Graeme Thomson

Albums should be forced by law to reveal where each song was written

Place is a crucially under-discussed element in the otherwise oversubscribed business of music criticism

Yoko Ono in the lounge of her Manhattan apartment she shared with John Lennon, 8 December 1981 (Getty Images)  
issue 06 January 2024

Bob Dylan is heading into the new year with a reduced property portfolio, having sold his Scottish bolthole, Aultmore House in Speyside, for a shade over four million quid.

Though the spec looks grand – 16 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, a folly (to complement his Christmas album, presumably) – only one aspect interests me: did Dylan ever write anything notable there? Is some piece of the Cairngorms National Park forever preserved in a line – perhaps the one he cribbed from Robbie Burns about his heart being in the Highlands – that came to him while gazing out enigmatically over the croquet...

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