I can still remember my oldest sister, Tamar, 9  years older than me, coming home from the University of Arizona talking about a new singer she’d seen in concert, Bob Dylan.

I remember her showing us the album cover.

I remember listening to the music.

I liked the words. I liked the sound of his voice.

It was so different from anything I’d ever heard before.

He couldn’t carry a tune.

I always felt different from everyone around me. I was Jewish in Texas…different. I was the Rabbi’s daughter…different. I had a crazy mother…different. I was willful and brash…different. When life kicked me around, I kicked back…different.

And there was Bob Dylan…a Jewish boy in Minnesota…singing off key with a gravelly voice and an in your face message to the world.

No wonder I liked his sound.

20 years later I had a bout of encephalitis. Mostly it was the headache from hell. But I also had tickets to see Bob Dylan in Jerusalem. No question. I was going. Headache or high water.

He was amazing. A grumpy old man. Pitted face. More pitted voice. No stage presence. No funny chatter between songs. No encore. Just a more gravelly, more off key voice with an in your face message.

My sister saw Joan Baez in concert a few years ago. She was old. She forgot some of the lyrics to one of her most popular songs in the middle. She yelled a politically incorrect epitaph at a heckler.

It’s 20 years since I last saw Bob Dylan in Jerusalem and I’ll be seeing him in Ramat Gan next month. He’s turning 70 this year. He  sings about love now. He sings about beyond the horizon. Still singing about the things most poignant in my life.

He’s changed and so have I.

But my oldest daughter saw him in Italy 5 years ago. Still grumpy. Still no stage presence. Still no encore.

A legend in his time.