The ICON and the GYPSY

I was a Young Gypsy boy trying to grow up in the 1920s in a

country which was very hostile to our lifestyle, and with no access to
education, and no chance to listen to music, or to attend festivals.
By chance my family were on the Isle of Wight during the
famous 1969 music festival. I was knocking on doors, trying to sell
our home-made clothes pegs. One day I came to a very large house,
somewhere in the middle of the island. A very charming American
invited me in. He gave me orange juice and asked me a lot of
questions about my life. He couldn’t understand what I was saying
very well because of my accent, and I couldn’t understand him much
either – he talked very quietly, I sat at his large wooden Kitchen table
and told him all about Gypsy life, how hard it could be, but also the
fun we had.
I must have been there for most of the morning and he got me to
sing a couple of the Gypsy songs I knew. Before I left the played me a
song on his guitar and gave me a record, which he said was his, and
had the song on. But I didn’t have a record player, and I soon lost the
record.
I had no idea who he was and I forgot about him until I was in
my early twenties. Unfortunately I had got into some trouble and was
in Brixton prison for burglary. My sentence was for two years. We
had a vicar who used to visit twice a week and because we were bored
we would sometimes attend his sessions. At one of the sessions he
played some music on an old record player and as soon as I heard it I
recognized the singer. He told me it was a man called Bob Dylan and
said that if I liked it, he would bring more of his records to the next
meeting. The following week I spent hours transfixed as I listened to
the records. One song stood out – North Country Blues – it was the
song he had sung to me in the kitchen on the Isle of Wight all those
years ago. When the song had finished, I cried – all the troubles and
hardship I had lived with just poured out of me.
Those sessions with the vicar became my education. With his
guidance and Dylan’s poetry a world opened up to me. He taught me
to read and write, and by the time my prison sentence came to an end I
had started a journey that transformed my life. With the vicar’s
support I went to college and became a carpenter – I didn’t look back.