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1
“And if my thought dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine”
I guess it’s hard to transport your mind back to the mid-sixties, especially if you didn’t live through them. The world was both bigger and smaller. Everybody didn’t have the possibility of reaching everybody, but those who got inside the corral, who played and won, had much greater impact than anyone today, for there was less competition for attention. Furthermore, there were fewer scenes, fewer niches, fewer verticals. You couldn’t just go on Reddit and find a sliced and diced thread that appeals directly to you, and just those who feel the same way, very few in all.
And in the sixties, you were either on the bus or off the bus. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, immediately read Tom Wolfe’s “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” It’s not about appearances, it’s who you are on the inside. You couldn’t fake it with Ken Kesey. The trappings were not sufficient, who were you REALLY? And when the sixties started, there were beatniks. Today, beatniks are seen as Maynard G. Krebs. Then again, most people today have no idea what a beatnik is, they may have never even heard the word, kinda like “keen”…for a moment there it was a descriptor bigger than “cool,” but I haven’t heard anybody use it that way in eons.
So, do you know how much inner strength it takes to go against the path prescribed from birth by Jewish parents? To drop out of college and go your own way? That was not de rigueur when Bob Dylan came of age. And he went to New York City to find like-minded people, before most of America even knew what Greenwich Village was. And he revered Woody Guthrie and ended up jumping off the platform Guthrie established but for a long time only insiders knew him. They might have known his songs, via the efforts of his manager, Albert Grossman, who got his other clients, Peter, Paul & Mary, to cover “Blowin’ In The Wind,” but Bob really didn’t get traction until “Like a Rolling Stone” in ’65. And this was a big deal, because the song was six minutes long and Bob had anything but a traditional radio-friendly voice.
Times have changed. To make it on Top Forty radio way back when, you used to have to have a classically great vocalist. That’s not Bob Dylan. And in the wake of the Beatles, you had to write your own songs. Today we’ve got two-dimensional voices with no writing chops on TV competition shows, none of which break through beyond this show, and zillions of less than stellar vocalists all over AAA and Active Rock radio while those not even featured keep complaining they deserve more attention when they wouldn’t have even gotten to play way back when.
So, just getting Dylan on the radio was a really big thing. Sure, he wrote the song, but credit Columbia with pushing it over the top.
But Dylan had already been around for years! As a folkie.
If I hear one more person tell me about Dylan going electric at Newport, my head will explode…well, maybe you’d like to see that. First and foremost, at the time MOST PEOPLE DIDN’T KNOW! It was not like today, where if anything meaningful happens we all know it instantly, the only way you might know about Newport was by reading it in the newspaper, a newspaper most in the scene didn’t bother to read at all, at least not religiously. So, it’s all in hindsight. What you had was an insular folkie scene which wanted no change, which resented the Beatles, the same way today’s aged rockers hate streaming, as if by complaining they can hold back the future. But that’s impossible.
So, Dylan pivoted. At least that’s what they call it in tech-speak.
2
So a year ago I did a podcast with legendary DJ Pete Tong. We talked about his big payday over the millennium. I asked Pete if he could make that same money today. And Pete said…ONLY IF I REINVENT MYSELF!
That has stuck with me ever since. Your audience wants you to remain who you are. Fans abhor change. They’ll castigate any efforts deviating from the norm. They want you set in amber. And then you’re no longer an artist, but a jukebox. Bob Dylan decided to break the norm, to reinvent himself, and that’s why he’s continued to exist, to be important all these years later, because he’s not afraid to take chances, to do it differently. Furthermore, he’s doing it his way and he doesn’t really care what you think. Well, at his Musicares speech a few years back one of the astounding elements of this highlight of the year, definitely the best acceptance speech in the history of the music business, was that he’d been paying attention! But prior to this night, he never bit back. After “Don’t Look Back” he didn’t even bother. As a matter of fact, Dylan, to this day, is the king of obfuscation. You can’t trust a thing he says, he’s making his own myth, in an era where everybody is a tool of the machine, vomiting up every detail as grist for the mill. Bob seemingly exists OUTSIDE the system. He CONFOUNDS critics. Live he switches from guitar to piano, he completely rearranges songs to the point of incomprehensibility. Some people like him in principle, others hate him in principle and if you dare to analyze, you’re stuck in the middle with almost no one. Dylan is like our political system, you either love him or hate him. And that is unfortunate, but that is today.
David Bowie reinvented himself into a long career. And, of course, Madonna has done this too. But it’s too risky for most artists.
So the folk scene is burgeoning. And Bob ends up the spokesman. But whenever you ask him for advice, he always says you know as well as he does, he doesn’t have the answers. How Dylan had this insight at such a young age is astonishing. The truth is we’re all equal, we all have insights, and this leads me to “Dear Landlord,” from his 1967 comeback album “John Wesley Harding”:Â
“Now, each of us has his own special gift
And you know this was meant to be true
And if you don’t underestimate me
I won’t underestimate you”
The talk was always about “All Along the Watchtower,” and ultimately Hendrix’s cover. But the (Small) Faces did an incredible cover of “Wicked Messenger” and Joe Cocker covered “Dear Landlord” and this ultimately proves that the artists were paying attention, today it’s all about data, but you cannot measure this kind of impact, the kind that penetrates souls.
And in ’67, when his old pal/keyboardist Al Kooper was employing a big band, i.e. Blood, Sweat & Tears, to make his music come alive, “John Wesley Harding” was simple.
Then “Nashville Skyline” was country, suddenly Bob was a crooner, a compatriot of Johnny Cash when most of his fans abhorred the Nashville sound, and then for the first time Bob failed, with “Self-Portrait.”
3
And four months later, Dylan came back with “New Morning.” He was gonna show us, that he still had it, he had no time to waste, forget schedules, he was gonna do it HIS way.
That’s where I came in. “New Morning” was the first Dylan album I bought. Sure, I knew his material, at least the “hits,” you couldn’t avoid them, but you had to own an album to go deep.
And “New Morning” got good reviews but it promptly fell out of the public discussion. It was out of time, it didn’t fit the airwaves. And at this late date, it’s seen as minor, yet it was anything but.
“Build me a cabin in Utah
Marry me a wife, catch rainbow trout
Have a bunch of kids who call me ‘Pa’
That must be what it’s all about
That must be what it’s all about”
And it is. Dylan was way ahead of the curve. Once again, he pivoted from the public to the personal, telling us fame was overrated, that family was where it was at.
And Bob played “Alias” in “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” a third-rate flick that wasn’t all bad, it did feature Slim Pickens and Harry Dean Stanton, but we went to see it and had no idea that “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” would become a classic, at the time it was seen as a movie throwaway!
And Bob tried throughout his career to make palatable movies, and he never succeeded, but if you can do one thing great, you’re a legend. Everybody believes they can do more, but the truth is almost nobody can.
But then Dylan made a deal with David Geffen and went on the road and… This is important, before I get into a discussion of “Before the Flood,” Dylan ultimately beat Geffen. Dylan never signed the contract and he went back to Columbia. Then again, that’s the legend and Geffen might see it differently, but after that one always wondered if jumping ship was ever prudent, after all your original label had your catalog…
So, in preparation for the “Before the Flood” tour, I went back and bought all the albums that came before. And contrary to conventional wisdom, I found 1965’s “Bringing It All Back Home” to be my favorite, it’s still my favorite.
The ’62 debut was the blueprint, most people couldn’t see who he’d become, but the label stuck with him and it ended up getting ’63’s “Freewheelin’,” with “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” both made famous by the aforementioned Peter, Paul & Mary. Management is everything, you can’t make it without a great manager, and Albert Grossman was the best of his era.
1964’s “The Times They Are a-Changin'”…the title track never goes out of style.
Dylan’s other ’64 album, “Another Side,” which no one ever references, no one ever talks about, contained “All I Really Want to Do,” “My Back Pages” and “It Ain’t Me Babe,” all of which were made into big hits by other artists, that’s how most people became aware of the cat.
1965’s “Highway 61 Revisited” had “Like a Rolling Stone,” and was seen as the best Dylan album until its double LP follow-up, 1966’s “Blonde on Blonde,” widely considered to be his best work, but in between “Another Side” and “Highway 61” came 1965’s “Bringing It All Back Home.”
4
Today “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is a classic. It wasn’t back then. Actually, “Don’t Look Back” made the song a classic, most people didn’t see the movie back then, but the flick has had a long afterlife.
And what you get to see in the film is the inanity of the press. I hate to tell you this, but the press ALMOST ALWAYS GETS IT WRONG! At least when it comes to music. The writers are either not familiar with the scene or are second or third-rate scribes. Dylan gets so frustrated he does end up writing “Ballad of a Thin Man,” but he refused to play the game thereafter. As time went by he seemed to exist outside the public relations paradigm. You couldn’t get an interview, or he made up answers, he became an enigma, and the writers disappeared while Dylan’s stature only grew greater.Â
Actually, that’s one of the great lines from “Absolutely Sweet Marie” off “Blonde on Blonde”:
“But to live outside the law, you must be honest”
If you can’t understand this line, you’re off the bus. The truth is if you go your own way, you cannot compromise, you can’t make mistakes, the machine and the audience won’t support you. But if you’re always honest, you can get away with doing anything, kind of like Neil Young, he’s never compromised his values.
And “Bringing It All Back Home” has “Maggie’s Farm.” And “She Belongs to Me.” And “Mr. Tambourine Man.” And “Gates of Eden.” But it also contains Dylan’s masterpiece, his best work in my mind, at least my absolute favorite, because of the truth contained, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding,” from which the initial lines at the top of this screed are excised.
Most people heard “It’s Alright, Ma” first on the “Easy Rider” soundtrack, via the Roger McGuinn version. “It’s Alright, Ma” is classic Dylan, in that it was not a hit single, but it has survived the sands of time via its excellence, like so many similar non-hit parade Dylan tracks.
And the reason “It’s Alright Ma” is so great, is because although it’s singular, it was also universal, or at least after its release. As in listeners were affected by the song, society changed, people started to question authority. I’m not talking about conspiracy theories, but the supposed bedrock of our nation:
“For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Do what they do just to be
Nothing more than something they invest in”
Bingo! Are you an automaton, or do you think for yourself and forge your own path? That was the question in the sixties, and most young people ended up on Dylan’s side.
“While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in”
This applies as much today. Everybody’s telling you to be like them, to conform, if you do it your way you’re going to be lambasted.
“Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony”
Should women control their own bodies? Is sex dirty? Is the system right? And now we all know it comes down to money. And propaganda…hell, look at Trump. But back then, the young ‘uns never would have fallen for it.
“While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows their minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely”
No one gets out of here alive. You bloviate as if it counts, and then you die and it’s all irrelevant. All the politicians, the business heroes…they’re so powerful and then they’re not, they’re forgotten.
“Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to”
A rejection of the system as opposed to a buying in, which is the ethos of the upper middle class/highly-educated caste of today.
5
The rest you might know. Or maybe not, maybe you’re just that young.
So after the ultimately disappointing “Planet Waves” for Geffen, which did contain “Forever Young,” but it ultimately took Howard Cosell’s usage of the song as a sports metaphor to make it part of the public consciousness, and “Before the Flood,” in 1975 Dylan released “Blood on the Tracks.”
Essentially no one comes back, reaches the height of their previous work, never mind employing a different formula. “Blood on the Tracks” was personal. And just before its release, Dylan recut it with friends in Minneapolis and if you’ve heard the original version, you know it was the correct decision. Dylan went by instinct. Most times he cut it and that was it. He wasn’t as insane about it as Frank Sinatra, but Dylan knew that the performance was all about capturing lightning in a bottle. It didn’t have to be right, it just had to capture the zeitgeist. All true artists know this, and they can tell the difference. Yet, to a great degree once people make it they spend endless time in the studio, eviscerating all the life from a recording in an effort to make it “perfect.”
And then Dylan went Christian. And although he ultimately rejected that, “Slow Train Coming,” produced by Barry Beckett and Jerry Wexler, was one of his best albums ever. Come on, listen to “Man Gave Names to All the Animals” and “When You Gonna Wake Up,” never mind the famous title track. And let’s also not forget the contributions of Mark Knopfler and his Dire Straits bandmate, Pick Withers.
But as good as “Slow Train Coming” was, its follow-up, “Saved,” was nearly that bad.
And then Dylan’s output thereafter has been hit and miss. But he stays in the game, and sometimes connects, whether it be “I and I” from 1983’s “Infidels” or…2000’s “Things Have Changed,” from the soundtrack to “The Wonder Boys.”
I read the book, and the film was better. And as soon as you heard Dylan singing you realized he had hit the note once again, created something just as great as his classics, yet years later…you know it when you hear it and I did, and ultimately so did others. Do you know how rare that is?
And then Bob went on the endless tour, long before his contemporaries were forced on the road for long periods as a result of the lack of recording income as a result of Napster/the internet, and he did it his way, as stated above.
So…
6
Today it’s announced that Bob Dylan has sold his songs to Universal and the scuttlebutt is all about the penumbra. Dylan has been reduced to one dimension. There are those criticizing him online as worthless, others referencing his whiskey and commercials…the songs, the music itself, is barely mentioned, the focus is on the money, whereas the focus was never on the money at the beginning, you just couldn’t make that much in music. It was only after the Beatles broke and Peter Grant insisted on 90% of the concert gross that artists really became rich, but nowhere near as rich as today. Sure, Dylan likes money, but what has that got to do with the MUSIC!
But that’s today, where everybody’s got an opinion and feels entitled to post it online and argue about it. It makes them feel good about themselves, however detached and uninformed their opinion might be. Hell, Dylan needs to write a song about this. My inbox is full of authoritative misinformation. And sure, I know more of the inner workings of Dylan’s life than the people on the street, but his camp is famously tight-lipped so I’m focusing on the business deal and the music itself. The deal is detached from the music, it doesn’t affect the songs whatsoever. And with the focus on the money the music is left behind, when that’s where the focus must lie.
Sure, Dylan has occasionally whiffed. But he’s not afraid to play, he’s not afraid to do something for fear it might tarnish his image.
Also, Dylan knows the game and refuses to play it, he’s an original. Once upon a time the biggest stars were originals, but the influx of the money in the seventies and eighties had people pulling back the reins, they didn’t want to put their cash flow in jeopardy.
And you might think Dylan has a bad voice. I’m not gonna argue with you, you’re entitled to your opinion, I’m not going to say you don’t understand, that his vocals are great, or great for his material, all I’m going to do is implore you to listen to the music, because it’s all there. The myth-making, the scuttlebutt, is superseded by the songs and the recordings, that’s what will remain. Bob Dylan has been doing it for sixty years, no one has ever counted him out, all true musos are always gonna check out his new work, he’s at the pinnacle of the classic rock artists on this, you never know when he’ll surprise you.
And it’s always a surprise. Most recently with “Murder Most Foul.” An almost seventeen minute track about the Kennedy assassination? And it may not have much repeatability, but one listen is more impactful than almost everything on the hit parade, it’s got gravitas without beating you over the head with its importance. Today people play it straight up the middle, Dylan’s viewpoint was always skewed, and made you think about the subject.
There is so much to dive into.
I know, I know, everybody talks about 1998’s release of the Albert Hall concert from 1966, and that package, “Bootleg Series, Vol. 4,” deserves your attention, but not as much as “The Bootleg Volume 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964 – Concert at Philharmonic Hall.”
’64. Sure the Beatles had broken, but there were not endless arena and stadium shows, most people in America hadn’t even heard of Philharmonic Hall, which was rebranded Avery Fisher Hall and now sports David Geffen’s name. But when you listen to this double album, you’ll yearn to have been alive in that era, to have been at that gig, because Dylan is making it up as he goes, he hits the stage naked, with no accompaniment, you can see him at work, he even forgets some of the words of “It’s Alright, Ma.”
Playing without a net. That’s what Dylan did with 1975/6’s “Rolling Thunder Review.” One and done, no one else has equaled it. And the ultimate movie featured Sharon Stone as a pivotal character, as if Kanye West had impacted Ronald Reagan, albeit a bit less obvious as a joke in Stone’s case. Dylan’s always bobbing and weaving. He has stayed forever young, aging all the while. He is not trying to be young and hip, he’s just being himself, going his own way. Dylan is a beacon, the Beatles knew it, many of your heroes knew it, and you can either get on the train or be left out of the loop. The slow train has finally arrived, it’s at the station, are you willing to get on? We all did back then, and no one sees Dylan’s work as nostalgia, it was vital, and it still is today. How many other artists can you say that about?
Is he imperfect?
Yes.
Has he made mistakes?
Yes.
Have all his decisions been admirable?
No.
But Bob Dylan keeps on keepin’ on, never resting on his laurels, constantly pushing the envelope, his music will remain long after the scuttlebutt fades away.
He not busy being born is truly dying…how many others have written bedrock aphorisms of society?
I rest my case.
