So, while Kelly and I work on some new songs which have, yet again, mysteriously turned up at her door by unknown means, I’ve been thinking. Venus’s own blog, which she randomly contributes to, has some tantalising glimpses of her life story: but they’re in no particular order. And I thought it might be easier for everyone to read if they were.

So what I’m going to do is, every week publish the start of one of the blog entries on here, with a link to the rest of it. It’ll be a bit like getting her life story in instalments, but not quite as organised (and we may have to back track if she surfaces again and publishes something out of sequence)

Ready? Here’s the earliest chronological entry I can find on the blog. It’s called ‘Waking Up To Dylan:

Bob Dylan at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, it must have been 1966. Julie and I were 16, for goodness’ sake. We’d made it down from Arbroath, don’t know how. I think we told our folks we were staying with Julie’s sister in Edinburgh or something, but instead we blew everything we’d been saving for a year, and got the train to Manchester. It was the first time either of us had been away from home.

First half of the concert was the Sermon on the Mount for us. Just Dylan, his guitar, and a concert hall full of his charisma. I remember him playing ‘Visions of Johanna,’ and it was like nothing we’d ever heard before. The chords looked simple enough, but the lyrics! How on earth could I remember them? In the interval, I tried writing some of them down on the back of my ticket, with a pencil I’d liberated from school. The ticket wasn’t big enough, of course…

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