I was around with Dylan in the early 60's, in London. I asked Martin Carthy to let him sing as a floor singer in a London folk club where Martin was the compere and Dylan did his Woody act and was very good. I had a few discussions with him --- he actually asked me if I was Hamish Henderson --- and he wondered why McColl was living in a nice house!! I'm afraid both of us were stoned most of the time, he on pot and I on whisky but us Scottish folkies who were writing republican and anti-polaris songs thought he was a pop singer with rather pretentious and weak political songs (our opinions!). It was also aggravating to see his manager, Al Grossman, recording the Saturday night folk session at the Troubadour where a wealth of traditional (and not so traditional) songs were sung. The tapes were taken back to their hotel and gave birth to various Dylan originals like 'God on our side', 'Pretty Peggy-o' etc. I think it was Liam Clancy who commented on the fact that one of Dylan's songs were written to the harmony of a song as the microphone was placed too near to the 'harmony' singer! I discussed Dominic Behan's Patriot Game with Dylan and, leaving aside the tune, his verse 'My name it means nothing, my age it means less' shows that he wrote his song after studying Dominic's ' My name is O'Hanlon, my age is sixteen'. He was a decent kid surrounded by pot heads, and driven straight into the arms of big business, but he could do a great Woody Guthrie! Cheers, Jim Mclean