Bob Dylan Read online

  Stars serve as a cultural form on which we can project our beliefs about privacy and individuality: as fans and critics, we spend a lot of time and energy searching for the ‘real’ Bob Dylan. We already know the real Bob Dylan, however: it is the one that we hear on record, see on stage, read in interviews. Whatever we think, know or believe about Dylan, we think, know or believe from what we see in front of us, not from anything backstage. And, while it may seem ironic that this ideology is developed most fully in an institution – the media – which is most closely associated with the invasion of privacy, it is actually the condition of its existence: ‘privacy’ emerges only in a society that was more public than ever before.

  STARDOM, THE VOICE AND THE MEANING OF SONGS

  My argument in the previous section reads a bit like those of the literary theorists who argue that we cannot use the author as the source of literary meaning. I need to backtrack a little, for what I want to discuss is not ‘what’s real and what is not’ but, rather, how people relate to stars. My approach is descriptive and not normative – I’m interested in how Dylan’s stardom works, not whether this is right or wrong. Stars may be merely a surface form but stardom always promises something more. Because stars have a real world referent – a physical person – they are different from characters in a novel or play. There is more to a star than a purely academic interest in how their image has been constructed. So, while I have spent time arguing that there is no such thing as an authentic Bob Dylan hidden behind the celebrity smokescreen, it is important to acknowledge that this is actually the key way that we understand stars and artists. We believe that there is a real, unmediated person behind it all and, in popular music, we believe that it is the work that provides us with access to that unmediated self. The following quote from Paul Williams exemplifies what I have been discussing in this chapter; showing how he responds to the singer’s voice as a way of getting to know the ‘real person’ to whom it belongs:

  It [Dylan’s work] is a story that matters not because of what it contains but because of the way it is told: with anger, love, honesty, passion, wit, humility, arrogance and heart. With integrity and spirit. With enthusiasm, pain, curiosity and doubt. Human qualities. Even as we stand in awe of his gifts, it is the humanity of the storyteller that endears him to us.49

  This returns me to the opening question of this chapter – how we hear the relationship between Dylan and his songs. Those who criticise utilising Dylan as the source of a song’s meaning make use of a literary perspective. Such an approach has provided valuable insights into Dylan’s work, but it overlooks the crucial way that stardom itself generates meaning. This is demonstrated by a general lack of concern in literary analyses for how Dylan’s voice works as a carrier of meaning. The meaning of Dylan’s songs is not ‘in the words’ but ‘in the voice’. While we could conceivably remove the authorial figure from our understanding of the songs, we cannot remove the star. ‘The meaning of pop is the meaning of pop stars, performers with bodies and personalities; central to the pleasure of pop is pleasure in a voice, sound as body, sound as person.’50 Ultimately, it is the star that shapes the meaning of the song, not the words (of course, this is made more complicated in a case when one of the main reasons for a star’s fame is his particularly good use of words). Thus, when Williams writes ‘if we found out tomorrow that Bob Dylan was a 64-year-old woman who’d changed her sex, and a proven Communist agent, we might be surprised, but the words to “Mr Tambourine Man” would not change in the slightest. It would still be the same song’,51 he is wrong. Well, he’s right that the words would not change, but the meaning of the song would be altered irrevocably. Whenever we heard the song we would automatically think of Dylan’s sex change and so on. That information would have become an inescapable part of the song’s meaning just as, whenever I hear ‘Idiot Wind’, I am forever aware that it was written and recorded at a time when Dylan was experiencing a traumatic marital breakdown.

  To illustrate this point, I want to use an example from a book by John Berger.52 It consists of a painting by Van Gogh (see next page).

  On the next page is the legend ‘this is the last picture Van Gogh painted before he killed himself’.* Berger then explains ‘it is hard to define exactly how the words have changed the image but undoubtedly they have. The image now illustrates the sentence.’ His point is to show that our understanding of works of art is shaped by a range of contextual factors and that we can never approach a work in a purely abstract manner. My argument here is that we have to consider Bob Dylan’s stardom in order to understand how his songs work for his fans. In many ways, Dylan’s performances of songs, written by himself and others, illustrate his star-image. We do not hear the songs in an unmediated form but only through his stardom, and through our understandings of that stardom. The meaning of Dylan’s stardom is not stable or fixed. His stardom has changed over time, and so the meaning of his songs has changed even though the recordings haven’t altered. Similarly, his stardom means different things to different people – very committed fans know more about Dylan’s personal life than casual fans, and so will garner different, perhaps more nuanced, meanings out of the same songs. But what ‘Bob Dylan’ means structures what the songs mean. For example, in ‘Beyond The Horizon’, Dylan sings:

  You think I’m over the hill,

  Think I’m past my prime,

  Let me see what you got,

  We can have a whopping good time.

  They don’t have to be about Bob Dylan but, when considering how they are received, they clearly are. Every time Dylan plays this song in concert, these lines generate a cheer from the audience, who are undoubtedly linking their meaning to the meaning of the star singing them (similarly, almost every review of Modern Times made reference to these lines).

  The fact that stardom shapes song meaning does not mean we can merely reproduce biographical explanations of songs. We need to be aware, however, that biography (with its emphasis on the individual self) is an important way that stardom signifies and, therefore, is important in how songs acquire meaning. The reliance on biography is used to ‘validate’ the cultural belief that works of art express an artist’s inner experiences. What we need to consider, therefore, is not whether a particular biographical detail is ‘wrong’ (though this can sometimes be useful) but, rather, how a particular star-image (of which biography is a part) works to give a song meaning. For example, Ricks explicitly criticises a biographical reading of ‘Not Dark Yet’ that associates the song with Dylan’s ‘heart trouble’ of that year.53 Now, in biographical terms, Ricks is correct – the song was written and recorded months before Dylan’s illness. But the song was released after his much publicised stint in hospital and the album’s melancholic sound became inextricably linked with his ‘brush with death’ – his stardom influenced the meaning given to the song. However good the song, and whatever its author’s intentions, it is given meaning through stardom, and stardom as a mediator of meaning does not depend upon biographical accuracy. Dylan certainly knows this, as illustrated by his construction of several fictitious biographies when trying to become a star.

  Stardom as the mediator of meaning thus does not depend on authorial intention – Dylan’s stardom provides a source of meaning for songs on Time Out Of Mind even if not intended by Dylan. This is, however, not to say that Dylan is ignorant of the effect that his stardom has on his songs. There are times when he has dealt with it directly (such as in ‘Brownsville Girl’, discussed in chapter 6).* There are also times when he strategically employs this effect in songs not explicitly ‘about’ stardom. For example, when, in 1963, Dylan opens a song with the lines:

  Oh my name it ain’t nothin’

  My age it means less

  (‘With God On Our Side’)

  he is doing three things simultaneously. Firstly, and least consequentially, he is pastiching a folk song (‘The Patriot’s Game’) which begins ‘My name is O’Hanlon, I’ve just turned sixteen’. Secondly, he is con
structing the narrator as a democratic, everyman figure, the importance of which will be discussed in the next chapter. Thirdly, however, he makes an ironic acknowledgement of his stardom for by this point the name ‘Bob Dylan’ was not nothing but the name of a figurehead, the name of a star. This song is so important not because it is sung by a nobody but because it is sung by Bob Dylan. And he further exaggerates the irony by suggesting that his age is even less important – even though at this point his star image symbolises politicised youth (as, for example, when he sings ‘Come mothers and fathers throughout the land / And don’t criticise what you can’t understand’).

  These lyrics (from ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’) lead me to one final point. Dylan’s star image influences our understandings of his songs, but the songs also influence our understanding of his star image. Discussing film stars, Richard Dyer suggests that we need to consider the importance of a film as a ‘vehicle’ for an actor whereby a film is deliberately utilised to construct a particular star image.54 Not all films are vehicles, but once a star image is constructed, analysing films this way is a useful strategy as we can see which films help construct and maintain an image, which may offer a subversion of it, and so on. This idea has some use for contemplating Dylan. For example, songs such as ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ and ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ play a particular role constructing Dylan’s star-image in the 1960s, while the album Self Portrait can be read as an attempt to subvert, or deconstruct that particular star-image. More recently, the albums Time Out Of Mind and Love And Theft have been significant in constructing Dylan’s current star-image. If we define stars as people who are famous because they have produced a body of work, then it makes sense that the body of work plays a prominent role in the creation, maintenance and revision of the star’s wider meaning. The relationship between stardom and work is a two-way process, however: the songs and concerts affect how we interpret Dylan while how we interpret Dylan affects how we ‘read’ the songs and performances. But the songs can never be innocent; stardom always impinges on musical meaning.

  Snapshot: The man of the people

  Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in May 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota. When he was six, his family moved 100 miles north to Hibbing, a small mining town. He experienced a conventional childhood. As a teenager, he was passionate about both rock and roll and the movies. He became interested in folk music around the age of eighteen, an interest that intensified when he started attending the university of Minneapolis. He soon dropped out of university and hitchhiked to New York City, partly to visit his hero Woody Guthrie in hospital and partly to make it in the folk scene in Greenwich Village. As a performer, he adopted a variety of pseudonyms, including Blind Boy Grunt and Elston Gunnn. By the time of his arrival at university, he had settled on the name Bob Dylan. He legally changed his name in August 1962.

  Dylan joined a flourishing folk scene with a number of young and talented musicians. He very quickly rose to prominence, however, because of his mature performing style. He also began writing his own songs, many of which were very highly regarded. In September 1961, Robert Shelton, the esteemed folk critic of the New York Times, wrote a career-opening review and one month later, Dylan was signed by John Hammond to Columbia Records, becoming the first of the new folk singers to be signed to a major label. His first album was recorded in November and released in March 1962.This album contained ten traditional covers and two original songs. By the time of its release, however, Dylan had progressed and was writing songs with astonishing rapidity. He began writing more politically aware ‘protest songs’, early in 1962 and in April wrote ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’,the song that made him famous and became the anthem of the folk movement. This brought him to the attention of businessman Albert Grossman, who became Dylan’s manager. Another of Grossman’s acts, Peter, Paul and Mary, recorded ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ and it reached number one on the US charts.

  In the years either side of 1960, folk music was undergoing a revival in popularity in the US. The success of ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, and the quality of Dylan’s other songs, quickly resulted in him becoming the figurehead of this new revival. Songs such as ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ and ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’ were interpreted as reflecting the feelings of a discontented youth and earned him the title ‘spokesman for a generation’. It was a label and a role with which he was distinctly uncomfortable.

  Albums* and major events

  January 1961 Arrives in New York. On his first full day in the city, he visits Woody Guthrie in hospital

  April 1961 Spends two weeks as opening act for John Lee Hooker

  November 1961 First solo concert is held at the Carnegie Recital Hall

  March 1962 Bob Dylan

  May 1962 Albert Grossman becomes Dylan’s manager

  May 1963 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

  June 1963 Peter, Paul and Mary’s ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ sells a million copies

  July 1963 Newport Folk Festival

  August 1963 Dylan performs at the ‘March on Washington’ in front of 250,000 people. Later that day, Martin Luther King gives his famous speech

  January 1964 The Times They Are A-Changin’

  *Romanticism was also a highly influential ideology within classical music. As the least representational of the arts, music was often assumed to be the most personally expressive. Today, we still tend to consider poetry and song as more personally expressive than either novels or plays, and this had a considerable impact on the development of rock.

  *Dylan did not really have a brush with death; the episode is discussed in the last chapter.

  *I appreciate that using Dylan’s words in the form of interviews may be considered as going against the spirit of the approaches outlined in this section. My reasons for utilising them should become clearer below.

  *I will discuss the relationship between records and live performances more in chapter 7.

  *This is not to suggest that there has been no discussion of performance within studies of Dylan. In fact, prompted by Paul Williams’ work, this has become one of the key motifs of writing on Dylan in recent years, but generally in fanzines rather than published books, and it has yet to develop an adequate critical vocabulary to discuss how Dylan’s performances create meaning.

  *This was from a study of general pop fans; it would be interesting to see if the results were repeated in a study of Dylan fans. My guess is that the meaning of words is more important for Dylan fans but that it is the fact that the words mean something (rather than being meaningless) that is most important to them.

  **I would venture to suggest that people are more likely to give a recording repeated plays than they are to reread a poem. They are, however, more likely to reread a poem than reread a novel, which suggests that a poem has a certain type of ‘musicality’ in creating meaning – the form of the words’ presentation matters.

  *I think this was what Dylan was reaching towards when he said ‘I never try to figure out what [the songs are] about. If you have to think about it,then it’s not there’ (Joe Dolen interview, 1995).

  *This is the case even if the song may have alternative existences, for example through cover versions. It may be the case with particular authoritative performers, however, that any alternative existences may still be shadowed by the ‘original’ performance (which is why CBS could run an advertising campaign claiming ‘no one sings Dylan like Dylan ’ – most covers of Dylan songs do not have the same quality of vocal ownership, always being ‘covers of Bob Dylan songs’ rather than great songs in their own right though some, most notably Jimi Hendrix’s ‘All Along The Watchtower’, do manage it).

  *I know this is all too neat and tidy, and that ‘folk singers’ sang blues songs and vice versa, but there does seem to me a distinction of type that’s worth highlighting.

  *There are some similarities here to the development of the close-up in cinema. Both processes are crucial in the emergence of modern stardom.


  *Dylan stated ‘Get that straight. I didn’t change my name in honour of Dylan Thomas. That’s just a story. I’ve done more for Dylan Thomas than he’s ever done for me’ (Jules Siegel interview, 1966). When a friend asked him if Dylan was spelt ‘as in Dylan Thomas’, he replied, ‘No, as in Bob DYLAN!’ (in Scaduto, 1996:69).

  *Subsequent research has suggested that it is not in fact the last painting, but that two further paintings were completed. This piece of information does not, however, weaken Berger’s argument.

  *Ironically, Dylan has perhaps most explicitly addressed the issue in film.In Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (1973), in which Dylan plays a character called Alias, the fact that audiences know that Alias is being played by Bob Dylan is a crucial part of the film. The complexities of Renaldo and Clara, which Scobie (2003:245) describes as dealing with the ‘staging of Dylan’s private life as public spectacle’ have already been mentioned while in 1986,Dylan played a lead role in the film Hearts of Fire about a disillusioned rock singer. Finally, in Masked and Anonymous (2003), a film written by Dylan, he plays Jack Fate, an old star bearing a striking resemblance to the Dylan of the Never Ending Tour.

  *Listings in these snapshots include only albums of original material – greatest hits collections and live albums are not included.