“It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there…”: How Bob Dylan confronted his own mortality in a hauntingly beautiful song – and re-established himself as an artist of real creative relevance

Bob Dylan.

40 miles due north-west of the twin Minnesota cities of Minneapolis and St Paul, near the city of Hanover, lies a 100-acre farm tucked away on the banks of the Crow River amid rolling fields and dense hardwood forest.

This is the property co-owned since 1974 by Bob Dylan and his younger brother David Zimmerman and it’s the place where Dylan wrote much of his seminal album Blood On The Tracks (1975).