Vision
Bob Dylan: The Riddle Resolved?
By Ken Shane
I was 14 years old when I saw Bob Dylan perform live for the first time. It was 1965, and thanks to a very hip older cousin, I had a seat at Newark’s Mosque Theater (now called Symphony Hall). The feeling of anticipation was palpable. After all, it was only a few short months since Dylan had turned the music world on its head at the Newport Folk Festival. There he had performed the deceptively simple act of eschewing his acoustic guitar and plugging in an electric. The audience reaction was swift, and harsh. The reverberations of that event are being felt to this day.
Dylan, as was his custom then, performed the first half of the Newark show solo, and acoustic. After the intermission he emerged with a band, and a Fender Stratocaster strapped across his shoulders. The majority of the audience that night seemed supportive. Dylan’s electric and electrifying “Like a Rolling Stone” was a huge hit that year, but there were still a number of folk-music purists in the house. When one of them shouted out: “Rock and roll sucks!” in the relative quiet between songs, Dylan responded, as he often did in those days, by playing his classic, dismissive rant, “Ballad of a Thin Man”. The perfect rebuttal to the supporters of stasis, it includes these lines:
But you know something is happening here,
But you don’t know what it is,
Do you, Mr. Jones?
There was not another word of complaint from the audience that night.
Dylan never looked back, and went on to a storied career. The years that followed saw the release of such masterpieces as Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde, and Blood on the Tracks. There were more than 40 albums in all. He became known as the spokesman of his generation, a description he despised, and dismissed.
Photo by Fred McDarrah/courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York.
Bob Dylan Saluting at Sheridan Square, January 22, 1965
There were some fallow periods, but the true believers never gave up hope that Dylan would be back. No one ever stopped wondering what Dylan would do next. Tired of his fame to the point of wanting to give it all up, he at one point retreated behind some rather lackadaisical music that he actually hoped would drive fans away and allow him to live a quiet life with his family. Despite these efforts, his star never faded very much, and each new release was eagerly awaited by the faithful.
Then he was back. The new Dylan album in 1997 was called Time Out of Mind, and this meditation on the passing years was universally acclaimed as a full return to form. When it was followed by the somewhat more playful Love and Theft in 2001, the “comeback” (if such a word even applies here) was complete. The brilliant music was accompanied by a virtually non-stop tour that continues to this day.
Dylan proved equally adept at writing prose, and 2004 saw the publication of the first volume of his autobiography, the critically acclaimed best-seller Chronicles. Last year Martin Scorcese’s Dylan documentary for PBS, No Direction Home, delighted long time fans, and won Dylan a whole new audience.
It is interesting that he has chosen this stage of his career to be more forthcoming in and about his music, and his life. In the past, he always seemed to work overtime to protect his reputation as an enigma. Interviews were full of abstract, even bizarre responses. Now he has clearly decided it’s time for plain talk. Chronicles is a fascinating, and very readable account of various stages of the Dylan odyssey, and interviews, including one he did recently with Jonathan Lethem for Rolling Stone, have finally given us a look into his songwriting process, and his thoughts on the current state of popular music. Of course accessibility is a relative thing when you’re talking about Bob Dylan.
The new Dylan album Modern Times is being promoted as the final piece of a trilogy that began with Time Out of Mind and was followed by Love and Theft. The thing is, there’s nothing final about this album. There is nothing to make you believe that Dylan is done. In fact the evidence is to the contrary. At the age of 65, Bob Dylan has delivered one of the finest albums of his career, and that’s saying something.
Once again the specter of the “new Dylan” has raised its brilliant head, and, as always, it’s a joy to behold. It can’t be easy to maintain this high a standard 40-odd years into your career. How the hell does he make it seem so effortless? The answer is that while other artists struggle to be current, to stay in tune with the times, Bob Dylan’s work is timeless. He has never followed trends, and he openly defies fashion. “Don’t follow leaders. Watch your parking meters.”
Modern Times is not just another album, it is an event. It seems to rise to the top of my list of 2006 releases without even really trying.
It is, at one and the same time, Dylan’s most accessible work in years, and a deceptively profound statement. It has rewards for the casual listener, but revelations come with closer attention.
There’s a lot going on beneath the traditional rock and blues surface of songs like “Thunder on the Mountain” and the elegiac “Workingman’s Blues #2.” It’s worth every moment of your time and attention to find out just what is there. “Spirit on the Water” is simply one of the most beautiful love songs that Dylan has ever written, immediately rising to the level of classics like “If You See Her Say Hello.” The finale “Ain’t Talkin” is nine dark minutes long, and full of the kind of foreboding that only Dylan can deliver.
Dylan himself has said that he has no plans to retire, and he continues to tour at a pace that would take a harsh toll on many a younger man. His return to form in the autumn of his life is an inspiration to a generation of artists who some might see as being past their prime.
