Bob Dylan is everywhere. You’ve got yours; I’ve got mine. So much has been said — my work is done. I don’t even want to talk up his influence, for it’s living history. The fact remains: I take him for granted, because he’s always been there. I’ve never known a life without his music.
So I have no real angle on Bob. (Sure.) I just like some of his songs.
Here’s my basic relationship with the work:
Slow Train Moving (1979) was a fresh start for Bob. It was for my mother, too, who turned Christian when he did; and it was at the same time that my father quit smoking and drinking. They liked the record. They could relate to it. The music was bright, clear, and slick, its message clear. Bob was born again, but the songs weren’t uniformly on the nose. And despite the record’s general woodenness, humor saved it in the end: God, or so Dylan seemed to suggest, had a funny bone. The vibe was kind of sexy.
Fast-forward to 1989, when my sister bought a cassette tape of Oh Mercy. (She was going to San Jose State at the time.) I remember her saying that the record reminded her of Tom Waits — but this was Dylan, so that was “better.” She liked the weird, modern blues: Wisdom washed up on the guy who was once the apple-cheeked folk poet king of the 60s.
Now Bob looks like a prune — the ugliest man in rock & roll.
*
My father showed me how to play the 12-bar blues. This was a guy who obsessed over country and blues records in 1950s Georgia, teaching himself to play a little guitar as a result. (He especially liked Jimmie Rodgers.) Now, at the ripe old age of 82, Dad (I call him Jor-el; he calls me Kal-el) is taking guitar lessons. Drink, marriage, the Korean War — life happened to him. He can barely remember the old stuff he used to play. But he’s starting over, in a sense, and having the time of his life.
Dad swears Bob schooled himself on these old sides, that Bob’s basically an obsessive like him, a dude who tried to sing like those guys and gals did and in the process found, then lost, then regained his voice. And I don’t doubt it. After all, Dylan is the every-man of a thousand faces — straight out of thin air, and prescient; random in appearance, and premeditated like Jesus.
“We grew up with him.” O.K. Elusiveness in general (that need for a private life, you could say) speaks to our dream — our wont — to identify with Dylan. His music sweeps you up. Too many people want things spelt out, or give the guy some sort of mystical aura. That’s why his backlog, though it is full of crap, feels bigger than life. He always made vague things rhyme. Profound he sounds (1), but most of the time he’s bunk, and he knows it.
When he’s in on the joke — when he keeps it simple — he can almost do no wrong. Flighty lyrics mar him. They show the limits of his craft, and particularly of folk music in general. I’d take Nashville Skyline (1969) over Blonde on Blonde (1966) any day.
Now. Brian Wilson (the Beach Boy) said at one time that Bob was killing music. He sang too many words through his nose. He couldn’t play to save his life. Et cetera.
Dylan was death, all right: misuse done expertly, our phoenix from the ash — “Like A Rolling Stone” (a song about you, me, Bob, some people I know, Mike Bloomfield, Brian Jones, Nico, Al Pacino, Serpico…). The dude can also play. Listen to his early guitar picking, or the fretwork on World Gone Wrong (1993). Don’t forget that “simple” music suits his voice, the instrument for which he’s best known. And remember that stick melodies stick. Each time I go to the Guitar Center, I test the acoustic guitars and play the chord progression from “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” (1973). Tuned or otherwise, it sounds great every time.
*
Dylan performs. You can’t take the voice from the lyrics. Everything’s a false start, because nothing is sacred to him. First cuts are perfect, a life each one. Live versions of old songs become rough drafts in finished form. They show how safe the official Bob is. He doesn’t really take to the album format.
Listen to the bootlegs, the deep cuts — swim out a bit. Tracks from Live 1966 rip into songs that, on Bringing It All Back Home (1965) and Highway 61 Revisited (1965), sound neutered and tame by comparison. The Basement Tapes (1975) are unrefined. Recorded live to tape, Blood on the Tracks (1975) certainly sounds polished (he was trying real hard), but I think I prefer the aftermath. “Up to Me,” a rhinestone lament cut at the same time but mysteriously left off the album, should have appeared but didn’t until years later. “Idiot Wind” and “Shelter From the Storm” rock harder on the live Hard Rain (1976). Drenched in echo and recorded live to tape, with the spectral air of a Sun Records acetate, Desire (1976) strikes me as a more compelling portrait of doom and regeneration than the highly celebrated and personal Blood is. (2)
The point? Bob’s a troubadour. His music pours out, the greatness strewn. Even the bad albums sport gems. Case in point: “Every Grain of Sand” (Shot of Love, 1981), one of the greatest songs ever written.
*
Stardom, marriage, divorce: Bob’s career in three acts. In 1977 Sara Lownds divorced him. He’s been a road warrior ever since. He didn’t peter out in the 70s, though — he stopped trying to outdo himself. A Martin Scorsese film, No Direction Home (2005), documents this. Burnout was inevitable.
So he defied expectations and started kicking ass again. Over the past 12 years, I’ve seen him play twice, once in Sacramento, the other time in Mountain View. At each concert, watching him as he bent down to play the keys, I wondered: How does this man, this legend, see himself? I’ll never really know, of course; but I suppose that’s one reason I continue to listen to his music.
Now we have perspective, something approaching the full swath of a man’s life. Yet something’s been lost. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know who lost it — but there you have it. “Don’t even have anything for myself anymore.” That’s from “Mississippi” (Love and Theft, 2001).
Will the real Bob please stand up?
(1) It’s not what he says so much as how he says it.
(2) For some folks, Desire confabulates the real-life subjects of two songs, “Hurricane” and “Joey”, beyond all good conscience. But Dylan tells tall tales. And he knows that history is a series of tall tales, as prone to fact as it is theater or reinvention.