Books |
Bob Dylan: Chronicles
By
Published: Dec 08, 2013
Category:
Memoir
Dylan’s memoir, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle prize and received a special award from the Pulitzer board for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”
"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?
If you’re like me, you’d expect something more cryptic. That might be Bob Dylan the singer-songwriter. It’s not Dylan the memoirist.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the surprises that Dylan delivers in what’s billed as the first in a series of memoirs. But "surprises" may not be the right word — "put-ons" may be more like it.
In the beginning of his career, Bob Zimmerman, son of a Minnesota storeowner, was ambitious in the extreme. He could be cruel to friends and colleagues. His relationship to the press was, at best, adversarial. [If you’re interested in a more likely chronicle of Dylan’s early years, read Positively Fourth Street.]
You’ll find none of that Dylan here.
This Dylan is a guy who had "come from a long ways off and had started from a long ways down." He had thought for a time of going to West Point. He had no great commitment to social justice or nuclear disarmament. Later, he would dream of a house with a white picket fence.
Maybe Dylan really believed this stuff way back then. Or believes it now and has simply backdated his opinions — forty years and a lot of living can play tricks on memory. Or maybe he’s doing what artists often do — tell his story as fable, create mystery around truth, cover his tracks. After all, what does he owe us? He’s given us his music. This book didn’t have to be a cry from the heart, a plea for understanding. It could easily have been an activity, something to do on the road while Dylan roams the world on an endless concert tour. But it’s more interesting than that. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here. For the audiobook read by Sean Penn, click here.]
In the first section, Dylan meanders through his early days in New York, presenting charming but unrevealing portraits of the people he meets along the way, the books he reads, the music business circa 1962. "I had no ambitions to stir things up." Right.
This writing has a purpose — it loosens Dylan up. Slowly, he writes himself into the book’s true subject, which is music: how you make it, where it comes from, what you do when the magic’s not in your fingertips anymore.
"A song is like a dream," he writes, "and you try and make it come true." Now he’s getting somewhere, you think, and then, suddenly, you hit a rich vein — the 60-page story of making a record in New Orleans with Daniel Lanois as the producer. Bono had recommended Lanois, and Dylan finds him a good collaborator ("He wanted to dive in and go deep. He wanted to marry a mermaid") but their work together doesn’t get off to a great start ("The tune was gaining weight by the minute and none of its clothes were fitting").
The process of creation — that’s a safe place for Dylan, and suddenly he’s free to write. And joke. Other people enter, and they have their say. The book breathes. And the reader leans in, enchanted by the tale.
I have great enthusiasm for the audio version. Sean Penn has perfect pitch for accents. He nails Dylan here; he’s hip, but not too. He is, in short, the Dylan you imagine when you think of the private Dylan. I can’t imagine a better road trip than to listen to Sean Penn read Dylan — and then to listen to Dylan.
