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NORDIC NOIR

BOB DYLAN

How did Bob Dylan end up in ‘The Bridge’?

Bob Dylan is set to feature in the coming third season of Swedish-Danish Nordic Noir hit 'The Bridge' – because the US music legend himself wrote to creators asking to get involved.

Published: 24 September 2015 16:19 CEST
Updated: 25 September 2015 02:11 CEST
How did Bob Dylan end up in 'The Bridge'?
US singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Photo: AP Photo/Chris Pizzello

The co-produced Scandinavian crime series has fans around the world. And it turns out that singer-songwriter Bob Dylan is one of them after a Swedish creator of 'The Bridge' revealed the American's passion for the Nordic Noir show on Thursday.

“We got an email from Bob Dylan's agent where they wrote that Bob Dylan liked our series and wondered if we could include a song in it,” scriptwriter Hans Rosenfeldt told public broadcaster SVT just days before the third season hits television screens in the Nordics.

Dylan's song 'The Ballad of a Thin Man' is going to be played on a car radio at some point during the third season of the crime series.

“I have never experienced anything similar. We got the rights to use the song for a very much symbolic sum compared to how much music rights usually cost,” said Rosenfeldt.

READ ALSO: Scientists sneak Bob Dylan lyrics into journals

The long awaited third instalment of The Bridge hits Swedish television screens on Sunday, September 27th, but it will be missing one half of the Danish-Swedish cop duo that has been the focus Scandinavia's biggest crime show since it launched in 2011.

Copenhagen-born actor Kim Bodnia quit the programme after the second season because he did not like the way his character Martin Rodhe developed. But Sofia Helin, who plays Saga Norén, the unusual autistic Swedish investigator assigned to work alongside him, will return.

But anyone keeping their fingers crossed for an on-screen appearance by Dylan himself as a Danish or Swedish police officer should not get their hopes up too much.

“It could easily become somewhat of a gimmick. I was not super-fond of Keith Richards in 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and all that. I think you should be careful, it's not certain that it would really fit into our universe. You would have to find a very good reason to have him there so that it would not just become a gimmick to get a bit of publicity. But you should never say never,” said Rosenfeldt.

The Bridge, which is jointly funded by Danish television network DR as well as SVT became a cult hit across Scandinavia four years ago and also has a strong following in the UK and Germany.

BOB DYLAN

Bob Dylan to play at Denmark’s Roskilde Festival

One of the all-time greats of rock ‘n’ roll will play at Denmark’s largest music festival this summer.

Published: 28 February 2019 13:02 CET
Bob Dylan to play at Denmark’s Roskilde Festival
Bob Dylan in 2012. Photo: FRED TANNEAU/Ritzau Scanpix

A new generation of fans will therefore be able to experience the Nobel Prize-winning songwriter, who also played at Roskilde on several occasions during the 1990s and 2000s.

Dylan, known for songs including Like a Rolling Stone, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Boots of Spanish Leather, Blowin’ in the Wind, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall and Subterranean Homesick Blues as well as countless others, will play the Danish festival’s main Orange Stage on July 3rd, Roskilde Festival confirmed.

“It’s now been 13 years since he last visited us, so for many of our young participants this could be the first and maybe only time they will have the chance to see an artist of such importance,” programme director Anders Wahrén told DR.

In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”, although it took him a while to officially accept the prize.

He has also won 10 Grammy Awards, one Golden Globe and one Academy Award.

Born in 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, Dylan emerged during the 1960s, with his distinctive vocal phrasing and guitar and harmonica-based music.

“Bob Dylan’s cultural impact can almost not be overstated, even if you don’t also consider his personal, literary or political awareness and engagement,” Wahrén added.

The rock ‘n’ roll icon will be 78 years old when he steps on to the Roskilde stage this summer.

Other acts so far announced for this year’s festival, which is the largest of its kind in northern Europe, include The Cure, Cardi B, Robyn, Travis Scott, Christine and the Queens, Robert Plant and Tears for Fears.

READ ALSO: Roskilde 'is not just stages, but also the space between'

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