Chekhov’s Mistess

DylanPalooza

I spent six hours this past weekend in homage to W.H. Auden and Bob Dylan. Two men who were masters of their respective arts, two men who peaked early and wrinkled exceptionally.

Martin Scorsese’s three-plus hour documentary was remarkable for getting Dylan to talk about himself as a young man and enjoyable for its seamless integration of great music clips, liberal use of past documentaries and reminiscences of Dylan’s old Greenwhich Village pals and lovers.

One thing that made these stories interesting was the contrast between the reminiscers. Pete Seeger and Joan Baez on one hand seemed more amazed by Dylan than anything. They, like fans and the press, didn’t seem to know what to do with him. Others like Alan Ginsburg and Liam Clancy seemed far more relaxed and were content to just love the man and his music. Clancy, by the way, a robust Irishman, told his stories from the West Village landmark White Horse Tavern with a large glass of beer in front of him that was slowly drunk offscreen throughout the interview until it was left empty at the end – see the extras for footage of him reverently singing Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country.”

Another cool guy was Al Kooper, founder of Blood Sweat & Tears, who – notably – as a studio engineer, sat down without invitation and played the organ in the recording session of “Like a Rolling Stone.” Dylan liked it, emphasized the sound of the organ and Kooper found himself playing concerts with Dylan and his new, controversial “rock” band.

Such is the stuff of legend and there was much of it surrounding Dylan in the sixties. Although I guess anyone who was not a fan of Dylan’s music would sit cringing for three hours, his is an interesting if apolitical lens to view the sixties (incidentally, I recommend the documentary “Weather Underground,” which gives a decidedly more political view of the sixties).

If I had any complaints it would be Scorsese’s lingering over footage and commentary on Dylan’s move away from folk music, which upset fans – mostly conspicuously because they happened to be filmed – during his ’65 British tour. It was as though the controversy were the most important thing. There was also a lot of rehashing footage of inane press conferences that would lead you to believe that no one on earth ever asked Dylan an intelligent question. They are humorous though, particularly one freak who couldn’t come to terms with the fact that Dylan didn’t care anything about the t-shirt he was wearing on an album cover – but this territory has been well covered.

The film ends abruptly in 1966 either setting us up for a very long sequel to cover the next 40 years or, I asked myself, were we witnessing the only significant period in Dylan’s career? Regardless of the answer to the first option, I listen to the lyrics of the songs he created in his twenties and am amazed – although I like some of his later music, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline were certainly mixed, leaving Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde being his last truly monumental achievements.

Maybe that’s not important because all that early music, from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan on is a wonderful body of work that remains relevant today.

The Auden Portion of this post is at AudenPalooza.

***

Selected Links:

Hollywood Reporter Review of No Direction Home

No Direction Home PBS Official Site has a lot of extra material to sift through.

How Bob Dylan Beat the Press, Alternet.

Guardian review.

comments

I loved seeing Scorsese’s documentary on Dylan.  It reminded me of the passion I had for music when I was an emotional teenager.  At one of the Bob Dylan concerts I went to, he made a joke.  The man barely even speaks enough to introduce his band, so this was quite a treat.

“This is my drummer.  He used to be a waiter.  He didn’t take any tips. (pause for effect) He was a dumb waiter.”

    – Lauren (09/28  at  04:59 AM)

Thank you for an excellent review of Dylan.  I watched it last night and was awed by how talkative he was about himself and his music.  I was one of those who loved folk music, and Dylan hurt my ears a bit, but I rediscovered him a couple decades ago and appreciated him a lot more.  He didn’t sing my one favorite:  Lay Lady Lay.

    – susan (09/28  at  10:13 AM)

I was riveted by the documentary even though I missed bits of it (grading papers, falling asleep...it’s been a long week already). Glad to know you were enjoying it, too. I want to post my own thoughts later--probably tomorrow. Cheers!

    – Anne (09/28  at  07:03 PM)

“It was as though the controversy were the most important thing.”

But it was the most important thing. Dylan’s unwillingness to settle for folk music pieties and his desire to explore the possibilities of music more broadly is precisely the point the film wants to make. The film ends where it does, because, in effect, the “controversy” and the subsequent eight year absence from live performance set the pattern for the rest of Dylan’s career. He wouldn’t let others define him, and he wouldn’t spend his time looking for a “direction home.” This frequently pisses off the purists among his fans, but clearly he doesn’t care.

    – Dan Green (09/29  at  06:12 PM)

Thanks Dan. It’s interesting that you put purists in the present tense, because this all happened 40 years ago - At this stage, why would Scorsese need to rehash a well-known point with nearly 4 hours? I would imagine that Dylan would have been pissed to have such a narrowly focused film on him and rehash a blip in the history of music and one that had been done with Penebaker’s film (which I saw about 5 or 6 years ago, which is partly why I was annoyed at seeing the disgruntled fans lingered on).

It’s not as though no one else was playing rock music - this stuff only mattered to folk music/activist types (a point I alluded to in my post).  His music, acoustic or electric was brilliant - the question in my mind is the one left open, what happened in the rest of his career? His music in the mid-sixties was so amazing - and you’re right in your post that he moved music along into a more sincere road (my summary), but Scorsese went, in my opinion for the easy stuff - I can only speculate as to why.

    – Bud Parr (09/29  at  07:45 PM)

“what happened in the rest of his career?”

Do you mean why was his later music not as good? Dylan himself really answers this question in the film when he describes the feeling he had that he was in a kind of “zone” (I forget the exact word he used) in the mid-sixties and wanted to take advantage of it as fully as he could. Probably you can only stay in such a zone for a little while. (Although I think much of his later music is perfectly good. The really good stuff just appeared more periodically.)

Or do you mean literally what did he do? As I said in the previous comment, he did what Scorsese’s film portrays him doing: what he wanted to do, rather than what was expected of him.

    – Dan Green (09/29  at  09:13 PM)

Yeah, both really. I admire him for doing just what he wanted to do and I wouldn’t expect anyone that seemingly magically pulled a bunch of divine music out his head to go on doing that (I believe his records from the sixties stand on their own as greatness, not just in relation to what else was going on), but his life and music and faith are interesting in that, despite pushing limits early in his career, those elements didn’t seem to put him on any different sphere musically than anyone else later on.

I think of someone like Paul Simon or Miles Davis who was never content, never going back (okay maybe sometimes) and always kept exploring and pushing well into ages that you would have expected them to be content - not that genre or continent hopping in and of themselves are genius. I mean if you want to talk about pissing people off, listen to Coltrane’s Ascension, and that by a guy who most people know from jazzing up a tune from The Sound of Music. Or to think of people pushing their boundaries, think of Ornette Coleman, who was a saxophonist but learned to play the trumpet and violin to expand and test his ideas - or to compare what Dylan’s faith did to his music, Coltrane again: his music can be so spiritual, like quwali (sp) music in its effect. Sorry my examples are in jazz, I don’t know if it’s the nature of the music or my knowledge -or maybe there’s a point there - If you know that most of the world is not going to buy your album anyway (i.e. commercially viable) then why not really stretch your limits - do you think he did that, particularly in the 80s and 90s. I have a gap between Desire in 76 and Love and Theft in 01 - Desire is fairly well indistinguishable from any of the second tier music from that (awesome musically) decade. I only have 13 Dylan albums right now and I think anything that I might have had before didn’t survive the move from vinyl to cd. I have a huge gap in the 80s and 90s (and only very vague memories of his music then, so I could be wrong, although I think I would have those albums if they were great, but I would love to know of examples otherwise. I would also love to hear Dylan and contemporary musicians talk about Dylan during and after the sixties.

    – Bud Parr (09/30  at  12:09 AM)

I’m afraid we have a disagreement about Paul Simon (with whom there is a more accurate comparison than with the jazz musicians). I don’t think Simon is even close to being in Dylan’s league.

If you want to hear some Dylan from your missing period, try: Shot of Love, Infidels, Oh Mercy, and Time Out of Mind. Also the Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3--some of this contains music from the earlier period, but the last disc contains some really good later stuff, e.g. “Blind Willie McTell” and “Series of Dreams.” The latter two songs are, in my opinion, as good as anything he’s ever written.

    – Dan Green (09/30  at  12:45 AM)

No disagreement. It was late and I was trying to have one non-jazz example because that was admittedly fairly lame of me in the first place.

Thanks for the suggestions - I used to have TIme Out of Mind and I didn’t know the Bootleg series had any later stuff.

For what it’s worth, see David Greenberg’s article in Slate, subtitled “Why critics ignore the rest of Dylan’s career.”

http://www.slate.com/id/2125915/

    – Bud Parr (09/30  at  09:09 AM)

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• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: September 27, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Music

• Comments:9
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