Anyone thinking of getting this book should know that the people who made this book seem to be completely obsessed with Bob Dylan. Literally there isnAnyone thinking of getting this book should know that the people who made this book seem to be completely obsessed with Bob Dylan. Literally there isn’t a single page without a photo of him or somebody writing some stuff about him. When I turned a page I would clap my hand to my head and exclaim loudly “Why, another picture of Bob Dylan!” The only surprise was, was he wearing a hat or not. Aside from the photos there is a lot of pages of photos of old bits of song lyrics in here, probably he was trying to write some songs and gave up. If you are not sure who he is he is quite famous for his version of that Adele song Make You Feel My Love and he also does the Guns & Roses one Knocking on Heaven’s Door. ...more
Just what the world needs, another Bob Dylan biography. How many are there already? 17? 18? But this one has a pretty good excuse for existing. The auJust what the world needs, another Bob Dylan biography. How many are there already? 17? 18? But this one has a pretty good excuse for existing. The author is far and away the most reseachingest, most obsessive-fan-accurate Dylan biographer there ever was. Clinton Heylin has already written ten books on Dylan including a giant biography from 2011 which this now replaces. In the last ten years mountains of Dylan archives have been made available and Mr Heylin has mountaineered the whole lot, so this is the Last Word. Until the next Last Word.
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Mr Heylin is the best biographer Dylan has had. (Maybe that’s not saying a great deal.) But Mr Heylin is notorious amongst Dylan fans for suffering from a particular form of Tourette’s Syndrome which causes him to involuntarily type out regular insults in his books about every other writer about Bob Dylan. An example of this is right here on page 3
A former tabloid reporter aka professional dirtdigger, name of Howard Sounes, had decided to …go all National Enquirer on the man called Alias. The result : a depressingly well-trundled, semi-literate stroll Down the Highway.
And on page 6 we have a comment about Ian Bell’s Once Upon a Time
Never in the history of biography has someone done less research for more poundage… it would barely qualify as sufficient for a college freshman’s first essay on pop culture
But once these savage lunges are out of the way there are no more of them, so that was a relief. Ah, yes… until he gets on to the subject of Joan Baez
Joan Baez, who could pierce the walls of Jericho with her contralto at twenty paces. Thankfully, she arrived too late to sing her party piece “We Shall Overcome”
THIS BOOK IS ONLY ABOUT 1961 – 1966
Dylan changed his songwriting, his singing voice and his personality every six months or so during this period, casually inventing entire new dimensions of popular music as he went along, leaving everyone out of breath and intimidated and maybe even hiding. So this is the great purple period. From Woody Guthrie imitator with a strong dash of Charlie Chaplin to absurdist acid rocker on a world tour in five years flat. Heylin demonstrates quite chillingly that Bob started out as a very likeable 20 year old wannabe and ended up as a character-assassinating entitled hateful supercilious hipster king surrounded by an entourage of sneering indoor sunglasses wearers. As the music got better and better, which it did, Dylan got worse and worse. And realising that, he bailed out by staging a fake (or extremely hyped) motorbike accident in mid 66.
(I’m happy to say that the likeable version resurfaced later, as anyone who’s heard Theme Time Radio Hour with your host Bob Dylan can confirm.)
IF I WALK TOO MUCH FARTHER MY CRANE'S GONNA LEAK
Now maybe it was me but I kind of got the impression that Mr Heylin started to drown in all these archives, especially the drafts upon drafts of early versions of lyrics which we are continually being told are located in the Tulsa Museum of Bobness or were sold at Sotheby’s for two million dollars. The last chapters are stuffed with this horrible melange of half-thoughts and unlyrical scraps. Look! Here is a fragment that is the missing link between Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues and Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window… pardon me for not being gripped. And while Mr Heylin was entranced by all these previously ungoggled-at details he seems to miss framing some of the more dramatic moments in a familiar can’t see the trees for the wood problem that besets those too close to their material.
But heck, you can skate past this aggravating stuff, and what you’re left with is a helter-skelter tale of one of the two or three most significant figures in popular music during the most significant six years of his life. Greatness strikes where it pleases.
On 24th May Bob will be 80 so they have published a flurry of Bob books as a cash in/celebration, and as a Bob fan I thought I’d better show willing aOn 24th May Bob will be 80 so they have published a flurry of Bob books as a cash in/celebration, and as a Bob fan I thought I’d better show willing and read at least one of them, so I got this one.
Mistake.
For fellow Bob fans consider this a gentle warning : get one of the other ones!
As an author Spencer Leigh is a grand list maker. This book is one long list! On 3rd June 1981 Bob did this. On 4th June 1981 Bob did that.
My heart began to sink on page TWO :
The most famous entertainers to come from Minneapolis are the Andrews Sisters
Well, they are pretty famous, but there was another entertainer came from Minneapolis and I would argue he became more famous even than the Andrews Sisters – yeah, Prince.
Spencer interviewed hundreds of tangentially related people for this book. This book is very long (500 small print pages) sometimes because Spencer includes random irrelevancies by his interviewees, like a paragraph from Charlie Gillett about how much he loves Mark Knopfler’s songs. Who cares. Occasionally someone gives a snappy quotable response, like Paul Jones who said :
Bob Dylan’s harmonica playing is useless, utterly and incorrigibly useless but very endearing
Spencer likes to make his own sarcastic comments too :
Dylan was experiencing arthritis in his fingers and he found it easier to play piano than guitar on stage. He often wore a pink jacket and he cancelled a show at Brixton Academy because of laryngitis, though how could he tell?
There’s an example of this book’s peculiar non-sequiturs. What’s the pink jacket got to do with arthritis or laryngitis?
Open this book at random and you’ll get a comment from Spencer that sounds like he’s just transcribing late night thoughts.
“One of Us Must Know” could be about Joan Baez or his relationship to the folk world, but I tend to think not as he had already used those subjects : “I never really meant to do you any harm” might have no bearing on his life at all.
Hmm, you don’t say so? Musing over the song “Licence to Kill” on p345 Spencer says
Dylan sings “Man has invented his doom, first step was touching the moon”. Dylan has commented on wasting money in space exploration but what does this mean? It’s only a song and it doesn’t have to mean anything but it is still perplexing. Sometimes I wish Dylan’s songs came with footnotes. This incidentally is one marked difference with Neil Young who is infatuated with space travel in several of his songs.
And it also distinguishes him from Pink Floyd. They love space travel.
On page 323 we read
When Elvis Presley died on August 16, Bob was morose for a couple of days.
When I decided to jack in this weird, slightly funny, more than slightly batty and eventually rather ghastly book, I was morose for a good 15 minutes.
The big Bob biographies just keep on a-comin’ – Scaduto 1971, Shelton 1986, Spitz 1989, Heylin 1991, Sounes 2001, McDougal 2014. Ian Bell’s is bigger The big Bob biographies just keep on a-comin’ – Scaduto 1971, Shelton 1986, Spitz 1989, Heylin 1991, Sounes 2001, McDougal 2014. Ian Bell’s is bigger than all the others because it’s a two-parter, this volume which goes up to 1974 plus Time Out of Mind which goes up to 2013. So that’s 590 pages plus 576 pages = 1166 pages!
But Ian Bell is different. He’s not really written a biography at all, his 1166 pages are a long leisurely commentary on Bob’s life. He assumes you know the details and you’ve turned up to see if any sense can be made of all these twists and turns. So you need to read the best of the just-the-facts books (Clinton Heylin’s great Behind the Shades is my pick) first and then join Ian Bell in the debriefing session. Here we get 25 pages on whether Self Portrait is the first Americana album, why Dylan got writer’s block in 1968, why people said he was a Woody Guthrie copyist in 1961 even though he sounded nothing like Woody, how Dylan tried so hard not to get dragged in to political sloganeering, why Blowin’ in the Wind is a bad song and so forth.
Once Upon a Time – yeah, it’s the first line of “Like a Rolling Stone”, but what a terrible title. Also, out of the billion available photos of Dylan someone has chosen a real bad one for the cover. The young Bob looks like he just threw your pet Chihuahua off the balcony. Never mind. This book is recommended for all graduate-level Bobologists. ...more
This is the other Christmas turkey I got – the second big dumb Bob book. It’s almost completely awful but it looks wonderful (which is a life lesson iThis is the other Christmas turkey I got – the second big dumb Bob book. It’s almost completely awful but it looks wonderful (which is a life lesson in itself) so let me immediately give
***** FIVE STARS!!!*****
to whoever the art director was, whoever found these brilliant photos, not just unseen ones of Bob but of all kinds of interesting faces usually in the shadows.
This book is translated from French so that may well be the reason for some of the odd stilted language we get throughout (this will not stop me from quoting some risible examples, see below) but maybe the authors are just very enthusiastic Dylan trainspotters who can’t write.
I can feel their love of the subject, but I cannot overlook the many factual errors and the accumulation of crushing banal observations that finally made me want to die rather than read any more of this vast book.
Which could have been vaster had they not – mysteriously, inexplicably – decided to omit the Complete Basement Tapes from their consideration. Kinda glad they did or we would have had another 50 pages of this well-meaning junk.
As an example of the level of analysis in this book , here is a comment about Queen Jane Approximately
Once again, there is some speculation as to the identity of the queen. It seems obvious to look for Queen Jane somewhere in British history.
And off they go with their maybe Jane Seymour, maybe Lady Jane Grey, maybe Joan Baez. Almost every song gets this kind of treatment. It’s so painfully teenage-fanboy literalism. The idea that Bob liked the sound of names and words and liked to create atmospheres and never liked to make banal this-represents-that personifications in his stuff is not taken seriously here, if you have a Mr Jones it MUST refer to someone in real life who was called Jones, and if you have a chrome horse and a diplomat, well, let’s see…
For an intelligent account of all Dylan’s songs, see Clinton Heylin’s two books Revolution in the Air and Still on the Road. I will give one example why Heylin exocets this huge French bulk out of the water.
“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” is one of Dylan’s greatest protest songs, no doubt. William Zantzinger went on trial for Hattie’s death in 1963, but Heylin puts the song itself on trial and finds that nearly all material facts listed by Dylan are wrong, because he based the song on the first and only inaccurate news story which came his way, and never bothered to check anything. It makes the song twice as interesting, and complicates our response considerably. Does this get a mention by Margotin and Guesdon? Not a murmur.
FOR TRAINSPOTTERS WITH A SENSE OF HUMOUR ONLY ERRORS I NOTICED, THERE WILL BE MORE
P 32 – The recording (of House of the Rising Sun) by The Animals, which started the rhythm and blues revolution in the United Kingdom – In fact that particular revolution had been going for at least three years before 1964.
P35 – Song to Woody also demonstrates how Dylan, at the age of twenty, is powerfully and poetically haunted by death and endings – not only the death of his mentor who died in a hospital bed… - Woody died sIx years later, in 1967.
P46 – Dylan’s pseudonym was not Blind Boy COUNT! It was Blind Boy Grunt! Equally ridiculous, I know, but one is right.
P165 – Canned Heat’s On the Road Again derives from Floyd Jones not Tommy Johnson – check it on youtube guys
P226 – Dylan told Clinton Heylin – No he didn’t. This refers to Clinton’s book Revolution in the Air , where we find Clinton’s actual words : He told one reporter
P276 – A few months after his motorcycle accident Bob Dylan…was transformed both spiritually and artistically. He had almost died. – No, he cracked a neck vertebra. This is now a known fact.
P329 – they mention the Lomax brothers, John and Alan! First we heard of those brothers…
P366 – they swallow the exaggeration about Dylan co-writing “Ballad of Easy Rider”
P454 – they think Street Legal outsold every other Dylan album in the UK! I don’t think so.
THE AWKWARD AND THE BIZARRE
P22 – In 1961 it was customary to avoid any mounting, and the artist had to control his performance as a whole.
P44 – he participated in the March on Washington, where more than 200,000 pacifists converged… Pacifists? No, that was the canard from the times.
P157 – re She Belongs to me – this ballad in 4/4 time with a classical harmonic style permits Dylan to subtly bring out the irony of his words.
P194 – Sara is a woman of Zen, secretive and detached from the material world.
P201 – the harmony, based on three chords, allows Dylan to create a gap between the darkness of the text and the nostalgic tone of the melody.
P239 – The song moves into the upper reaches of Dylan’s imagination
THE TRANSCENDENTALLY BANAL
P71 – re Corrina Corrina – The song is a success, with a flair for nostalgia
P84 – at age twenty-two, Dylan already seemed to be carrying a cross, this heavy burden of the violence and injustice he witnessed every day and of which sometimes he was the victim.
P240 – The second verse of Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands begins “With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace”. This is probably a reference to Sara’s Father, who had worked in the steel industry. (You don’t say so)
P257 – It is a medium-tempo blues song about laundry hanging out to dry. (Never would have spotted that)
P295 – His singing is well controlled, like that on his previous albums (So glad to discover this)
P402 – Tough Mama is a mid-tempo rock song, during which the Band displays group cohesion. (I did not know that!)
P460 – This blues rock song is rather successful because the group plays well together. (This was news to me)
This was a Christmas present but it’s okay, the person who gave it to me never reads these reviews, so I can speak freely.
If ever there was an unneceThis was a Christmas present but it’s okay, the person who gave it to me never reads these reviews, so I can speak freely.
If ever there was an unnecessary book in the world, it could be this one, in which a flock of Dylan commentators, two by two, waffle and witter inanely about each and every studio album, in exactly the same witless tones as I and my friends have been known to babble. In our case we are forgiven because our trite secondhand insights will not be typed up and printed in a coffee table book with shabby chic pre-dinged pages.
Bryant : What did you think of the new Dylan album? Friend of Bryant : It’s okay. But I don’t think it’s quite as good as the other one. Bryant: Which other one? FOB : You know, the other one. Bryant: You mean the one I lent you? FOB: No, not that one, the other one. I forgot its name. Bryant: Well there’s a lot of other ones. FOB : Yeah, he sure has made a lot of albums now. Wow. Bryant: Yeah. What is it, around 350? I can’t keep up. FOB : Yeah, he’s 86 and he don’t stop going. Bryant: I got to get the annex finished this year. FOB : Just for the Dylan? Bryant: No, for the Neil Young as well. He’s another one. He doesn’t stop. Do you think these bastards will ever die and then I can stop buying their records? FOB: No, they got a stockpile so that even if they do die which they won’t they’ll be issuing new albums for 30 years to come, you see. Bryant: Wow, I bet you’re right. Our generation has been cursed with these guys. All these cds and then all the books too. FOB : You don’t have to buy the books, just the records. Bryant: Well, I think you do. You have to buy the books to express solidarity with the people who have the same affliction. You don’t have to read them though, that would be taking it too far. Etc etc
Now I know you think I am joking – surely the dialogues in this book are more interesting and thoughtful? Let’s see:
Ocasek: He seems like he could play probably a thousand songs and get all the lyrics right… Reilly: What’s cool, it’s just a guitar. I’m not a guitar specialist, but it seems like there’s some weird tunings. (p 32)
DeCurtis: “It’s Alright Ma”, the whole song is like an explanation of “it’s life and life only”. I can only do what I can do. ( P 41)
Henry (talking about “Ballad of a Thin Man”) : I’ve always been inclined to think that Mr Jones is not a particular person, but the point of the song is nothing is as we perceived it necessarily. Everybody is going to have to reimagine their own reality. (P46)
Chapman : I know critics thought Dylan was taking a step back with this but I thought he was taking a step forward. (p64)
Ruehl (on “Self Portrait”) : It doesn’t flow together well. It feels a lot like putting something on random play. You have to stop and really listen to it. (p72)
Atkins (answering the question why is the record called Desire?) : It sounds like sex and murder and want and travel. Those are all things that people desire. (p113)
Light: The other thing about this record, it’s really short. Like thirty-one minutes or something. (p159)
Honestly, you can open this book at random and come up with these priceless pronouncements on any page. My toes were curling and my eyes were rolling and my jaw was dropping as I read, if anyone had been around they would have called for an ambulance.
Also, would it be churlish for me to point out that they missed out a song in their tracklisting of Bringing it All Back Home on page 36? Yes, I guess it would, so I will refrain from such nitpicking.
But I will say this : the photos are wonderful, loads of unusual ones here. One whole star for those.
Journalist: Doesn’t it ever get tiring singing the same song over and over again?
Dylan: No, it doesn’t.
****
This is a great one stop shop for anyone waJournalist: Doesn’t it ever get tiring singing the same song over and over again?
Dylan: No, it doesn’t.
****
This is a great one stop shop for anyone wanting to get to grips with the vastness that is Dylan. He’s the most recorded rock artist of all time, maybe excepting Frank Zappa. And 90% of his output is either good or great. (10% is really crap. Ugh.) And even on his worst albums there will be something wonderful (Brownsville Girl on Knocked Out Loaded). Nigel Williamson is a long time British fan and music writer and does an absolutely great job here. The biography section and the albums section go right up to this year, and the albums section at last weaves in to the chronological story all the myriad Bootleg Series & other archive releases.
Also, the photos are great, including the as stoned as it’s possible to be and keep upright 1966 pic on the cover.
Even though I have a ton of other Bob books this is one I will be dipping into many times. I have been dipping away for about three weeks now.
That’s the review. Five stars.
Now comes a bit of a perplexing downer, so you can skip this, but in case anyone’s interested here I go.
There’s a section called I Shan’t Be Released all about bootlegs. If you want to be comprehensive you have to check out bootlegs of Bob, of course. But in this section we find in the list of 15 must-own Bob boots The Gaslight Tapes, The Witmark Demos and the Complete Basement Tapes. Now, these items have been officially released and are reviewed in the albums section.
Oops! Didn’t anyone notice? Or did Nigel Williamson cut & paste this section from an earlier guide, say the 2006 Rough Guide to Bob Dylan which he also wrote, or one of his myriad articles in rock mags? I see that the text is copyrighted 2007 to 2015. And I suspect there may be other cut & pasted sections too, like the books section. It’s not such a big deal, but in a book this meticulous and otherwise excellent it’s a real clanger. Sorry Nigel!
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Suze Rotolo : How many verses does this one have Bob? ...more
Defenders of Bob Dylan say – as I do to my profoundly sceptical daughter – well, okay, he does have a funny way of singing (“it’s not singing, it’s talking in a singsong voice – maybe that was singing in the 1960s but people have improved since then” says Georgia) – yes, well, let’s not argue – but he wrote these great songs – listen to the words!
Well, don’t listen to ALL the words, please, because Bob’s internal quality checker quite often goes on the blink - you can be enjoying a great song and suddenly a real cringer of a line whaps you when you least expect it.
We’re not going to wag a digit at Bob’s early ultra-earnest stuff, which he didn’t even officially record:
If you can’t speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that’s so unjust Your eyes are filled with dead men’s dirt, your mind is filled with dust Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!
- it would be in poor taste, Bob was just the same as any other high school poet until 1962 when he started to be able to write social commentary which didn’t sound embarrassing, and he was on a roll for two straight years, but he couldn’t keep up with the finger-pointin’, his finger just got so tired, so he decided his great subject was the phoniness of American life, the chaos of modernity (to give it a non-Holden Caulfield gloss) and this led him to become Very Poetical – ditching the reportage (“Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen, she was 51 years old and gave birth to ten children”) for something a whole lot more significant with a big S
Crimson flames tied through my ears Rollin’ high and mighty traps Pounced with fire on flaming roads Using ideas as my maps “We’ll meet on edges, soon,” said I Proud ’neath heated brow Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now
or, the following year
The lamppost stands with folded arms Its iron claws attached To curbs ’neath holes where babies wail Though it shadows metal badge All and all can only fall With a crashing but meaningless blow No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden
I think we’re back to the Promising High School Student again, but these horrible lapses come on albums which also contained To Ramona, Subterranean Homesick Blues and Love Minus Zero/No Limit, and a lot of other wonderful stuff. I’m just being mean here.
If Modern Life is Chaos then meaning is abandoned, you can write absolutely anything, who cares – a whole lot of Bob’s stuff is like that, and suffers accordingly
The ghost of Belle Starr she hands down her wits To Jezebel the nun she violently knits A bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sits At the head of the chamber of commerce
Well, Shakespeare, he’s in the alley With his pointed shoes and his bells Speaking to some French girl Who says she knows me well And I would send a message To find out if she’s talked But the post office has been stolen And the mailbox is locked
It's really doggerel. But, as it happened, Bob found a brilliant new sound and some great musicians to help him put out his anti-message in 65 to 67, ending up with a lot of delightful whimsy in the famous Basement Tapes – new deluxe version out soon!
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The next 50 years have been fairly patchy. Occasionally he takes up an actual subject (Hurricane, George Jackson) but mostly it’s Life is Chaos or, increasingly, These Women will be the Death of Me. It’s not a nice thing to say, but the awful bust-up with Sara did re-energise Bob’s songs. The remarkable outpouring of viciousness in Idiot Wind starts with a weird and fairly silly first verse
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me I can’t help it if I’m lucky
Bob explained that if he put that in first, he could then be as insulting as he wanted (“you’re an idiot, babe, it’s a wonder you can even feed yourself”) because he was “in character”. This is surely a terrible reason to start one of your greatest songs with a daft verse.
A few years later Christianity of the ranting variety gave him a whole new subject. The songs and the energy of the gospel period were good, his voice was probably never better (listen to “When He Returns”) but many times the lyrics make these songs unlistenable :
Counterfeit philosophies have polluted all of your thoughts Karl Marx has got ya by the throat, Henry Kissinger’s got you tied up in knots
Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules Spiritual advisors and gurus to guide your every move Instant inner peace and every step you take has got to be approved
When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?
(Answer : “Tomorrow, Bob, or maybe next Monday, I’m kind of busy this week.”)
After the apocalypse faded, Bob went right back to songs about chaos and meaninglessness
The cat’s in the well, the horse is going bumpety bump The cat’s in the well, and the horse is going bumpety bump Back alley Sally is doing the American jump
And has stayed that way pretty much since, although with a whole new songwriting technique – Songwriter as Diligent Magpie. This is where Bob raids the vast reservoir of old Americana (blues & hillbilly music before the 1940s, 19th and early 20th century poets and novelists, the more obscure the better) and rearranges and stitches and nips and tucks until
My pulse is runnin’ through my palm–the sharp hills are rising from The yellow fields with twisted oaks that groan Won’t you meet me out in the moonlight alone?
She’s looking into my eyes, she’s holding my hand She says, “You can’t repeat the past.” I say, “You can’t? What do you mean, you can’t? Of course you can.”
Okay, I have now demonstrated Bob sometimes writes less than brilliant lyrics. A guy like that (there is no other guy like that) gets over-praised (e.g. by the French Academy or the American Academy of Arts and Letters
"For more than 50 years, defying categorization in a culture beguiled by categories, Bob Dylan has probed and prodded our psyches, recording and then changing our world and our lives through poetry made manifest in song – creating relationships that we never imagined could exist between words, emotions and ideas"
and knee-jerkily dismissed as overrated by bewildered 17 year olds. Ah well. The lamp-post still stands with folded arms and Shakespeare’s still in the alley and I'm in trouble with the tombstone blues. ...more
A peculiar, fast-moving and queasily unpleasant gamut of emotions passed through me as I raced through this book about Dylan fans.
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Gamut ? ThatA peculiar, fast-moving and queasily unpleasant gamut of emotions passed through me as I raced through this book about Dylan fans.
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Gamut ? That’s a word like petard. You only use it in one context. A gamut of emotions. You don’t say “a gamut of vegetables was displayed on the market stall”… “I encountered a gamut of children in the schoolroom”…. Well, we should liberate this word from its phrasal confinement. But calling the grotesques foregathered in this book “fans” is like calling Eilert Pilarm a poor Elvis impersonator
or Wagner’s Ring Cycle long. This is the scary end of Dylan obsessiveness. Gangs of these people, for instance, follow Dylan’s never-ending tour like they’re commandos yomping through Helmand province. For these hardest of cores sleep is for wimps. If you must you sleep in the queue which you’ve joined for the next day’s gig having just come out of today’s gig (or if you’re rich you can pay a homeless person to stand there for you, all night and the following day); or you leg it to the car to drive to the next impossible Midwestern town (could be Tuscaloosa, Carbondale, DeKalb, or …. Normal. Ha, Normal?). Do these people have jobs? It’s hard to tell. “My boss thinks I’m still at the office,” she says, rushing through her computer coding tasks on her laptop. In the queue.
Everybody knows AJ Weberman was the world’s first Dylanologist, he who invented garbology, founded the Dylan Liberation Front and coined its hilarious motto “Free Bob Dylan From Himself!” AJ & his posse was rifling D’s rubbish bins one day in 1971 when Sara came screeching out of the house and they had a little contretemps. Later, on Elizabeth Street, AJ was walking along when D cycled by and spotted him. Let AJ take up the tale:
A couple of days later, I’m on Elizabeth Street and someone jumps me, starts punching me. I turn around and it’s like—Dylan. I’m thinking, ‘Can you believe this? I’m getting the crap beat out of me by Bob Dylan!’ I said, ‘Hey, man, how you doin’?’ But he keeps knocking my head against the sidewalk. He’s little, but he’s strong. He works out. I wouldn’t fight back, you know, because I knew I was wrong. He gets up, rips off my ‘Free Bob Dylan’ button and walks away. Never says a word. The Bowery bums were coming over, asking, ‘How much he get?’ Like I got rolled. . .
AJ thought Dylan was singing in code, you know, like where “rain” = “heroin, and “dog” = “heroin”, and so forth. So the pattern was set. And it’s not hard to see where it comes from. Dylan has always sung songs of condemnation, from Masters of War
And I hope that you die And your death’ll come soon
to Positively 4th Street
Yes, I wish that for just one time You could stand inside my shoes You’d know what a drag it is To see you
to Idiot Wind
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth You’re an idiot, babe It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe
To the gospel stuff
Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules When you gonna wake up
And consequently people get the idea he’s like one of those old testament prophets, cursing the Israelites and their kine for their vile backsliding.
It’s an abusive relationship. Dylan hates and fears these crazies and they continue to make his life as uncomfortable as they can – only because they love him so much, you see. It gives them the right to complain when he’s rubbish, when he slurs words on stage, when he releases stupid albums (Down in the Groove, Saved), when he doesn’t release the right stuff, so they have to do it for him… Oh those naughty bootleggers and their falsely-pregnant girlfriends (one way to smuggle taping equipment in). Phone calls and hotel rooms and of course recording studios, nowhere is immune, Dylan is always recorded and the recordings are always bootlegged. When Dylan decided finally to officially release the most famous 1966 Manchester “Judas!” concert, the bootleggers sniffed and released a 10 cd edition of 1966 concerts. It’s no wonder Dylan can come across as a little distrustful and resentful at times.
A fog of sadness slides through this book. Yes, some of it is funny. Some nutter once told Dylan his lyrics were like the Bible because you could find everything you needed to know in there somewhere. Dylan paused a while and said “Well, that goes without saying.” One Dylan fanzine was called “Homer the Slut. Any fan would instantly spot where that came from. But really, these fans are after something Dylan was never in the business of providing, and they won’t take no for an answer.
And Dylan himself, he’s also obsessed. He can’t stop dragging round the world playing one terrible monotone gig after another, pissing off another 2500 audience members, night after night. You can’t tell me that’s not an unhealthy obsession.
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The last third of the book is the most interesting. The subject is the Late Dylan period (from Time Out of Mind onwards) and the matter of plagiarism. No – hush my mouth – I mean creative reworking. You know this already, where Dylan quotes lines from Confessions of a Yakuza, Henry Timrod the Civil War poet, Tennessee Williams, The Great Gatsby, John Donne… the list goes on. His book Chronicles Vol One is a weird patchwork quilt made up from an issue of a 1962 Time magazine, a Mezz Mezrow autobiography, a New Orleans guidebook…. There are blogs about all of this. It calls into question the whole question of what art is – what part originality plays, what is legitimate borrowing, what about TS Eliot, and so forth. I’d love to talk it all over with you one day.
You know I appreciate obsession, I have a number of minor obsessions myself. (One, for instance, was to make the Goodreads all time top ten reviewer list. But I had to recognise that’s never gonna happen – the tsunami of YA reviewers dashed my hopes, and my steady diet of theology, true crime and minor novels is just not sexy enough for the public. Dashed? That’s another of those gamut words.) So also, I’ve been fairly obsessed with for instance John Fahey, the Incredible String Band, Brian Wilson, Eric Rohmer, Raymond Chandler, James Joyce, the Carter Family, and Bob Dylan too, if you must know. I think I managed to have so many concurrent obsessions that no single one of them was able to take over. My current one is American independent cinema. I love those no-budget movies like Humpday and Drinking Buddies and Shotgun Stories. I bet Bob would too. So…. Er… what was the question again? Oh yeah - The Dylanologists by David Kinney is a pretty good book, if you’re interested in Dylan fans and you’re prepared to accept how melancholy life can be, and how art is really no help at all. Okay, a little bit of help. Tiny bit.
Old Man Dylan – as good as Young Man Dylan and better than Middle Man Dylan. Here’s a quick trip through the last 16 years.
1997 : Time Out of Mind – fOld Man Dylan – as good as Young Man Dylan and better than Middle Man Dylan. Here’s a quick trip through the last 16 years.
1997 : Time Out of Mind – first album of new songs for 7 years, half of them great. A whole new style to go with them , a massive pessimism, a steady gazing upon death, betrayal, futility, you know. Dylan was back, and this time he stayed back.
2006 : Modern Times This made Dylan the oldest performer ever to have a No 1 album in America, but in Britain, he only got to No 3. The oldest No 1 album artist here is Vera Lynn who is currently 96; she hit No 1 four years ago, aged 92, with an album which featured “The White Cliffs of Dover”. That famous song includes the greatest ornithological error in the history of modern pop music. It was written by a couple of Americans, and they had no idea that there are no bluebirds in Dover or anywhere in England.
2009 : Together Through Life. Great title – these artists, who last so long, like Dylan, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, they really are with you through your life if you been listening as long as me.
2013 : Another Self Portrait. A fabulous example of why Dylan never fails to be interesting. Extracted from some of the apparently worst years, musically, of Dylan’s career, we find many gorgeous versions of old folk songs. Have we seen the last of these remarkable exhumations from the Dylan mines? I don’t think so.
THIS BOOK
I was only interested in the last 250 pages, the account of this latter golden autumnal Dylan period; I already read about Dylan’s earlier years too many times to count. This book is an excellent meditation on all the curious (singing for the Pope, already?), aggravating (too many bad concerts), depressing (Victoria’s Secret advert?), delightful and serendipitous aspects of the whole story; and particularly he takes many pages to debate the major charges of plagiarism which certain critics (called “wussies and pussies” by Dylan himself) have made much of since Love & Theft and Chronicles. It’s the debate I’ve been needing to read for a long time.
Recommended to diehard Dylan fans – I know there are way too many Dylan biographies, but this one is much more an affectionate journey through the music itself with a serious guy who knows his stuff and covers pretty much everything in detail, right up to about June this year.
Bob Dylan is probably only of interest to middle aged white guys so if you’re not in that demographic, move right along, nothing to see here.
When I loBob Dylan is probably only of interest to middle aged white guys so if you’re not in that demographic, move right along, nothing to see here.
When I look at the music book section in the big ass bookshops I go to there’s always 50 books on Dylan, 30 on the Beatles and one each on everyone else. This probably means that only middle aged white guys read music books. Also, that only middle aged white guys write music books.
There's about three in there written by women. Wow, writing about music is a real boy's club. I wouldn't have thought it was, but it really is.
So now I'm umming and ahing about whether to buy the updated edition of this very good guide to all things basement. It was just updated because of the new version of the basement tapes issued recently. This was the old version
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and this is the new version:
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not to be confused with this:
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but that's not by Bob - well... I mean... it... er...aw it's too complicated to explain.
So wondering whether to get an updated edition of a book about some homemade demos from 1967 which I've already listened to and read everything else about them too - if you were looking for the definition of a first world problem, that's a good one right there. ...more
1. Song to Woody 2. Talkin' New York 3. Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues 4. Man on the Street 5. Sally Gal 6. Hard Times in New York 71961
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1. Song to Woody 2. Talkin' New York 3. Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues 4. Man on the Street 5. Sally Gal 6. Hard Times in New York 7. I Was Young when I Left Home 1962 [image] 8. Ballad for a Friend 9. Poor Boy Blues 10. Standing on the Highway 11. Ramblin’ Gamblin Willie 12. Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues 13. The Death of Emmett Till 14. Ballad of Donald White 15. Let Me Die in my Footsteps 16. Blowin’ in the Wind 17. Corrina, Corrina 18. Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance 19. Rocks and Gravel 20. Quit your Low Down Ways 21. Babe I’m in the Mood for You 22. Down the Highway 23. Bob Dylan's Blues 24. Tomorrow is a Long Time 25. Ain’t Gonna Grieve 26. Long Ago Far Away 27. Long Time Gone 28. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall 29. Ballad of Hollis Brown 30. John Brown 31. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right 32. Mixed Up Confusion 33. I’d Hate to be you on that Dreadful Day 34. Paths of Victory 35 : Train A-Travelin’ 36. Walkin’ Down the Line 37. Cuban Missile Crisis 38. Ye Playboys and Playgirls 39. Oxford Town 40. I Shall Be Free 41. Kingsport Town 42. Hero Blues 43. Whatcha Gonna Do 1963 [image] 44. Masters of War 45. Girl from the North Country 46. Boots of Spanish Leather 47. Bob Dylan's Dream 48. Farewell 49. All Over You 50. Only a Hobo 51. Walls of Red Wing 52. Bob Dylan’s New Orleans Rag 53. Dusty Old Fairgrounds 54. Who Killed Davey Moore? 55. Seven Curses 56. With God on Our Side 57. Talkin' World War III Blues 58. Only a Pawn in Their Game 59. Eternal Circle 60. North Country Blues 61. Troubled and I Don’t Know Why 62. When the Ship Comes In 63. The Times They Are A-Changin' 64. Percy's Song 65. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll 66. Lay Down Your Weary Tune 67. One Too Many Mornings 68. Restless Farewell 1964 [image] 69. Guess I’m Doin’ Fine 70. Chimes of Freedom 71. Mr. Tambourine Man 72. I Don't Believe You 73. Spanish Harlem Incident 74. Motorpsycho Nitemare 75. It Ain't Me Babe 76. Denise Denise 77. Mama You Been on my Mind 78. Ballad in Plain D 79. Black Crow Blues 80. I Shall Be Free No. 10 81. To Ramona 82. All I Really Want to Do 83. I’ll Keep it with Mine 84. My Back Pages 85. Gates of Eden 86. It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) 87. If You Gotta Go, Go Now 88. Farewell Angelina 89. Love is Just a Four Letter Word 1965 [image] 90. Subterranean Homesick Blues 91. California 92. Outlaw Blues 93. Love Minus Zero/No Limit 94. She Belongs to Me 95. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue 96. Bob Dylan's l l5th Dream 97. On the Road Again 98. Maggie's Farm 99. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, it Takes a Train to Cry 100. Like a Rolling Stone 101. Sitting on a Barbed-Wire Fence 102. Tombstone Blues 103. Desolation Row 104. From a Buick 6 105. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? 106. Positively 4th Street 107. Highway 61 Revisited 108. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues 109. Queen Jane Approximately 110. Ballad of a Thin Man 111. Medicine Sunday 112. Jet Pilot 113. I Wanna be your Lover 114. Long Distance Operator 115. Visions of Johanna 1966 [image] 116. She’s Your Lover Now 117. One of Us Must Know 118. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat 119. Tell me Momma 120. 4th Time Around 121. Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands 122. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again 123. Absolutely Sweet Marie 124. Just Like a Woman 125. Pledging My Time 126. Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine 127. Temporary Like Achilles 128. Rainy Day Women Nos 12 & 35 129. Obviously 5 Believers 130. I Want You 131. Definitely Van Gogh 132. What kind of Friend is this? 133. I Can’t Leave her Behind 134. On a Rainy Afternoon 1967 135. Minstrel Boy 136. King of France 137. All American Boy 138. Tiny Montgomery 139. Sign on the Cross 140. Santa Fe 141. Silent Weekend 142. Bourbon Street 143. Don't Ya Tell Henry 144. Mil¬lion Dollar Bash 145. Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread 146. I’m not There 147. Please Mrs. Henry 148. Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood) 149. Lo and Behold 150. You Ain't Goin' Nowhere 151. This Wheel's on Fire 152. I Shall be released 153. Too Much of Nothing 154. Tears of Rage 155. The Mighty Quinn 156. Open the Door, Homer 157. Nothing Was Delivered 158. Odds and Ends 159. Get Your Rocks Off 160. Clothes Line Saga 161. Apple Suckling Tree 162. Goin' to Acapulco 163. All you have to do is Dream 164. The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest 165. Drifter's Escape 166. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine 167. All Along the Watchtower 168. John Wesley Harding 169. As I Went Out One Morning 170. I Am a Lonesome Hobo 171. I Pity the Poor Immi¬grant 172. The Wicked Messenger 173. Dear Landlord 174. I'll Be Your Baby Tonight 175. Down Along the Cove 1969 [image] 176. Lay Lady Lay 177. I Threw It All Away 178. To Be Alone with You 179. One More Night 180. Country Pie 181. Peggy Day 182. Tell Me That It Isn't True 183. Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You 184. Wanted Man 1970 185. Living the Blues 186. Time Passes Slowly 187. Father of Night 188. Went to See the Gypsy 189. All the Tired Horses 190. If Not for You 191. Sign on the Window 192. One More Weekend 193. New Morning 194. Three Angels 195. If Dogs Run Free 196.The Man in Me 197. Winterlude 198. Day of the Locusts 1971 199. Watching the River Flow 200. When I Paint my Masterpiece 201. Wallflower 202. George Jackson 1973 [image] 203. Forever Young 204. Billy 205. Knockin' on Heaven's Door 206. Never Say Goodbye 207. Nobody ‘cept You 208. Going Going Gone 209. Hazel 210. Something There Is About You 211. You Angel You 212. On a Night Like This 213. Tough Mama 214. Dirge 215. Wedding Song 1974 [image] 216. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts 217. Tangled Up in Blue 218. You're a Big Girl Now 219. Shelter from the Storm 220. If You See Her, Say Hello 221. Call Letter Blues 222. Simple Twist of Fate 223. Idiot Wind 224. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go 225. Up to Me 226. Buckets of Rain 227. Meet Me in the Morning 1975 [image] 228. One More Cup of Coffee 229. Golden Loom 230. Oh, Sister 231. Abandoned Love 232. Isis 233. Joey 234. Rita May 235. Hurricane 236. Black Diamond Bay 237. Catfish 238. Mozambique 239. Romance in Durango 240. Sara 1976 241. Seven Days 1978 [image] 242. Changing of the Guard 243. Is Your Love in Vain? 244. Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) 245. No Time to Think 246. We Better Talk This Over 247. True Love Tends to Forget 248. Where Are You To¬night? (Journey Through Dark Heat) 249. Coming From the Heart 250. New Pony 251. Baby Stop Crying 252. Am I Your Stepchild? 1979 253. Slow Train 254. Do Right to Me Baby (Do Unto Others) 255. Gotta Serve Somebody 256. I Believe in You 257. Ye Shall be Changed 258. Trouble in Mind 259. Man Gave Names to All the Animals 260. Ain’t No Man Righteous 261. Gonna Change My Way of Thinking 262. Precious Angel 263. When You Gonna Wake Up 264. When He Returns 1980 265. Saving Grace 266. Covenant Woman 267. In the Garden 268. Pressing On 269. Saved 270. Solid Rock 271. What Can I Do for You? 272. Are You Ready 273. Coverdown Breakthrough 274. Ain’t Gonna Go to Hell for Anybody 275. The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar 276. Yonder Comes Sin 277. Let’s Keep it Between us 278. City of Gold 1981 278. Property of Jesus 279. Every Grain of Sand 280. Caribbean Wind 281. Shot of Love 282. You Changed My Life 283. Angelina 284. Heart of Mine 285. In the Summertime 286. Need a Woman 287. Dead Man Dead Man 288. Trouble 289. Watered-Down Love 290. Lenny Bruce 291. Thief on the Cross 1983 292. Jokerman 293. I and I 294. Clean Cut Kid 295. Union Sundown 296. Blind Willie McTell 297. Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight 298. License to Kill 299. Man of Peace 300. Sweetheart Like You 301. Someone’s Got a Hold of my Heart/Tight Connection to my Heart 302. Neighborhood Bully 303. Tell me 304. Foot of Pride 305. Julius and Ethel 306. Lord Protect my Child 307. Death is not the End 308. Driftin' too far from Shore 309. Brownsville Girl (New Danville Girl) 310. Something's Burning Baby 311. Seeing the Real You at Last 1985 [image] 312. I'll Remember You 313. Maybe Someday 314. Trust Yourself 315. Emotionally Yours 316. When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky 317. Never Gonna be the Same Again 318. Dark Eyes 319. Shake 320. Under your Spell 1986 321. Band of the Hand 322. You Wanna Ramble 323. Got My Mind Made Up 324. Had a Dream About you baby 325. Night after Night 1989 [image] 326. Congratulations 327. Political World 328. What Good am I? 329. Dignity 330. Tweeter and the Monkey Man 331. Born in Time 332. God Knows 333. Disease of Conceit 334. What Was it you Wanted? 335. Everything is Broken 336. Ring them Bells 337. Series of Dreams 338. Most of the Time 339. TV Talkin' Song 340. Where Teardrops Fall 341. Shooting Star 342. Man in a Long Black Coat 1990 343. Handy Dandy 344. Cat's in the Well 345. 10,000 Men 346. Unbelievable 347. Under the Red Sky 348. Wiggle Wiggle 349. Two by Two 350. She's my Baby 351. Where were you Last Night? 352. Inside Out 353. If You belonged to Me 354. The Devil's Been Busy 355. 7 Deadly Sins 1996 [image] 356. Dirt Road Blues 357. Can't Wait 358. Mississippi 359. Highlands 360. Dreamin’ of You 361. Marching to the City 362. Million Miles 363. Not Dark Yet 364. Red River Shore 365. Standing in the Doorway 1997 366. Cold Irons Bound 367. Tryin' to Get to Heaven 368. Make you Feel my Love 369. Till I Fell in Love with You 370. Love Sick 1999 371. Things have Changed [image] 2001 372. Summer Days 373. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum 374. Honest with me 375. Lonesome Day Blues 376. Bye and Bye 377. Floater 377. Moonlight 378. Po’ Boy 379. High Water (for Charlie Patton) 380. Cry a While 381.Sugar Baby 382. Waitin’ for You 2002 383. ‘Cross the Green Mountain 2005 384. Tell Ol’ Bill 385. Can’t Escape from You 386. Thunder on the Mountain 387. Spirit on the Water 388. Rollin’ and Tumblin’ 389. When the Deal Goes Down 390. Someday Baby 391. Workingman’s Blues # 2 392. Beyond the Horizon 393. Nettie Moore 394. The Levee’s Gonna Break 395. Ain’t Talkin’ 396. Huck’s Tune 2008 397. Life is hard 398. This Dream of You 399. Beyond Here Lies Nothing 400. My Wife’s Home Town 401. If you Ever Go to Houston 402. Forgetful Heart 403. Jolene 404. Shake Shake Mama 405. I Feel a Change Comin’ On 406. It’s All Good
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2012
407. Duquesne Whistle 408. Soon after Midnight 409.Narrow Way 410. Long and Wasted Years 411. Pay in Blood 412. Scarlet Town 413. Early Roman Kings 414. Tin Angel 415. Tempest 416. Roll on John
Dylan started his songwriting, tentatively, as a plagiarist and is[This review, like this book, continues from the review of Revolution in the Air]
***
Dylan started his songwriting, tentatively, as a plagiarist and is finishing, magnificently, as a plagiarist.
WHAT DYLAN STOLE
1) HE ROBBED FOLK AND BLUES BLIND
When you're a folkie you are allowed, nay, expected to steal because that's the folk process. So you take a tune from there and some lines from here and stir em up with a new guitar intro and a harmony et voila, new folk song. So Dylan cranked out a whole lot of early terrible songs like that, but also quite a few early good songs, also like that. Then the words became more & more original, and finally, after two or three years, he figured out how to create original melodies. So the melody of With God on Our Side is from Dominic Behan's The Patriot Song, and Blowin' in the Wind is from the old spiritual No More Auction Block, but Mr Tambourine Man is 100% Bob.
2) THEN HE STARTED IN ON THE MOVIES (YOU KNOW HOW TO WHISTLE, DON'T YOU?)
It pretty much stayed 100% Bob (with a few stolen moments) until the mid 80s, when fans began to notice the bizarre appearance in Bob's songs of various lines of dialogue taken almost verbatim from old movies. Examples:
Alan Ladd: I don't mind leaving, I'd just like it to be my idea. (Shane)
Bacall to Bogart: You gave me something to think about, said you can help me. (To Have and Have Not)
Bob :
You give me something to think about, baby, Every time I see ya. Don't worry, baby, I don't mind leaving, I'd just like it to be my idea.
(Song : Never going to be the Same Again from the awful Empire Burlesque)
Karl Malden: You want to know what's wrong with our waterfront? It's the love of a lousy buck. It's making love of a buck---the cushy job---more important than the love of man! (On the waterfront)
Bogart to Bacall: Stick around - we're not through yet. (To Have and Have Not)
Bob:
I saw thousands who could have overcome the darkness, For the love of a lousy buck, I've watched them die. Stick around, baby, we're not through, Don't look for me, I'll see you When the night comes falling from the sky. (Song "When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky" )
3) CONFESSIONS OF A YAKUZA - huh? A what?
Then jumping forward to the brilliant album "Love and Theft", the title itself being lifted from this interesting book we have various quotes and paraphrases embedded in the songs which are – bizarrely, but this is Bob we’re talking about – from Confessions of a Yakuza
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"If it bothers you so much," she'd say, " why don't you just shove off?" ("Confessions," page 9)
Bob:
Juliet said back to Romeo, 'Why don't you just shove off If it bothers you so much?' ("Floater")
My mother...was the daughter of a wealthy farmer...(she) died when I was eleven...I heard that my father was a traveling salesman who called at the house regularly, but I never met him. (My uncle) was a nice man, I won't forget him...After my mother died, I decided it'd be best to go and try my luck there. ("Confessions," pages 57-58)
Bob:
My mother was a daughter of a wealthy farmer My father was a traveling salesman, I never met him When my mother died, my uncle took me in - he ran a funeral parlor He did a lot of nice things for me and I won't forget him ("Po' Boy")
Actually, though, I'm not as cool or forgiving as I might have sounded." ("Confessions," page 158)
Bob:
I'm not quite as cool or forgiving as I sound I've seen enough heartaches and strife ("Floater””)
Just because she was in the same house didn't mean we were living together as man and wife...I don't know how it looked to other people, but I never even slept with her- not once. ("Confessions," page 208)
Bob:
Samantha Brown lived in my house for about four or five months Don't know how it looked to other people I never slept with her even once ("Lonesome Day Blues")
4) HENRY TIMROD - COME ON, YOU SHOULD KNOW WHO HE WAS
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After that, Modern Times lifted various tunes and lyrics from old songs – e.g. When the Deal Goes Down uses the tune of Bing Crosby’s When the Blue of the Night meets the Gold of the Day, and Beyond the Horizon uses the tune of Red sails in the Sunset, and then Dylan starts up again with the literature, this time your favourite Confederate poet ole Henry Timrod.
Bob:
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours (“When the Deal Goes Down”)
Henry (from “Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night”)
A round of precious hours Oh! here, where in that summer noon I basked And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers.
And so forth. Okay, what does Bob himself say?
Well, you have to understand that I'm not a melodist... My songs are either based on old Protestant hymns or Carter Family songs or variations of the blues form. What happens is, I'll take a song I know and simply start playing it in my head. That's the way I meditate. A lot of people will look at a crack on the wall and meditate, or count sheep or angels or money or something, and it's a proven fact that it'll help them relax. I don't meditate on any of that stuff. I meditate on a song. I'll be playing Bob Nolan's "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," for instance, in my head constantly – while I'm driving a car or talking to a person or sitting around or whatever. People will think they are talking to me and I'm talking back, but I'm not. I'm listening to a song in my head. At a certain point, some words will change and I'll start writing a song.
And later he became a little more tetchy:
And as far as Henry Timrod is concerned, have you even heard of him?" he asks. "Who's been reading him lately? And who's pushed him to the forefront? Who's been making you read him? And ask his descendants what they think of the hoopla. And if you think it's so easy to quote him and it can help your work, do it yourself and see how far you can get.
and even tetchier:
Wussies and pussies complain about that stuff.
T S Eliot said "Good artists borrow, great artists steal" John Fahey (who stole some lines from T S Eliot for some song titles, there's a little homage for you) reminded his fellow artists to steal from obscure sources, and he did all the time.
5) and HE DOESN'T STOP
Then there was the big hoohah when they found out about Bob's book Chronicles which just might be a giant mosaic of quotes from Jack London and Melville and 1963 Life magazine and many others. Now that's taking actual lines from some other guy's book and putting them right there in your own actual book. Hey, wait a minute - THAT AIN'T THE FOLK PROCESS! That's actual plagiarism. Isn't it? Oooh my head. My brain hurts. Because James Joyce and TS Eliot, to name but two, use LOTS of other people's words, and they don't attribute them neither. And Warhol used everyone else's images; and Liechtenstein stole outright from comic books and yet no one busted them. Aw shit, I don't know.
6) ONE THING I DO KNOW
I've been immersing myself in Dylan's goldenhued late period which started with Time Out of Mind in 1996. This is where his voice is like a deathbed confession and all the songs are quarried out of ancient riverbeds, tunes and words, and filtered through his brain, where they become something rich, and strange, and beautiful. No song makes complete sense, you can take any verse from here and stick it in another song there. Well, pretty much. And it's great. Bob has to be Bob, you know.
Oh yeah we really need a book all about songs didn't write... it's another Dylan Telephone Directory... to which I confess multiple addictions ....butOh yeah we really need a book all about songs didn't write... it's another Dylan Telephone Directory... to which I confess multiple addictions ....but I like Barker's tone :
Dylan has a habit of murdering Paul Simon songs and these three performances certainly do not break the mould.
Old MacDonald Had a Farm : this children's song is about a farmer and his various animals.
I dug this book out of the loft the other day, and I still can't quite see the point of it. But I like it.
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