Sam sings the Firenze blues

Comics about a trip to see Bob Dylan in Italy

Hi Drawing Book readers! I’ve been making my way through my old illustrated sketchbooks from the late 1990s (known as “The Drawing Book”): last time, I wrote about getting stuck in Germany for a week. But this week, it’s time again for a tale about going to see a Bob Dylan concert, back in the days when I was an adventurous traveller.

In an earlier Bob Dylan adventure story, I wrote about going to see a couple of shows in Santa Cruz, California. Not only did I get to enjoy a couple of incredible shows (Highlands!!), I also met a guy who became my boyfriend! In the months that ensued, there was a whirlwind romance that involved a lot of travel between Calgary and California. At last, we decided that if we were going to have to travel to be together, we might as well travel somewhere beautiful - like Italy! (Remember, this was when I was a flight attendant. And before Sept. 11th, 2001, hopping on standby flights was so easy.) Anyway, we planned a trip to Italy in the spring of 2000, and believe it or not, it just happened that Bob Dylan was planning a trip there, too. Fate!

I drew a lot of pictures on this trip, but I’ll save those for another, non-Bob-related Drawing Book story.

After a couple of weeks travelling, we arrived at the train station in Florence, to be met by lots of locals trying to convince us to stay at their hotels, hostels and penziones. One lady was particularly persistent, and in an attempt to deter her, I told her, “we don’t want to stay in the city. We need to stay at a place near the Palasport…” (the stadium where the Dylan concert was happening, outside of the city centre). “Ma poi!” this lady cried (or something like that), “our place is right beside Palasport!” What could we do? We went with her and her son Bernardo, who (she assured us) made the best cappuccini in Florence.

And that night we walked over a little footbridge from her street over to the stadium to see the show!!

You can see the boyfriend figures rather large in the picture - for me, this trip was as much about him, as it was about Bob!

The set list was about as close to a “Greatest Hits” set list as Bob ever gets… there are some real classics in there, along with the obligatory obscurities. I don’t see this show online anywhere, but I can find recordings of my two “firsts” from that show (songs that I was hearing live for the first time, that evening). First, a recording of the “really nice” version of “Visions of Johanna” that he played that evening, to an appreciative crowd; and a recording (from another show) of the catchy, upbeat traditional cover “Duncan and Brady.”

But our blissful holiday was not going to end as blissfully as it had begun. This trip was the longest time my long-distance boyfriend and I had spent in the same place, and we were starting to feel the strain of that too-much-togetherness. You can tell how upset I was, when you see that on the next page of the drawing book, I even referred to my cool new Bob Dylan t-shirt as “this silly t-shirt.”

By this time, the blissful trip had become decidedly un-blissful. It was time to sing the blues. This part isn’t about Bob Dylan, but I’m including this page because of the Dylan reference in my made-up song.

It was time for me to leave Firenze. So I did - without the boyfriend.

The relationship didn’t last much longer and I spent about a year with a broken heart. But luckily there were still some more Bob Dylan shows in my future - I’ll write about them in the next episode of Bob Dylan Comics. In the meantime, stay well and don’t get your hearts broken!