When I got
back home I put on Bringing It All Back
Home, and the first thought that struck me was “What is this?” I had always thought of Bob Dylan as an acoustic guitar-wielding
folksinger, the man who sang the song that played over the opening credits of Watchmen. But this was very different.
This Bob Dylan was backed by a rollicking blues band, thrashing an electric
guitar while singing a stream of strange, surreal lyrics: “Johnny’s in the
basement mixin’ up the medicine/I’m on the pavement thinkin’ ‘bout the government”.
What? I didn’t know what that meant, but he certainly sounded like he did. And
that voice! I didn’t find it off-putting, but it was unlike any singer I had ever
heard and I had no idea what to make of it. More
Bob Dylan Greatest Hits provided no easy answers; a daunting 24-track
melting pot of musical styles, it was far too much to take in in one listen.
Fortunately, a chance encounter with the far more accessible Bob Dylan at Budoken album caused
everything to fall into place, and before long I was officially a fan. Delving
into Bob’s back pages, I was fascinated by the amount of stylistic changes he
had gone through over the years.
Bob began as
a Woody Guthrie-ish folksinger before starting to write his own songs, which
ranged from moving love songs, (‘Girl from the North Country’), to goofy comedy
monologues (‘Talking John Birch Society Paranoid Blues’) and austere
observational songs (‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’). By 1964 Dylan was
moving away from writing songs that could be interpreted as ‘protest songs’,
and his writing leaned increasingly towards the surreal, although he still retained
his trademark wit (‘Motorpsycho Nitemare’) and talent for love songs (‘To
Ramona’). A big change came in 1965, when Bob started using a backing band for
the first time; a significant portion of his fan base apparently felt that he had
‘sold out’ in pursuit of a more commercial sound, but personally I think the
extra musicians added texture and colour to his already impressive
compositions. My favourite song from this period is ‘Desolation Row’, an
extraordinary phantasmagoria of people and places which benefits immensely from
Charlie McCoy’s sparkling guitar and Russ Savakus’ pulsating bassline, not to
mention Dylan’s impassioned singing.
After an
exhausting tour in 1966 to promote the album Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan disappeared from public view, having been injured in a mysterious motorcycle accident. For the next
eight years he appeared in concert extremely rarely, and his recorded output
during this period sounds like the work of a content family man enjoying a
quiet yet happy life of domestic tranquillity (Bob was by this time married
with children). Unfortunately this was not to last, and by 1974 rumours
suggested that Dylan’s marriage was breaking down. This speculation appeared to
be supported by the appearance in January 1975 of the album Blood on the Tracks, which contained
numerous songs dealing with relationships ending. This album is often thought
to be autobiographical, but Bob has denied this and I believe him; while elements
of his personal life must surely have seeped into the record (especially on the
raging ‘Idiot Wind’), Bob for the most part retains a healthy detachment as a
narrator, and the gentle lightness of the music prevents the album from
becoming maudlin, despite the subject matter.
I976 saw the
release of the wonderful Desire
album, on which Dylan collaborated with playwright Jacques Levy to create a
series of incredibly visual and cinematic story songs; pieces like ‘Hurricane’,
‘Isis’, ‘Joey’, ‘Romance in Durango’ and ‘Black Diamond Bay’ could easily be
adapted into full-length motion pictures. Dylan’s personal life remained
troubled, however, and the following year Bob’s wife Sara filed for divorce.
I mention
this because it appears to have had a profound effect on Dylan’s music making.
From 1978 onwards Bob’s songs, once so bright and outward-looking, veered
increasingly towards melancholy introspection, and his voice, formerly powerful
and confident, suddenly seemed strained and frail. His mood only appeared to
worsen when the public rejected his conversion to born-again Christianity and a
subsequent trilogy of gospel albums which, at their worst, sounded
uncomfortably like a man in the throes of a total nervous breakdown. Dylan was also
struggling with the recording process itself; his albums throughout the 1980s
suffer from over-production, and you get the feeling that Bob had far too much
time in which to second-guess himself in terms of arrangements and song
selection.*
To some at
the time it must have seemed that Dylan had lost his spark, but a closer
examination of this period reveals that the old magic was still there. Bob’s
Christian albums might have not been to everyone's taste, but the performances he gave in
support of these records were incendiary; one need only listen to a recording
of his performance in Toronto in 1980, for example, to dispel any suspicions
about the sincerity of his conversion. In another flash of brilliance, Bob
showed up for a 1984 appearance on Late
Night with David Letterman with punk band The Plugz in tow. The group
proceeded to tear the house down with barnstorming performances of ‘Don’t Start
Me Talking’, ‘License to Kill’, and ‘Jokerman’ (during which Bob wandered
off-stage to retrieve a misplaced harmonica, leaving the band and the audience
to wonder where he had gone and if he was coming back).
With his
record sales falling and his star in decline, Bob Dylan made two crucial
decisions in 1988. The first was to join The Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup
consisting of George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne. Working
with friends in an informal environment seemed to revitalise Dylan, who turned in
some terrific songs including the wonderful ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man’,
another story song that I hope is one day made into a film. The second big decision
was to go on tour with a tight three-piece band, playing dozens of shows
throughout the remainder of the year with a fire and energy that many had
probably presumed lost forever. A big reason for the success of these shows
was, in my opinion, Dylan’s hiring of GE Smith as lead guitarist and bandleader.
Dylan is by many accounts an eccentric man who is at times hard to work with, but
Smith genuinely seemed to like and ‘get’ Bob, and the two appear to have
enjoyed playing together tremendously.
No one could
have predicted it at the time, but the tour that began on 7th June
1988 is still going today, twenty-eight years later. Countless band
members have come and gone, but the whole process seems to have allowed Dylan
to rediscover his mojo. He still releases albums, but I get the sense that Bob
thinks of himself primarily as a live performer as opposed to a recording
artist. Bob uses his shows as a chance to reimagine his back catalogue;
sometimes the results are poor (his diabolical 1991 tour remains infamous), but
often he succeeds in successfully reinventing his songs and sometimes even
eclipses the studio versions. Personally, I think something gets lost in translation
when Dylan performs in the studio; from the late-70s onwards, many of Bob's songs
have only really come to life when being played live on stage. A lot of his
performances can be found on YouTube, and are well worth investigating.
As I hope
this piece of writing shows, I have a lot of love for Bob Dylan’s songs and for
the man himself, although I have never met him and have yet to see him in
concert. If I did meet him, I wouldn’t ask him to sign anything or pose for a
selfie; all I would really want to do is give him my sincere thanks for his
music. Thanks Bob!
* I now completely disagree with the opinions expressed in this paragraph - 12/5/2018
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