Kindly Leave the Stage

Boy, is this an old song. It dates back to the early 1970s, when I was a not-so-hot singer-songwriter in a well-known Edinburgh pub, the Waverley Bar. Looking back, I was paid quite well for my night's work, but I'm not sure I was worth it.

It's about Bob Dylan, of course. Back then, he'd just come off a couple of (IMHO) rank bad albums, and it looked to me like he was pretty well done – so I wrote this. Then Dylan released Blood on the Tracks, which I still think is his best album of all. Shows you how little I know.

I put the song away in disgrace for a long time, then rediscovered it not so long ago and realised that if I (very slightly) re-wrote the song, it could still work. There's a huge demand to see these artists – in their 70s and 80s – play "just one more time"; but maybe it's time for all of us simply to move on.

Anyway, here's a very experimental video version.

Gordon Lawrie, April 2020