‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’: Visiting the hallowed ground of Bob Dylan’s London video shoot
One of the world’s greatest cities, London, is home to a must-visit spot for fans of one of the world’s greatest artists, Bob Dylan, for it’s where DA Pennebaker shot the video for ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’.
London is littered with memories of the past, but for fans of Dylan, or indeed fans of music in general, this spot, just a stride away from the Strand, is iconic. In many ways, ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues‘ was one of the very first in what we’d now describe as a music video, and it was filmed just behind the famous Savoy Hotel.
The story started in May 1965, when Dylan was touring the United Kingdom, and it’s in Savoy Court, an unassuming passageway that looks like so many across the capital, where this significant moment in modern music history took place, not that you’d know it now, with no statue or blue plaque left to commemorate it.
The Savoy Hotel is a true London landmark, world famous for its legendary afternoon tea, the quintessential British experience, and just around the corner sits Savoy Court, where, standing in the alleyway, Dylan held a stack of cards, which he flipped as the song played, with each one displaying key words from the track, some correct, some misspelt, and some appear in the wrong place, but they’re there.
It was brilliantly simple and thrillingly minimalistic; this could be any alleyway in the world, and Allen Ginsberg, the famous beat poet, could just so happen to be in the background there, too. Despite being incredibly ordinary, even today, the video is oddly hypnotic and incredibly watchable.
It’s an easy location to find, just a short distance from three tube stops, being roughly equidistant from Covent Garden, Embankment and Temple. Walk along the Strand, one of the capital’s busiest and grandest streets, and you’ll find it, coming off the Strand on a slope downward and is now primarily used by black cabs picking people up at the hotel’s back entrance, rather than its original use as a service route for hotel deliveries.
Despite the huge significance of the ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ video, this feels like a hidden gem, a real if-you-know-you-know piece of London pop culture, much like 23 Heddon Street, which was where David Bowie was photographed for The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars cover, or Soho’s Berwick Street from the (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? album cover, none of which has been overrun by tourists in the way that Abbey Road and its famous zebra crossing have been.
Its anonymity makes it special; after all, it’s still just an alley, even if it’s one of the most important in music history. Unlike a large chunk of modern London, nobody has found a way to turn this into a cash cow yet, remaining incredibly low-key even after 60 years since that famous video was filmed, and Savoy Court still looks near-identical, besides the lack of scaffolding.
This is real, historic London, it’s modest and very-Dylan, and a must-see stop for any fans visiting the city.
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