| December 25th, 2005 11:16 AM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Bob Dylan - still on that road
25.12.05 / New Zealand Herald
By Graham Reid
Against expectations, this has been a rare year for 64-year old Bob Dylan, especially since he hasn't had an album of new material out in four years.
Dylan seemed to be everywhere.
His influence was evident in neo-folk and alt.country artists (from Devendra Banhart and Bright Eyes to Wilco and Will Oldham), and in former post-punk rockers getting straight with life (Chuck Prophet).
More than that, however, Dylan - once elliptical and reclusive - seems to be opening up. His autobiographical book Chronicles: Volume One published this year was an insight on crucial periods in his musical life.
He remained elusive about some things - as you would expect from a man who once described himself as a mathematical singer.
But in the past two years Dylan has been helping to put the formative, and revolutionary, early part of his career up for analysis.
The process began last year at Seattle's EMP rock'n'roll museum. With stacks of memorabilia - his high school essays, concert tickets, hand written lyrics, rare recordings and so on - the exhibition entitled Bob Dylan's American Journey 1955-66 pulled together the many threads of Dylan's career during those turbulent years.
What Dylan assimilated, filtered and moulded into a unique voice were influences as diverse as Hank Williams' country music, Woody Guthrie's socialist folk, Buddy Holly pop, the political activism of the period, old country blues, the poetry of the Beat Generation, and a young man's desire to play rock'n'roll.
All this from a chubby-faced Jewish kid who had grown up in the culturally remote town of Hibbing, Minnesota?
By his very early 20s Dylan had been accorded the spokesman-of-a-generation mantle and was retreating from it as fast as he had arrived.
Three years later he was being reviled by folkies who felt betrayed by him playing electric guitar, and he was the subject of death threats. Audiences booed and abused him.
The Seattle exhibition has been extended until April and recently a companion book, The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, has been published. But while that tome with its reproductions of hand-written lyrics and so forth is interesting, Dylan fans - and anyone curious about recent cultural history - will be drawn to Martin Scorsese's extraordinary DVD doco No Direction Home, unequivocally the best rock film of the year.
It covers the same formative period and has rare and pivotal concert footage, and interviews with old lovers Suze Rotolo and Joan Baez, fellow travellers Allen Ginsberg and Dave Van Ronk, and disgruntled folkies like Pete Seeger who saw their connection with a new generation slip through their fingers.
Best of all it features recently recorded commentary from Dylan.
If Dylan has always seemed elusive then the times have a-changed. Here - as in Chronicles - he makes his case as an unapologetic solo traveller, reflecting with unsentimental insight, occasional humour and clarity on the times he lived through and influenced.
As always, however, his private life goes unmentioned.
Until now D.A. Pennebaker's film Don't Look Back was the most revealing document of that volatile period, but Scorsese - who uses Pennebaker footage and numerous other sources - has crafted an almost four-hour epic which will stand as the definitive account.
No Direction Home recreates the world the young Robert Zimmerman grew up in.
It was a world of tent shows and carnie folk passing through, of Hank Williams' country and Johnny Ray's sobbing pop, of Muddy Waters and the remarkable voice of John Jacob Niles (the Antony and the Johnsons of his period).
All this gives context to the fat-faced kid who thought of maybe going to Westpoint Military Academy as his way out of Hibbing.
Then he heard Woody Guthrie.
You could listen to his songs, Dylan says, and learn how to live.
And so his long journey began, first to the cultural crucible of New York's Greenwich Village.
Small facts spill out - he sold 2500 copies of his debut album - and also big events, such as when he sang Blowing In the Wind at the march on Washington in 1963 when Martin Luther King made his famous speech. Dylan was only 22.
Scorsese underscores how Dylan's early music captured the zeitgeist by playing A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall over footage of the Kennedy assassination.
Then everything changed: with increasing desperation we see Dylan recoiling from the shackles of others' expectations.
He is often calm and even good-humoured as the insults fly (fake, bastard, traitor and, notoriously, Judas). But then he becomes pale, reclusive and impenetrable behind shades.
It was a remarkable career arc. No other artist has gone from being so embraced to so reviled in such a short period.
The motorcycle accident in 66, where the doco ends, allowed him to withdraw. He didn't perform live for nine years.
The few great rockumentaries are usually about artists under pressure rather than scaling great heights. But this one has both and, mercifully, Dylan doesn't attempt to rewrite his story.
The Scorsese doco arrived with a tie-in double disc, No Direction Home: Volume VII, and again Dylan's voice - sometimes caressing as on the demo of Don't Think Twice, sometimes a howl from inside the hurricane as on Ballad of a Thin Man recorded on that controversial 1966 tour of Britain - is commanding.
But it was long ago in a very different world, one Dylan seemed to define and then courageously - to reclaim the necessary freedom to be an artist - denied.
And this year - when you might have expected him to be marginalised - that struggle still sounds relevant.
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| December 25th, 2005 01:47 PM |
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| Martha |
TTM thanks for posting this article. :-) |
| December 25th, 2005 11:17 PM |
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| keefjunkie |
sweet article, i just got the double disc no direction home soundtrack today, buying the movie tomorrow |
| December 26th, 2005 09:20 AM |
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| Martha |
quote:
keefjunkie wrote:
sweet article, i just got the double disc no direction home soundtrack today, buying the movie tomorrow
KJ,
You have now officially entered heaven on earth!
EnJOY!
peace,
Martha |
| December 26th, 2005 02:15 PM |
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| gypsy |
quote:
Martha wrote:
KJ,
You have now officially entered heaven on earth!
EnJOY!
peace,
Martha
Agreed! |
| December 26th, 2005 03:36 PM |
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| MRD8 |
Martha,
Did Gazza send you the Dublin CD's along with the Brixton shows? |
| December 26th, 2005 06:24 PM |
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| Soldatti |
Great read. |
| December 26th, 2005 08:44 PM |
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| Gazza |
quote:
MRD8 wrote:
Martha,
Did Gazza send you the Dublin CD's along with the Brixton shows?
yes  |
| December 27th, 2005 01:16 AM |
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| keefjunkie |
quote:
Martha wrote:
KJ,
You have now officially entered heaven on earth!
EnJOY!
peace,
Martha
WOW just got finished watching it, you defintely were right! |
| December 27th, 2005 05:30 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
quote:
Martha wrote:
TTM thanks for posting this article. :-)
You're welcome Martha. People like Bob only come down the pike once every 100 years or so. |
| December 27th, 2005 08:12 PM |
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| Martha |
quote:
MRD8 wrote:
Martha,
Did Gazza send you the Dublin CD's along with the Brixton shows?
Yes indeed and due to your review of Forever Young I put that show in straight away and listened to the 2nd encore...it is lovely. :-)
Gary you said Bob performed that 2nd encore in honor of who again? I can't remember for sure who the gentleman was that passed away...but I think it was posted here then by you. Am I thinking of the right guy?
Thanks for the shows and for offering me the shows both of you...I am still listening my way through them. Haven't gotten to Blue Monday yet.
:-)
xxxxxxxxxoooooooo,
MM |
| December 27th, 2005 11:16 PM |
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| Gazza |
quote:
Martha wrote:
Gary you said Bob performed that 2nd encore in honor of who again? I can't remember for sure who the gentleman was that passed away...but I think it was posted here then by you. Am I thinking of the right guy?
George Best - see my avatar
He had died the day before the show and it had got blanket coverage all over the news all that week and the following week. Dylan didnt mention it, but the fact that he never does a 2nd encore these days, the choice of song (played only about 5 times all year) plus the fact that he was performing in Ireland (George was from Belfast, and had a status throughout the entire island bordering on God-like) made the whole thing look like more than just mere coincidence
[Edited by Gazza] |
| December 27th, 2005 11:33 PM |
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| time is on my side |
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
People like Bob only come down the pike once every 100 years or so.
Excellent point!! I'm looking currently viewing the No Direction Home DVD for the third time. For some reason, can't get enough of it. |
| December 28th, 2005 12:54 AM |
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| Martha |
quote:
Gazza wrote:
George Best - see my avatar
He had died the day before the show and it had got blanket coverage all over the news all that week and the following week. Dylan didnt mention it, but the fact that he never does a 2nd encore these days, the choice of song (played only about 5 times all year) plus the fact that he was performing in Ireland (George was from Belfast, and had a status throughout the entire island bordering on God-like) made the whole thing look like more than just mere coincidence
[Edited by Gazza]
Yes, I did remember the name and thank you for helping me with that. I am sure Bob did it on purpose and in his honor. Coincidence, uhuh, not with Bob doing a 2nd encore....it was intentional I am certain of it. :-)
Now I am curious wondering why he did the same thing the night of the Louisville show (in the parking lot) 4/30/03. He hadn't been doing his normal length sets for several shows up to that night (only 13 1nd 14 song sets in fact) and he not only did a 2 song 1st encore he came back and did a 2nd encore...... and it was Forever Young.
That night was magical throughout and kept building momentum...the sound was so rich no matter where you went in that sea of 8,500 hippie kids. I'll never forget it. My back was in terrible shape and I was in pain and yet my going helped me to fee some relief and that gave me hope I could get better (and I am better than I was then back-wise).
That show was the show when I began to know there is healing properties to music. I began to feel it rather than just hear it. I went to a new depth that night...and have gone much deeper since. :-)
I sent TMR's Louisville boot to a ton of people. That show opened me up to a deeper appreciation of Bob's music and energy. It was a turning point in my life. A good one. :-)
I'm taking another good turn soon.....:-)
Thanks, you are a dear!
xxoo,
MM
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| December 28th, 2005 07:52 AM |
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| Gazza |
quote:
Martha wrote:
Now I am curious wondering why he did the same thing the night of the Louisville show (in the parking lot) 4/30/03. He hadn't been doing his normal length sets for several shows up to that night (only 13 1nd 14 song sets in fact) and he not only did a 2 song 1st encore he came back and did a 2nd encore...... and it was Forever Young.
My guess is because Louisville is Muhammad Ali's hometown and Bob is a big Ali fan |
| December 28th, 2005 10:09 AM |
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| Zeeta |
Incidentally just how fuckin good are Dylan's Bootleg Series 1-3 disc 2 specifically!?! Blowin my mind! I picked them up real cheap - glad I did man! |
| December 29th, 2005 10:32 AM |
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| Gazza |
the scary thing is that those songs are his 'rejects' (and theres a lot more genuinely great stuff from that era that DIDNT make it on to that album)
Any other artist would build a career around songs like that.
The other side of the coin about that boxed set (as well as the 18 unreleased songs that are on 'Biograph' from 1985) is that it raises serious concerns about his lack of artistic judgement. When you take an album like 'Infidels' for example, which is a good, but not great album from 1983 - and then look at songs like "Blind Willie McTell" (IMO one of the top 5 songs he's EVER recorded) which were left off it, it makes you wonder 'what the hell was he thinking?' |
| December 29th, 2005 12:43 PM |
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| Martha |
Yes, what was/is Bob thinking! LOL
Gary...I have to tell you> I was listening to 21/11/05 disc 2 track 4 (while going over our budget paying bills and having queasiness overtake me as it always does when I have to look at the lack of money vs. bills) only half-heartedly (mind on money stress) and suddnely I heard something I've NEVER heard before.....:-) Thanks to YOU!
Listen closely......you can hear Bob talking between songs to (prolly Tony) as he does so often. I call those moments, 1, 2 or 3 second band meetings...LOL. I've wondered to myself and allowed what he is saying at those moments to his band (and can they even hear him he speaks so lightly) and yesterday for the first time I HEARD him during a 3 second band meeting. :-)
I really need one of those computer deals like that kid on CSI as to pull Bob's voice out of the mix. I know he says "ok"......but it's too hard to make out any more. But I can hear he's talking for a few moments then they blow into the Strummer tribute.
I am wondering where he was and what mike picked up his voice?
I wanted to tell you that this thrilled me to no end.......I get off on cheap thrills I guess. :-)
Check it out!
xxxxxxxxxxoooooooooo,
Martha |
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