Dylan, the self explanatory Google tag
Dylan, golf and sex are the most self explanatory Google tags
Bob Lefsetz, You live long enough and you no longer worry about perception. You know life is brief, that yours will soon be over and that the world is a game, where the winners lose and the losers frequently win. Money can’t buy you love and fame doesn’t make you happy. But a trusted companion and a good conversation will make you feel like the king of the world. The key is to get enough distance from the tilt-a-whirl, the fire and brimstone, to see that the planet, as George Carlin so famously said, will save itself. But people?
The artist is beholden to nobody. He follows his muse. He has to. We’ve been lacking artists for far too long. In a commercial world where private jet travel is an achievement more worthy than a perfect rhyme. We’re all about the material, that which feeds our souls has been pushed aside. Except by the chest beaters, often religious wingnuts, who tell us they have the answers, and insist we follow their rules. You get old enough and you realize there’s no manual, there are no rules, we’re all here alone, and you try to make sense of it all. Still, it’s difficult, with everybody telling you what to do and how to feel. The role of the artist is to open the door just a little, so we can experiment, so we can take the unpopular route, so we can become enlightened.
I don’t expect Bob Dylan’s new album to be good. I thought “Love and Theft” was listenable and “Modern Times” not much better. But I’ll give it a chance, all because of “Things Have Changed”, from the movie of the Michael Chabon book, “Wonder Boys”. Bob got it right. He seems to get it right at least once a decade, sometimes two or three times. He’s like Picasso, his flame never extinguishes, he keeps on surprising us. While other acts were left in the folk world, Dylan went electric, Christian, took so many left turns that he ended up on his own path.
Have you been reading the Bill Flanagan interview posted to bobdylan.com? I checked it out, seemed a bit mannered to me at first. Did Flanagan truly come up with these questions? How much was edited, how much was scripted? It didn’t seem as artificial as Bob’s satellite radio show, but it seemed a put-on. Bob gives us the Bob he wants to. But now he’s adopting a persona no other major artist will. Being a regular person. Unlike Eminem, he’s not trotting out his drug problem, he’s not Steely Dan, revealing who Rikki was all in an effort to sell a new record few really want, rather he’s sitting in your living room and you’re asking him all kinds of questions, which he’s answering, in a way that you feel is so intimate that you wouldn’t dare take notes and breach the trust. It’s like your long lost pal has come back to your house in Minnesota, and you’re drinking a beer in the basement and catching up on a few decades of history.
It’s so strange this latter Dylan period. Reminds me of my dad. Who had a very hard life. But suddenly, not long before he died, but before he was stricken with cancer, my father would start revealing intimacies. About relatives I’d never heard of, experiences in high school, my dad became more three-dimensional, just like Dylan. Rather than pull a Salinger, the older Dylan gets, the more he lets out, and us in.
You’d think that Dylan is not a member of society. But reading the transcript of this interview, you find out he’s got an interest in politics, and history, and is not afraid to utter an opinion.
He’s the anti-Bon Jovi. There’s no fear of shattering his image, after all, that’s all it is, an image! You know this if you’ve ever met any of these stars. Personally, they’re radically different.
Bob Dylan’s opinionated. He shits on the Stones. Stating “They’re pretty much finished…” Yet lauds Jimmy Buffett. And Gordon Lightfoot.
Lightfoot’s most famous now for that old girlfriend who supplied John Belushi with his lethal dose. Maybe his almost fatal illness. But no one speaks of Lightfoot’s music anymore. But Dylan does. He says he can’t think of any of Gordon’s songs he doesn’t like, singling out “Shadows”, “Sundown” and “If You Could Read My Mind”. Was Bob driving around in his car in the summer of ’74 listening to “Sundown” being banged on the radio incessantly, just like me? Are we both two wanderers on the planet, more alike than dissimilar?
As for Buffett, he’s considered a joke. Known as a concert blue chip and a one man conglomerate, his musical talent has been forgotten. But did you ever listen to those early records, like “Life Is Just A Tire Swing”? Or “Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season”? Or “A Pirate Looks At Forty”?
“Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call Wanted to sail upon your waters since I was three feet tall You’ve seen it all, you’ve seen it all”
We start out with dreams, we take a few chances and then we end up with the life we’ve got. How we got from there to here is a line we can see but cannot fathom. Chance encounters, impulsive decisions, failures to act and suddenly our skin sags, the equipment doesn’t work too well and we find ourselves closer to the end than the beginning.
But, as I stated earlier, realizing there’s only a reel or two left in the movie is liberating, if you’re willing to jump off the cliff, stop worrying about preconceptions, others’ opinions, and know that your accumulated years of living give you as much insight as anyone, that you’re just as big an expert as the talking heads on TV trying to sell you shit and infect your brain with their power games. And being liberated, you become suddenly alive, more so than so many of your contemporaries, dying their hair and tightening their faces, and the kids who are too young to know that age brings wisdom.
Jessica Simpson got dumped by Sony Nashville. Britney may not be able to tour Australia. They saved a contestant on “American Idol” last night. A couple of years from now, no one will remember these minor blips on the radar screen. It’s cotton candy for a public those in power want to keep high on carbohydrates.
“Mother, mother ocean, after all the years I’ve found My occupational hazard is my occupation’s just not around I feel like I’ve drowned, gonna head uptown”
Realize this is where you’re at. Stop trying to prove yourself. Don’t worry about what others think. Investigate the works of the poets and pirates, those who’ve rejected the game in search of answers. If you haven’t got more questions than answers then you’re an uptight master of the universe headed for a fall. We’re all lost, looking for a bit of direction. That’s what artists do, nudge us. Insist we challenge convention and think for ourselves. How can you follow performers who do neither?
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