***Once Again on Bob Dylan’s Never-Ending Tour-Bob Dylan: Never Ending Tour Diaries: Drummer Winston Watson's Incredible Journey

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Bob Dylan: Never Ending Tour Diaries: Drummer Winston Watson's Incredible Journey, Winston Watson, Bob Dylan and his bands, Highway 61 Productions, 2009

By now with a million miles, maybe more, behind him on the road, the road first travelled from Minnesota to the Village way back when, it is easy for Bob Dylan aficionados to kind of snicker about the never-ending tour that appears to be exactly what old Bob intends to do. The image of him doddering to the stage, assisted, is not a pretty one and we can speculate on the rational for that later. One thing is sure though during a long and varied musical career Bob Dylan has run through many musicians since he started out with the Band many years ago. And the ups and downs of Winston Watson’s working as a drummer with Bob Dylan is the story told in this documentary,  Bob Dylan: Never Ending Tour Diaries: Drummer Winston Watson's Incredible Journey.

I have always been interested, having heard early on in the 1960s that he was hard to work with at a time when Dylan was a solo artist, what it was like to work for, with him. Winston Watson very capably tells us his story of what it was like to beat the drums behind Dylan later in his career during the 1990s. While the particular documentary format is a little wooden with lots of soft-pedal Q&A being thrown at Winston by his interviewer this is a pretty good bird’s eye view of the interaction between Dylan and Watson once Dylan decided that he wanted Watson as his touring drummer.

We never get a real good answer about what Dylan was like to work for day to day but it is clear that if you knew that the message was about giving him high-quality back-up then you would be okay. That and being professional in a very professionally run Bob Dylan, Inc. operation. That seems right. After all it will be Dylan and his segment of the American songbook that will be remembered one hundred years from now. The part that Watson really gives insight on is the way a band comes together, melts into one, about the his own personal odyssey on the road, about the hard life of the road and the stress on yourself, your family and any outside interests that takes a beating in order to “travel with king.” Not everybody is made for it and Watson eventually moved on but what he had to tell in his own very articulate way about the Dylan road will thrill aficionados, no question.