of ‘Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again’ is lovely, and entirely honourable. But around about what must be the fifteenth verse, you can almost hear her thinking, “Oh, my. These lines just keep on coming, don’t they?” He, of course, will always be the only one who ever understands them properly, and that must help.