Music |
Bob Dylan: On his 82nd birthday
By
Published: May 22, 2023
Category:
Rock
Bob Dylan will be 82 on May 24. Before considering whether he’s our Shakespeare or just a terrific game player who’s made a career out of an ever-changing persona, let’s just consider his summer tour schedule. I ask you: is that the tour schedule of an octogenarian?
If you’re his contemporary, give or take half a dozen years, Dylan overhangs your life. Not your musical taste. Your life. I no longer see him in concert — I can watch the intersection of time, persistence, and destiny without leaving home— but when I listen to the songs, they seem freshly minted. I’ve reviewed more CDs than these, but these strike me as the best, and I’ve listed them in order of my affection. There are videos in most of these reviews. And then there are books. If you want to lose yourself for an hour or two or inflict this appreciation on someone who’s been in a coma for 60 years, have at it. As for birthday wishes, I wouldn’t dream of it.
The first session, on October 17, lasted three hours; out of it came master takes of “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” “Drifter’s Escape,” and “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest.” On November 6, Dylan knocked off :”All Along the Watchtower,” “John Wesley Harding,” “As I Went Out One Morning,” “I Pity the Poor Immigrant” and “I Am a Lonesome Hobo.”
Twelve hours in the studio for 40 minutes of music — there’s no comparison in all of American music.
All these years later, I find myself drawn again to “John Wesley Harding.” I am a slow thinker, so it took me a while to figure out why — of all the music I could be playing, this is the most relevant I know. The reason is right at the start of the first song: “John Wesley Harding was a friend to the poor…” The whole album is shot through with references to losers: hoboes, immigrants, drifters. In short, all the people that a certain group of politicians, moguls and voters want to exclude from the national conversation. And then, even though you and I are still lucky enough to matter, the line we can all understand: “Dear landlord, please don’t put a price on my soul.”
“Blood on the Tracks,” an instant masterpiece, is a guided tour of romantic devastation — its apparent subject is the end of Dylan’s marriage. He’s denied that; the songs, he says, were based on Chekhov. But he acknowledges that the songs are light years from easy listening: “A lot of people tell me they enjoyed that album. It’s hard for me to relate to that — I mean, people enjoying that type of pain.” Yes, but….
“THE LONESOME DEATH OF HATTIE CARROLL”
He could have written this at any time in the last few years. He wrote it in 1965.
William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll,
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath’rin’,
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station,
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder.
But you who philosophize, disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face, now ain’t the time for
your tears.
William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years,
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him,
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland,
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders,
And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was
snarling,
In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking.
In the mid-1980s, Dylan asked Mark Knopfler to be his producer. “I’d like my records to sound more … professional,” he said. The collaboration didn’t last, and Dylan turned to producing himself. “Tempest” — Dylan’s 35th CD, released half a century after he burst on the scene as a latter-day folk singer — had critics falling all over themselves to praise it.
There’s a lightness in this music that takes you back — four decades back — to the ‘Highway 61’ years. Dylan was just exploring rock then. Now he’s got this rock thing down. And the blues thing. And the throwaway torch song. Just ten songs here, but you find yourself asking: Is there anything he can’t do?
BOOKS AND TEXTS
BOB DYLAN ON A COUCH & FIFTY CENTS A DAY
He was 19, just becoming “Bob Dylan,” and when he showed up at the New York apartment of Eve and Mac McKenzie, he had nothing… and nothing to hide. He was supposed to stay one night. Many months later, when he left, he had become a hero and big brother to their son Peter, a 15-year-old high school sophomore. All these years later, Peter McKenzie remembers everything: interactions, conversations, descriptions of early writing attempts, never-seen-before images of handwritten song drafts, accounts of guitar and harmonica lessons.
“Lou Levy, top man of Leeds Music Publishing company, took me up in a taxi to the Pythian Temple on West 70th Street to show me the pocket sized recording studio where Bill Haley and His Comets had recorded ‘Rock Around the Clock.’” Now I ask you: Of all the ways you might have imagined that Bob Dylan would begin his memoirs, would you have dreamed…that?
The one photograph that will render Jerry Schatzberg immortal is the blurry portrait of Bob Dylan he took for the record jacket of Blonde on Blonde. It’s one of a great many photographs he took of Dylan — the musician and the photojournalist were friends.
BARACK OBAMA ON BOB DYLAN AT THE WHITE HOUSE
The President’s review: “Here’s what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you’d expect he would be. He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that….
In 66 short essays, he discusses songs he loves and the artists — only four of them female — who recorded those songs. It’s a thick book: 350 beautifully illustrated pages, with shots of old American record shops, casinos, fairgrounds, and movie theatres.
