In light of the recent publicity around the new Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, I thought I’d share some thoughts on Bob.
My wife and I went to the theater (for the first time in years) to watch it. I thought it was interesting, the performances were outstanding, but I didn’t learn much.
My main criticisms have to do with some historical inaccuracies (not gonna spend time detailing those).
Another thing; the dialogue communicates how amazing and revolutionary his lyrics were, but any performance of a given song in the movie never exceeds more than a verse.
That was disappointing to me because there is no substitute for the impact of hearing 5 or 6 verses of brilliant lyric after brilliant lyric, song after song.
I understand; you’ve got to tell the story in a little over two hours. Including entire songs would just take too long. The historical inaccuracies also serve the purposes of pacing, as well as time limitations.
If this movie creates an interest in Bob Dylan among young people who don’t know about him then I’m all for it. That’s happened with a couple of my students, so, “Bravo!”
I think Martin Scorsese's 2005 Bob Dylan documentary, No Direction Home, is much more interesting (not to mention more historically accurate). I’ll talk about that below.
A lot of the following is lifted from a previous blog, Porn & Bob Dylan, which didn’t get much traction because Facebook rejected it.
At the time, I didn’t care to take the time to try and find out why the algorithm rejected it; I assumed the issue was the word “porn” in the title, but I now think that perhaps it was because I used a picture of Bob Dylan as the thumbnail. Maybe there were copyright or licensing violations.
Anyway, that post wasn’t about porn at all; it was about why I don’t engage on the subjects of politics or religion on social media. Read it if you’re interested.
Concerning Bob Dylan:
I was never a fan of Bob Dylan's brand of musicality or guitar playing.
However, I am a big fan of his lyrics. Especially the early to mid-sixties stuff. The guy is a poetic genius in my opinion, and the simplistic nature and asymmetry of a lot of his music just accentuates the complexity of some of his lyrics.
Many years ago a friend of mine gave me a 2-CD boxed set of Bob Dylan. It was all early stuff and was pretty much demo-quality; just him playing guitar and singing. Some of the later cuts are alternate studio takes with various combinations of players. All but 2 tracks were previously unreleased material.
There were 28 songs on this thing. 3 to 5-minute songs - song after song after song. I sat and listened to the whole thing in one sitting. Aside from 2 or 3 folk standards it was all alternate takes of Dylan tunes. I was mesmerized by the lyrics. Brilliant lyric after brilliant lyric just flowed out of the guy, verse after verse, song after song. He struck me as being like some kind of prophet or shaman or something.
I found out years later that this 2-CD boxed set was originally released as a companion piece to Martin Scorsese's 2005 Bob Dylan documentary - No Direction Home - that I happened to watch on Netflix a while back. It was long - almost 4 hours - and it covers only the early years; it ends in 1966. In my opinion, that’s the most interesting era of his career. I do many of his songs from this era; I’m sure I relate to them because I was in THE formative stages of my early musical life when he wrote and released them.
I was first exposed to his music by others who covered him; The Byrds with Tambourine Man, Peter, Paul and Mary with Blowing in the Wind, Jimi Hendrix with All Along the Watchtower and Like a Rolling Stone, Johnny Winter with Highway 61 and many other popular artists who covered Dylan tunes.
One of the fascinating things No Direction Home brought out was his refusal to participate in the politics of the '60's. Joan Baez (they were lovers at the time) expresses great frustration and hurt because of his noncompliance relative to her political agenda; not engaging with the anti-war movement, not showing up at rallies, demonstrations, marches, happenings, be-ins and whatnot.
Even though many of his songs were used as anthems for various (usually liberal) political movements, he always refused to take a stand and would never define what they were about. He would let people interpret and use his music in whatever way they did. I don't see that he had much choice about how people took his meaning, or lack of it.
I've spent some time ferreting out old interviews on YouTube (example) and, over and over, he seems amused and confused by questions concerning some perceived deep meaning or political message to his lyrics.
He says, "Hey, man, it's just a song."
When asked if he defined himself as a poet, or a spokesman for the counterculture, his only answer was, “I'm a song-and-dance man.”
I like that. In my experience people are always tugging at me to submit my musical abilities to one agenda or another, whether it be politics, religion, a favored charity or whatever. Music is bigger than all that. And at the same time, it’s only music; just a song-and-dance.
As Frank Zappa said, “Shut up and play yer guitar!”
Music can be used for anything. However, I've written elsewhere about the ability of music to transcend whatever it's being used for, whether it be drink sales, gambling, a wedding, promoting a car dealership, a funeral, prostitution, a church service, or politics.
Even though I come from the sixties - a politically charged era - I identify much more with Bob Dylan's apolitical stance rather than those who thought they could change the world of politics through music and the counterculture (Joan Baez, CSNY, etc).
I've always thought that the hippie ethos was originally an apolitical thing, a spiritual thing; something tried to get the affairs of men to notch up the evolutionary ladder but it got co-opted and corrupted by the anti-war movement (politics) and drugs, morphing into violence and depravity. Sad.
The fact that Dylan's song, "The Times They Are A-Changin'" seems just as current now as it did when it was written in 1964 just goes to show that nothing's really changed as far as politics go...the same old crap just comes back around and the same old song and dance is just as relevant.
If you are engaged politically, no matter what side you're on, the war is never-ending - ever. Somebody's always trying to take over the world.
Today's revolution becomes tomorrow's status quo. Which is the establishment the next revolution overthrows which then becomes the status quo.
"Meet the new boss; same as the old boss." - the Who.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesy with your pen
Keep your eyes wide the chance won’t come again
But don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin
There’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’
Come senators and congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside and it's raging
It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times, they are a-changin'
Sorry, but all that could be said at any time! I think Bob knew that. In "My Back Pages" he said,
Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate!" I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull I dreamed
Romantic facts of Musketeers
Foundationed deep somehow
I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now
John Mayer, who was born 13 years after Dylan wrote The Times They Are A-Changin', wrote the 2006 hit song, Waiting on the World to Change. Coming from the '60's era I can't help but notice that the bridge is Mayer's nod to Marvin Gaye's politically-motivated 1970 hit, What's Going On?.
Sorry John, you're gonna be waiting a looong freakin' time; we're still asking, "What's going on?"
During the Covid shutdown in 2020, for the first time since the early ‘70’s, I had no gigs on the calendar. One of my goals during that time was to memorize Bob Dylan lyrics. That exercise gave me even more of an appreciation for his lyrics than I had before.
I now regularly perform Tambourine Man, My Back Pages, Times are a-Changin’, Don’t Think Twice, All Along the Watchtower and several others - all with no lyric sheets.
In 2015 I had occasion, through a mutual friend, to have lunch with Bob Dylan's guitar player, Stu Kimball. Although now no longer a member, at the time Stu had been in the band for 11 years.
There were several very interesting directions to the conversation, musical and otherwise, but the one pertinent to this blog was Stu's response when asked a question about Dylan,
"I'm not at liberty to talk about Bob."
When our mutual friend requested a couple of photos, Stu agreed, but there were stipulations;
No social media. I was free to post pictures to my own website, but absolutely NO social media - FaceBook, Twitter, etc.
Stu picked the spot.
I'm sure the primary reason for these demands was security-related (Hello? John Lennon!); social media posts can be geolocated.
When Stu picked the spot, nothing in the background could hint at location.
However, I think these parameters also sync with Dylan's famous reticence to engage with the press, do interviews and commit to some kind of political position. His "security" involves not just his physical safety, but his apolitical stance.
In a mid-sixties Interview with Time Magazine Dylan said,
"I got nothing to say about these things I write, I mean I just write 'em! I don't have anything to say about 'em, I don't write 'em for any reason. There's no great message. If you wanna tell other people that, go ahead and tell 'em but I'm not gonna have to answer to it."
As for myself, I have political and religious opinions; some of them are strongly held - most are not - but publicly, like Dylan, I refuse to participate in and perpetuate the fraud, the cesspool that is the media - social and otherwise.
I'm just gonna play my guitar. That's the best thing I can do for the world.
Oh yeah, stay married and help raise my grandkids; that’s good for the world too!
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