Former Isle Of Wight Festival organiser says Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize is ‘long overdue’

Dylan is the 259th American to have won the award

Former Isle Of Wight Festival organiser Ray Foulk has hailed Bob Dylan‘s Nobel Prize for Literature.

Dylan, 75, earlier became the 259th American to win the award. The prize is given to an individual who has produced “in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”.

Foulk, the organiser of the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival, told NME: “As analysed and detailed in my book, Stealing Dylan From Woodstock, Bob Dylan’s 17 songs at the Isle of Wight in 1969 (his only concert in seven and a half years) was a good taster of his whole 60’s output. His music is heavily laden with literary references and concepts and this alone is enough to justify a major award. This Nobel Prize is long overdue, recognising one of the greatest wordsmith’s of all time.”

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READ MORE: Bob Dylan’s Poetic Mastery: 10 Of His Finest Lyrics

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Sara Danils, Secretary of the Swedish Academy, also described Dylan as “a great sampler… and for 54 years he has been at it, reinventing himself.”

On his classic ‘Blonde On Blonde’, she said: “An extraordinary example of his brilliant way of rhyming. putting together refrains, and his brilliant way of thinking.

“If you look far back, 5000 years, you discover Homer and Sappho. They wrote poetic texts which were meant to be performed, and it’s the same way for Bob Dylan. We still read Homer and Sappho, and we enjoy it.”

Previous winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature include Alice Munro, Harold Pinter, Doris Lessing, J M Coetzee, Toni Morrison and Seamus Heaney.

Last year’s award was given to Belarusian investigative journalist Svetlana Alexievich.

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Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Dylan, No Direction Home, is being reissued to mark its tenth anniversary.

The film traces the early stages of Dylan’s career as he rose to prominence, beginning in 1961 when the singer-songwriter first arrived in New York, and ending with his supposed “retirement” from music in 1966.

To mark the tenth anniversary of the release of No Direction Home, the film is being re-released as a special edition. The deluxe edition of the film will be available to buy on Blu-ray and in high-definition format on streaming sites, while there will also be over two hours’ worth of extended scenes and bonus footage included with the new package.

The physical release of No Direction Home will be available to buy on October 28, with a digital version becoming available to buy on iTunes three days earlier (October 25).

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