I would like to make some observations on Martin Carthy's account of his first meeting with Bob Dylan.
On the night in question my girlfriend (future wife) was 'on the door' with Anthea Joseph, collecting entrance fees. Anthea was also, more often than not, on the door at the Troubadour with Jenny Barton.
I was hovering around my girl friend like some lovesick swain (I think that's how you spell it!) when Dylan came in. He had a guitar and I asked him if he wanted to sing. He declined and sat at the back of the hall. Martin was compere that night and Nigel Denver and the extraordinary singer Marian Gray (Thamesiders) were on the bill.
I spoke to Martin later and said that an American kid had come in and as he had a guitar, why not ask him up for a song. This happened later and Dylan sang a Guthrie song complete with harmonica round his neck. I remember thinking he was OK but had nothing on Josh MacRae whom I had heard singing Guthrie since the late fifties, in Scotland. I wasn't a singer but Nigel Denver sang a few of my songs and at the interval, Dylan asked if we could talk. We headed down stairs to the toilet and I produced a half bottle of whisky. We were all pretty broke in those days and rather that paying bar prices, we bought a half bottle from the Off Licence and smuggled it in under our coats.
Dylan recoiled from the bottle and muttered something like 'I didn't mean that' but we talked nevertheless about Scottish folk music. He asked me at one point if I were Hamish Henderson! I told him about other clubs in London and met him again a few times in the Troubadour. Our conversation usually went something like this: Dylan 'did you write that?' me 'yes' or 'no' and I would give him an explanation of the song in question. My explanation of Behan's Patriot Game which he turned into God on our Side has been documented elsewhere. I'm afraid I was more concerned with chatting up my girlfriend than talking to Bob. She is Alison Chapman McLean who took many photographs in the Troubadour and elsewhere in the sixties, including the one with Dylan, Eric von Schmidt, Dick Farina, Ethan Signer and Martin Carthy which appears quite regularly on the BBC and various publications etc..
Dylan and I were not each other's cup of tea as he didn't drink whisky .. a terrible sin! and I didn't smoke pot so we never socialised.
At that time Martin, his wife Dorothy, Nigel Denver, Pete Stanley and his wife and myself all lived on the ground floor of a house in Haverstock Hill, Belsize Park. I remember Martin's piano was regularly smashed up for firewood although I never saw Dylan there.