The Dylan of Myth & Magic
Maybe the “real” Dylan came to life in the film A Complete Unknown and even if wasn’t the “real” Dylan, it satisfied fans in too many ways to count. Bob Dylan himself would probably just laugh if you asked him about Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal, but it doesn’t matter really. No one will ever get to the bottom of what makes Dylan the mythical musical genius of pop culture; Dylan is probably as mystified as the rest of us.
In any case, Timothée Chalamet just won Best Actor for his portrayal at the Screen Actor’s Guild awards and he deserves it. I am all in for him to win the Oscar, as well. The movie was phenomenally excellent and it filled me with so much emotion and joy, I am still seeing the images flying by in my mind. Kudos to Monica Barbaro, too, for nailing her role as Joan Baez. What a love story! The joy writ large across both of their faces when they sang together beautifully leapt off the screen and went straight into the heart. Edward Norton was also brilliant playing Pete Seeger and Elle Fanning as Dylan’s brokenhearted love interest was mesmerizing, as well. Director James Mangold could well up with a Best Director Oscar and should!
In any case, I wrote a lengthy chapter on Dylan in my book, The Journey Across Forever, which I will happily share once more with any readers who happen to love music with the level of passion I do. All music is “soul” music in my opinion because it speaks to the soul and is spiritually uplifting. What follows here is from the chapter I entitled “Blood on the Tracks.”
BOB DYLAN’S GENIUS is something that never ceases to mesmerize me and not only when I play his recordings and grow inspired beyond all measure by the profound depth of his lyrics, but even when I am not playing his records. Dylan is in my heart now like some supreme western guru who is head and shoulders above everyone else, even those who are considered the wisest in our culture.
Dylan famously balked at being called “the spokesman of his generation”, for he knew damn well that he was more than that: he was and is the embodiment of the conscience of Western civilization.
This, too, I suspect is a perception that he would, likewise reject, for Dylan is such a bright, “freewheelin” soul that he has, over the decades, simply refused to be burdened with the expectations of his fans. His sole goal is to make music and let his music speak for him. He certainly did not want to be leading movements and shouting his objections about injustice over megaphones and microphones when he was young. His songs spoke of civil rights and the unconscionable nature of war. He wanted only to be left to his own devices to pursue his artistic vision. He wanted to write lyrics that rang out like poetry and to make music that possessed, what he called, “that wild mercury sound”. (No substance on earth is more slippery and difficult to contain than mercury, a substance also known as quicksilver!)
Dylan wasn’t a politician, after all. He was just a pure-hearted singer of the soul. He was a minstrel and he still is.
Rolling Stone magazine in the first decade of the 21st century named Dylan’s song, “Like A Rolling Stone”, number 1 of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
That was no small deal. When we think of all the incredible songs that have moved us over the years and this one tops them all, that is a stunning achievement.
Dylan, with a canon of hundreds of songs, agreed in one interview that “Like A Rolling Stone” is indeed his best of all time. The magazine acclaimed its “revolutionary design and execution” and explained that the song received its initial start when one of Dylan’s closest of friends at the time asked him to sing a verse from “Lost Highway” by Hank Williams, which begins, “I’m a rolling stone, I’m alone and lost / For a life of sin I’ve paid the cost.” Dylan put precisely that kind of grit and pain into the singing of the song and, at just 24 years of age, it was a phenomenal feat.
One of the greatest rock ’n’ roll bands ever, The Rolling Stones, had already been down that rogue highway and were deep into the blues at their inception. However, when they chose their name they took it from a composition by the Hoochie Coochie Man himself, Muddy Waters, a song called, “Rollin’ Stone”.
Perhaps, then, no other title better suits what “rock” music is all about than the idea of being out on the road, daring to break free, seeing the world on one’s own terms and taking one’s chances. To do that one had to become a “rolling stone” oneself.
Dylan, of course, inspired the band, The Byrds, to take up his songs and electrify them. Their first major hit was Mr Tambourine Man. The jangling 12 string guitar of Jim McGuinn perfectly captured what soon became known as Folk Rock.
One of the most magical and exhilarating moments in all of rock history followed a few years later. It was when Jimi Hendrix recorded Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower. His version is so incendiary and sizzling, so absolutely apocalyptic and moving, that I still get goosebumps when I hear it, especially when I hear the lines: “No reason to get excited, the Thief he kindly spoke. There are many here among us who think that life is but a joke. But you and I, we’ve been through that and this is not our fate. So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”
The hour is indeed getting late; now more so than ever. (And if there really is a “cosmic joke” for us to have a last laugh over as so many of the starry-eyed stoners of yore once thought in their most mind-blown moments, I have yet to discover exactly what it is, but we can always hope!)
The guitar solo in the middle of that tune, by the way, is one of the most hair-raising, breath-taking, electrifying virtuoso performances ever recorded and when Hendrix sings the final lines of the song — “Outside in the cold distance a wildcat did growl. Two riders were approaching and the wind began to howl!” — the attentive listener cannot but explode from the thunderous power and fury of the recording. All Along the Watchtower is Dylan at his most prophetic best. The only thing that could have made the song even more staggering would have been if Dylan had had the “four horsemen of the Apocalypse” approaching the figure in the watchtower.
One of my favorite Dylan albums is Blood on the Tracks, which arrived in the early Seventies. It is a very different kind of record. The title, in my opinion, is the most revelatory in the entire history of rock music. It perfectly captures truth in two ways: as we all know, a song on any album is called a “track” and we also know that it is a wounded animal in the wild that leaves blood on its own tracks, especially as it laboriously drags itself off in an effort to flee from whatever predator has inflicted the damage and wants to kill it. (Usually a human being nowadays, unfortunately, with a high-powered rifle.) The animal, of course, seeks to save its own skin.
Dylan was a very wounded man during that particular time frame, it seems, for he had just gotten divorced from his wife, Sara, and he was hurting. He was hurting badly.
We’re all wounded likewise at one time or another in our lives. After all, each of us suffers the vicissitudes of this world to some degree and that means that we all have blood on our own tracks in one way or another. No life is perfect, not even those of the rich and the famous. Obviously, some people suffer more than others, but I can personally identify with many of those emotions behind Dylan’s rage and hurt on that album, for I’ve been down that dark road myself. I know the pain, I know the agony. It makes one feel as if a colossal stone has rolled over you; and not just a stone, but a big, bone breaking boulder that leaves you in a bloody heap.
So, yes, once you pick yourself up and hobble off, there is blood on the tracks. Oh, indeed, there is blood on the tracks.
And maybe that’s good. Consider the wise words of Rumi in this regard: “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens,” he said. Dylan’s chief musical colleague from that era, Leonard Cohen, understood Rumi’s advice perfectly, for later in his life he wrote and sang in his song, “Anthem” that, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” As for Dylan himself, he was acutely aware of the pain and suffering of much of humanity from his very earliest days as a singer and a songwriter. He was very socially aware and had great empathy for ethnic minorities and the downtrodden and the poor. His feelings always ran deep and that is why he created such arresting music. He sang from the soul. He drew his lyrics from the deep wellspring of his heart and fell easily into the role of folk singer. He especially excelled at writing “protest” or “anti-war” songs and fighting for civil rights.
Dylan was just 20 when he wrote “Blowing in the Wind” and just 22 years of age when Peter, Paul and Mary made a hit of the tune in 1963. To name just a few of the follow ups to that now iconic tune, we have, “The Times They Are A’Changin’”, “Masters of War”, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” and “A Hard Rain’s A’Gonna Fall.”
Sheer genius. (Even The Beatles at the absolute height of their global fame were infatuated with, and in awe of, Dylan. He was virtually the only musician the band members put above themselves.)
Robert Zimmerman was the son of a Jewish couple living in Hibbing, Minnesota; the son of an appliance salesman and a stay at home mom. “Dylan”, in stark contrast, was born of the Higher Self of Robert Zimmerman, which is why Dylan in his early years told tale after tale about where he was from and made-up countless stories about all that had happened to him in his travels on the road. All of it was pure fiction, but in the songs he sang, those road tales sprang to life and they were made real. Through his songs, Bob Dylan as a person, became as true as the road itself. Such is the power of myth, for in effect, “Bob Dylan” is a myth and will always be a myth. He is a totally archetypal figure and a giant among humankind for that very reason. One of the things that he proved to me was that mythologizing one’s own life is both liberating and illuminating, for the mythic dimension is rooted in the realm where the deepest patterns of psychic functioning reside. The archetypes are the root patterns of our instinctive behavior and are imbued with a collective level of consciousness. This serves us, essentially, in the guise of our “Higher Self”.
We can’t all have Dylan’s talent, of course, and 99% of us certainly do not, but we can still mythologize our own lives and discover the archetypal powers that impel us toward the horizons to which we are driven. We are all the embodiments of soul, after all, but Dylan is overtly that. He is never anything less. Bono of U2, after visiting Dylan in his hotel room one time, said something to the effect that, “Yes, Dylan is great, but the trouble with him is that he just can’t get over being Bob Dylan.”
No, he cannot and he does not apologize for that. He is a genius and he knows it. He has every right to be proud and secure in that role. After all, he won an Academy Award for best original song in a film in 2001; a “special citation” by the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2008 for his impact on popular music, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2012 and the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016. He has won ten Grammys, a Golden Globe, been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and sold over 100 million records, which makes him one of the best-selling music artists of all-time.
Yes, he is the quintessential rolling stone with his “Never-ending tour” and, yes, he has blood on his tracks, but Dylan helps us all heal as we look back on our own tracks and see the blood that is there. And, yes, every drop has a story behind it and every story has a huge soulful mix of average, ordinary people living out their lives with one another. We are all in this life together, after all, and none of us is, in all reality, “just” an average, ordinary Joe Blow or Jane Doe of no high worth. Furthermore, none of those who think themselves so superior to others is quite as god-like as he or she might imagine.
Dylan lifts us up when we are down and he is well able to rip us apart when we get uppity about ourselves. If we listen closely to Dylan’s lyrics, we will be made to feel every emotion known to humanity. We will learn what matters in this world and, conversely, what counts for little or nothing at all. Dylan keeps us bonded to our past and to the actions of our ancestors, while pointing the way to a future that carries justice for all and equality under the law.
Dylan never wanted to be called the “spokesman of his generation”, nor did he want to be the “conscience of America”, which is what he was called when he received an honorary doctorate from Princeton University in 1970. Apparently, he winced and grimaced at the accolade. Nor, I suspect, does he want to be called what I dared to call him at the start of this essay, “the conscience of humanity”. And yet Dylan knows why people say these things. He’s just humble about it, I believe, while secretly knowing how true it is. In the end, he wants only to let his music speak for him and to be left in peace to pursue his art.
We should all be left in peace, likewise, to pursue the art of our own lives. To live with the integrity of Dylan, we need to keep a close watch, as our lives unfold, on our own consciences.
So, yes, take me for a trip upon your magic swirling ship, forever and anon, Mr Tambourine Man. I, too, am ready to go anywhere with you, so do cast your dancing spell my way. I promise to go under it.
