Bob Dylan and genius

[Kevin Solway]

I just watched an old documentary about Bob Dylan, "Don't look back".

I think it is a portrait of a genius, to a degree. It's not so much his music, or even his songwriting, but the fact that he does apply logic to an unusual degree in certain matters, and isn't afraid to voice the conclusions of his logic.

He's not a great genius by any means, as I don't think he has discovered any terribly deep truths, but the small amount of genius he does have puts him head and shoulders above those around him, and it has a a very powerful effect.

[David Quinn]

You'll have trouble convincing me of that. What's an example of his "genius"?

-

[Kevin Solway]

You'll have trouble convincing me of that. What's an example of his "genius"?

As I say, it's only "to a degree", but that is still exceptional.

It's to do with the way he doesn't give a toss what people think of him, and how he reasons something through, in an almost childlike way, and voices his conclusions regardless of the consequences. It's quite refreshing to watch.

Character and confidence is a long way towards genius.

[David Quinn]

Would you place him in the "god realms" or the "human realm"?

Didn't he become a Christian later in life?

-

[Kevin Solway]

Would you place him in the "god realms" or the "human realm"?

Definitely more in the "god realms" at that stage of his life, as I don't believe he was terribly open to the deepest truths.

When you see him side by side with other successful artists of his day, he looks like a shining beacon.

Didn't he become a Christian later in life?

Yes, a Christian of sorts, but I can't tell you what sort. Later in his life he became very confused.

[sevens]

You guys in Oz get PBS?

There's an 'American Masters' documentary broadcasting the 26th of this month - directed by Martin Scorcese. It's based on Dylan's 'Early Period': 62' - 66' -- 'No Direction Home'.

!

[Troglodytes]

I think it is being screened on ABC next week. Talk about timing, eh?

[David Quinn]

Eternal Drifter Escapes His Fame

Eternal drifter escapes his fame
October 01, 2005

Bob Dylan the spokesman of his generation? Surely he's much more than just that, writes Bryan Appleyard

IN the early 1960s, Bob Dylan became a folk singer and protest hero, then he was a pop and rock star, then a rural recluse, then a streetwise drifter, then a born-again Christian, then he embarked on the Neverending Tour, then he nearly died of an obscure disease caught from bats' droppings, then he became a grand old man.

Now, suddenly, he has become a thoughtful, wry master of the carefully examined life. Dylan's personas, like the times, they are always a-changin'. But from the beginning one thing remains the same: his genius. "If you're interested," says his former lover Joan Baez, "he goes way, way deep."

She was interested and so was he. He wrote the greatest love song ever written, Visions of Johanna, for her.
Louise, she's all right, she's just near,
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here.

Being Dylan, of course, he immediately denied it was anything to do with Baez. It was just, you know, some chick. But she knew, and so did we. He'd moved on, as he always does, and always will. Back in the mid-'60s he hurt Baez by not letting her go on stage with him. He smiles now and shrugs. "You can't be wise and in love at the same time."

Unless you're Bob Dylan, of course. He's been wise and in love all his life, going way, way deep since his first album in 1962. He just didn't always know it. Neither did we, really. I, like many others, began to doubt him after Street Legal (1978), but then, in 1997, came Time Out of Mind, a sensationally original album that blew every aspiring grand old man of rock out of the water, and made me realise what a gigantic figure with whom I was sharing my time on earth.

Beaming wistfully, the great literary critic and now professor of poetry at Oxford, Christopher Ricks, once said to me: "Isn't it wonderful being alive at the same time as Bob Dylan?" And now we have an autumn of Dylan, a kind of accidental festival, the centrepiece of which is No Direction Home, an almost four-hour, two-part documentary about Dylan made by Martin Scorsese, televised this week in the US on PBS and in Britain on BBC2. See it if and when you can [the DVD will be released in Australia next week]. I have, and I wept through both parts -- probably, I admit, for my own lost youth, for a timeless moment almost lost in time.

Alongside this comes a soundtrack album, all but two tracks of which are hitherto unreleased. The paperback edition of his autobiography Chronicles Volume One is published, as is The Bob Dylan Scrapbook: 1956-1966, a sort of adult pop-up book full of unseen archive and photographic material. What, you might ask, has happened to inspire this sudden wave of Dylanology and Bobmania?

Basically, two things: Chronicles and No Direction Home. Chronicles stunned everyone, me included. Usually, when Dylan commits himself to writing anything that isn't a song, the result is impenetrable. His poems seldom quite work and his novel, Tarantula, lacks structure of any kind. And he has always been comprehensively evasive whenever he has been asked to explain himself in interviews and at press conferences. When once asked what his songs were about, he just said some were about three minutes and some about 12 minutes. But Chronicles is clear, apparently frank, unremittingly serious about his musical influences and exquisitely written. It is, in fact, a masterpiece, as the many thousands of buyers of the hardback will have found.

As if that wasn't enough, No Direction Home is another masterpiece, arguably the greatest documentary about rock music ever made -- two other prime contenders being Scorsese's The Last Waltz, which included a Dylan performance, and D.A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back, which was about Dylan's 1965 tour of Britain. Not only does Dylan make great art, he inspires it in others.

The creation of this film has been a mysterious, tortuous process. At its heart is a long -- apparently 10 hours in total -- interview with Dylan conducted by Jeff Rosen, his manager. Other interviews, with friends, collaborators and fellow artists, were also conducted by Rosen. There is also a vast amount of previously unseen archive material, including, crucially, extracts from 60 hours of film of his 1966 tour of Britain owned by Dylan. Scorsese does not seem to have met Dylan throughout the process. Instead, he has made a collage of all these elements. The result is a story told partly by Dylan and partly about him. And it is a great story, one even I -- a Bob freak since the age of 11, when I pestered myself a sheepskin coat and corduroy cap just like his on the cover of the first album -- had not fully understood until now.

Weirdly, though Chronicles and No Direction Home were put together at about the same time, there was no interaction between the two. The film people did not even know he was writing the book. Yet they are, predominantly, about the same thing: Dylan's formative period after his first arrival in New York in a blizzard in 1961. He arrived there from Hibbing, Minnesota, where he had been raised in a stable, middle-class household. He invented an alternative biography about working-class roots, an upbringing in New Mexico and hopping boxcars across the country. Less than two years after that blizzard, this compulsive myth-maker was a star.

But, from the beginning, he was a star on the run, fleeing every attempt to pin him down, to label him. This, as his film wends its brilliant way through its encyclopedic range of material, is Scorsese's main theme, just as it is the subtext of Chronicles and the true meaning of the Neverending Tour, the continuing global concert series he seems unable to live without. But why, exactly, was he, is he, running?

The broad answer is that he has always believed in the constant state of becoming, that you must always travel and never arrive, and that the road does not lead to the truth, the road is the truth. The problem was, in the critical period on which this current Dylanological wave now focuses, everyone was trying to tell him that he had arrived.

All poor, unformed 20-year-old Bob knew was that this must never happen. So he started dodging and weaving like a sub-flyweight boxer, evading every attempt to possess him. He was introduced at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 with the words: "You know him, he's yours." Nothing could have been further from the truth. He was called a folk singer, yet in radio interviews -- the best are on a CD included with the Scrapbook -- he denied the label. Then, with songs like Blowin' in the Wind, Masters of War and A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall, he was called a protest singer. This was a label he hated even more. Asked by one dumb reporter how many protest singers there were, Dylan first looked derisive, then deadpan: "136." Pause. "Maybe 142."

What neither the hacks nor anybody else could quite get their heads around was that here was a pop star who seemed to be serious, who seemed to have a "message". Many were just rank disbelievers. So one wretched English hack asked Dylan if he really cared about what he was saying. The response was savage and graphic evidence of the vicious wit and colossal intelligence of the man. "How can I answer that," he spat out, "if you've got the nerve to ask it?"

This is press statement as metaphysical poetry. How, after all, could he answer it if the poor fool hadn't had the nerve to ask it? Dylan's mind is a hall of mirrors. The irony was that, in a way, the disbelievers were right. Dylan didn't have a message any more than Shakespeare had a message. There are no messages in great art.

Sick of all the pomposity of the folkies and the protesters, sick of his soft image as the drifter with a guitar on his back, and envious of bands like the Byrds making big pop hits out of his own songs, Dylan threw it all away and went electric. Of all his many renunciations -- of women, fans, styles, labels, identities, meanings -- this was the most shattering to his audience.

At the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 he launched into a blistering performance of Maggie's Farm, accompanied by Mike Bloomfield, a supreme blues guitarist. The crowd was stunned, incredulous. Veteran folkie Pete Seeger went looking for an axe to cut the cables. Nobody could hear the words, but Dylan, the greatest lyricist ever to draw breath, didn't care. He just wanted it loud.

He went on to record Highway 61 Revisited, an album that included Like a Rolling Stone. No Direction Home has an interview with the sublimely cool and wry session man Al Kooper. He had wheedled his way into the session to play guitar, but realised he couldn't compete when he heard Bloomfield. Instead, unseen by the producer, he snuck back in and starts playing the organ an eighth-note behind the rest of the musicians because he didn't know the chords.

Dylan liked what Kooper was doing and had the organ foregrounded. The result was the "wild mercury sound" you hear on the record. It was the supreme anthem of renunciation, of scorn, of derision at the pretensions of the ungifted and the insensitive. It was the revenge of cruel, youthful genius upon mediocrity -- "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose/ You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal ..." And, with that song, Scorsese begins to bring his great work into focus.

Throughout No Direction Home, he threads in footage of the 1966 tour of Britain. The first half of each concert was acoustic and the second electric.

The second halves were always booed. Interviewed outside, the booers explained why: "Crap; we paid to see a folk singer." Presented with the most sublime, savage and overpowering rock performances of all time, the British slouched sulkily back to their houses.

Captions tell us that, after this tour, Dylan had a motorcycle accident. From that he was later to emerge to produce the elemental, granite-like sermons of John Wesley Harding. Then, in another amazing act of renunciation, the soft country sounds of Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait, both intended, as he admits in Chronicles, to get the crazed message-seekers off his back.

It didn't work. At about this time, he was awarded an honorary degree at Princeton. All was going well until the citation was read out: "He remains the authentic expression of the disturbed, concerned conscience of young America."

"Oh, sweet Jesus ... There it was again," Dylan writes. "I couldn't believe it. Tricked once more."

He avenged himself as usual by writing a song about the incident, Day of the Locusts: "Sure was glad to get out of there alive."

After 1966 he wasn't to tour again for eight years. Scorsese's film is about the silencing of genius by idiocy. The climax of this process happened, as everyone now knows, at the Free Trade Hall Concert in Manchester, and it is this with which No Direction Home ends.

From among the boos a voice cries out: "Judas!" Dylan, alert as ever to every overtone of every word, sees this as a new and particularly resonant term of abuse. He leans into the mike. "I don't believe you." He starts strumming his electric guitar in the vague direction of a rhythm. "You're a liar!" He turns to face the band, the rhythm and chords now definitely those of Like a Rolling Stone. "Play it f---ing loud!" he says, and they deliver that song's most perfect, most crushingly savage performance, a wave of jagged steel falling on the heads of the hacks, the folkie ideologues, the protesters and of all the dumbass philistines who had tried to cage his art.

So, quite right, Bob, play it f---ing loud. And louder still. And never stop becoming. Like the lady said, you go way, way deep.

The Sunday Times Magazine

I still don't get any sense of Bob Dylan's "genius". Constantly escaping other people's categories in a vitriolic manner doesn't quite do it for me. Angry teenage girls do that sort of thing all the time. Can anyone provide a better example of his genius?

(Unfortunately, I don't like his music and poetry, as a rule, does nothing for me, so I realize this may be an impossible task.)

-

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Dylan's philosophy could be categorized, at least since the nineties, as some sort of variant of mystical Hasidic Judaism - Martin Buber comes to mind. As a serious student though, not just parading with it. For those unfamiliar with its basics:

The teachings of Hasidism are founded on two theoretical conceptions: (1) religious panentheism, or the omnipresence of God, and (2) the idea of Devekut, communion between God and man. "Man," says the Besht, "must always bear in mind that God is omnipresent and is always with him; that God is, so to speak, the most subtle matter everywhere diffused... Let man realize that when he is looking at material things he is in reality gazing at the image of the Deity which is present in all things. With this in mind man will always serve God even in small matters."

Devekut (communion) refers to the belief that between the world of God and the world of humanity there is an unbroken intercourse. It is true not only that the Deity influences the acts of man, but also that man exerts an influence on the will of the Deity

Better than Christianity for sure. But in my opinion it seems to revolve still too much around the ecstatic, some 'exalted religious mood' to really give birth to any true genius.

Personaly I only like a couple of songs on his late 'Oh Mercy' album, that's it. Never got to me otherwise so I won't comment further on the man. Missed the documentary this week on the BBC.

[MKFaizi]

I rate Dylan as a small genius when he was a young man. He was certainly iconoclastic and original.

I am old enough to remember his beginnings very well. He was considered to be god-like by young people in the Sixties. According to Dylan, this was greatly disturbing to him at the time.

But so were the Beatles and I see no genius in the Beatles whatsoever. They look more doltish with each passing year.

Driving in the car today, I heard "Lay, Lady, Lay" on the radio. I thought, "God, that really sucks." I thought it pretty well sucked at the time it was released but it sucks more now. Kind of rodent level. Tupac Shakur at his best beats hell out of that sort of sentimental crap.

Artistically speaking, Shakur was fortunate enough to die before he got long in the tooth. Dylan has been long in the tooth since the Seventies.

He did not become a Christian of sorts. He became a rather sickening Christian.

Dylan's early small genius was mostly political and cultural. He had a very good influence on young people then. The Sixties were a time of cultural and political upheaval in the US. The kind of upheaval that is needed now but does not seem to be in the offing.

Unfortunately, those young people grew up to be gas guzzling SUV owners and Bushies.

Dylan has gotten old and he has become ill. Still goes on the road. Recently, he and Willie Nelson were in concert locally.

Dylan's early efforts were certainly worthy of what I call small genius. But, like many young men, he outgrew it.

Faizi

[MKFaizi]

As the article pointed out, he has certainly been a changeling. In that way, I have always equated him with Cher.

I think his best song might be "Highway Sixty One." But I admit that I just love that legend about Abraham. Great adaptation of a Biblical/Koranic theme set to music. American qwali.

Faizi

[sevens]

Dylan's genius is safely tucked away, inbetween the enigma of his life - and the shifting realities, of his red cent words. The onlooker is often caught, tossed within Dylan's spectrum of smoke and mirror, light and shadow - with an end resulting in a shared form, of sun and rain. His elusive persona only amplifies the deeper you delve into his precision craft. Great art, is the gathering of seemingly obtuse pieces, spun together - forming a timeless portrait, of a snap shot.

Plus, he's just really fucking cool.

[MKFaizi]

The documentary -- "No Direction Home" -- is airing here tomorrow evening. I will make a point of watching it.

I don't think Dylan was ever cool.

Faizi

[MKFaizi]

What are red cent words?

In American currency, the only red cent is the worthless penny. Do you refer to red cents as having the same value as the penny during the Great Depression?

Were those your words or the words of a critic?

Personally, I kind of think Dylan enjoyed being a god. Beyond that, despite some insight worthy of small genius, I think he is lost and looking for it. Otherwise, he would stop fucking around with religion. Fantastic wordsmith. At his best during the early and mid sixties. Inspiring in his time --- kind of like Kennedy.

Faizi

[sevens]

Twas me that wrote it.

Choose 'red cent words' for their 'folk imagery' -- though, their objective reality might outweigh any subjective spin. However, given the nature of Dylan's handle on words, the combination of imagery and reality does project some form of 'shared irony' - tracing a connection between the profound impact of his words, and the 'seemingly humble' medium that he choose to present them under.

A play on perception, for the 'nasal neophyte'.

[David Quinn]

sevens wrote:

The onlooker is often caught, tossed within Dylan's spectrum of smoke and mirror, light and shadow - with an end resulting in a shared form, of sun and rain. His elusive persona only amplifies the deeper you delve into his precision craft. Great art, is the gathering of seemingly obtuse pieces, spun together - forming a timeless portrait, of a snap shot.

Is that all his genius is? An ability to transcend artistic categories and genres? But what exactly does he transcend into? By the sounds of it .... nothing at all.

What is the point of being all smoke and mirrors and nothing else?

However, given the nature of Dylan's handle on words, the combination of imagery and reality does project some form of 'shared irony' - tracing a connection between the profound impact of his words, and the 'seemingly humble' medium that he choose to present them under.

What profound impact? Do his words cause his listeners to experience enlightenment? Do they invoke in them the desire to become Buddhas?

And what does "shared irony" mean? Is this where Dylan and his listeners all realize that, behind all their idealistic posturing, they are mediocre nobodies?

-

[sevens]

Genius is a subjective term, but even quoting the quotes from this website -- Dylan certainly falls into the catagory.

His earlier work specifically, blew minds. He was a mythic figure, honing words like arrows - guitars like bows. His artistic effect is still deeply felt - to accurately document his influence would require some gold leaf charts and graphs.

Within an opened mind, his stories read like road trips and maps, through 'the corridors of the mind' - with your own memories and thoughts, at the helm. That is what I consider his genius: the ability to open the senses, of 'artists and folk' alike, by using such simple means, to paint such lavish scenes -- and deceptively so!

His deception - smoke and mirror - sparks neurons, twists thought 'round, squeezing new life into the mind of the avid audiophile. It's a process with Dylan - word and music, abstract-tangents sewn and stripped, back-and-forth - leaving you empty - with some kind of patchwork quilt, for the ride home.

(Check out 'Live 1966' Royal Albert Hall - When He Went Electric)

[Kevin Solway]

What is the point of being all smoke and mirrors and nothing else?

I agree that it's difficult to call Dylan a genius, since he offers little of positive substance - but it's also difficult not to attribute some genius to him, since he does offer a little positive substance - through his "character" if nothing else. That is to say, he offers considerably more than the average male.

Dylan is essentially an artist, and not a philosopher, which puts him behind the eight-ball from the start, and for that reason it is that much harder to make the label of "genius" apply. He is a painter of pictures, so it is as hard to call him a genius as any other painter.

While I do appreciate Dylan's music - as folk and blues music - for its sheer impact on the psyche, I'm more inspired by his sometimes idealistic spirit, and relative independence and single-mindedness throughout his life.

Did anyone see that documentary?

[Blair]

- for its sheer impact on the psyche, I'm more inspired by his sometimes idealistic spirit, and relative independence and single-mindedness throughout his life.

You could apply that to a few iconic rock lyricists/musicians, who are considered to be "geniuses"; Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison. They all stood out in a similar way.

[David Quinn]

sevens wrote:

Genius is a subjective term, but even quoting the quotes from this website -- Dylan certainly falls into the catagory.

Certainly not. He is barely a gnat compared to the likes of Kierkegaard, Diogenes, Buddha, and Nietzsche.

His earlier work specifically, blew minds. He was a mythic figure, honing words like arrows - guitars like bows. His artistic effect is still deeply felt - to accurately document his influence would require some gold leaf charts and graphs.

Within an opened mind, his stories read like road trips and maps, through 'the corridors of the mind' - with your own memories and thoughts, at the helm. That is what I consider his genius: the ability to open the senses, of 'artists and folk' alike, by using such simple means, to paint such lavish scenes -- and deceptively so!

In other words, he is an artist. He is performing the standard function of the artist - that of taking his listeners on a mental journey of some kind. He is doing his job.

I don't know. I get the feeling there is a lot of romantic projection going on here. Weininger used to do the same with respect to Ibsen.

-

[David Quinn]

Kevin wrote:

Dylan is essentially an artist, and not a philosopher, which puts him behind the eight-ball from the start, and for that reason it is that much harder to make the label of "genius" apply. He is a painter of pictures, so it is as hard to call him a genius as any other painter.

I guess I have the same problem with Dylan that I have with Frank Zappa. Although I consider Zappa to be a greater artistic genius than Dylan, he too suffers from the problem of trying to mix philosophy and music together. The end result is that both he and Dylan come across as transvestites. The way they drape hard-hitting, satirical observation with the feminine frillyness of music is very off-putting - at least to me.

As Seinfeld says, "If you've got something say, say it!". This business of singing your message is extremely weird. Imagine a fireman bursting through your door and singing that your house is on fire ....

While I do appreciate Dylan's music - as folk and blues music - for its sheer impact on the psyche, I'm more inspired by his sometimes idealistic spirit, and relative independence and single-mindedness throughout his life.

It's interesting that when he was universally feted as a iconoclastic rebel in the 60's, he was inwardly yearning to live a normal, middle-class life in suburbia. Or so I've heard.

-

[MKFaizi]

I am disappointed that the documentary was not shown on the particular PBS station I can receive. I was looking forward to watching it.

It is available on DVD, I think. I will see if I can rent it. I would like to see it.

As I said previously, I do recall Dylan from the beginning. He was considered to be god-like by those in my age group. Everything he said was considered profound and meaningful. Also, he was mysterious and I think that mystery was part of his allure.

I think his best years were from '62 until '66. He is sixty four now. Don't look like a good sixty four. He looks pretty rough. Not in a good way. Mick Jagger has a better face.

Faizi

[David Quinn]

The desire to be mysterious and uncategorizable is a very feminine trait, in my opinion. It is something that women everywhere focus on all the time. They love being deliberately contradictory, for example. It makes them seem enigmatic and increases their sexual allure, at least in their minds.

Women hate the thought of being "stereotyped", even though most of their behaviour is indeed stereotypical. Because women generally have no depth to them and aren't really enigmatic at all, they have to rely on behaving in a contradictory manner to generate the illusion of it. Their greatest fear, in turn, is being found out.

It's no wonder that people thought Dylan was god-like.

-

[sevens]

[raps David on the head with a guitar]

Dylan, man.

Dylan.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

This business of singing your message is extremely weird. Imagine a fireman bursting through your door and singing that your house is on fire ....

This is the crux of the problem, isn't it? But lets examine this comparison a bit further to see if it holds up in philosophical sense. The problem of a humanity being asleep in a 'burning house' might not be solvable by simply dragging them out by force or shouting 'fire!' and 'get out!'. If it was so simple enlightened teachers would have gotten their message through ages ago with hardly a sheep getting lost anymore. The majority of people are indeed so focused on whatever it is they're doing the 'fireman' cannot get through. Lets imagine someone is glued to her television and the fireman tries to attract attention. The TV cannot be disabled since there's no off-button. Blocking the view only results in the fireman being pushed away. He starts clapping one hand before the eyes of the living dead, tapping on the shoulder, trying to divert attention away from the tube. The fireman however discovers that making funny faces captures the attention and putting on this show even lets the trapped person come out of her chair and make a few steps.

So yeah, okay, it's a drag, and the fireman might decide this is not worth the time. But if such trick works to get a whole crowd to start moving a bit, might it be worth the act?

Of course now there's the flip side of the coin, a less experienced fireman might get so absorbed by his own act that he forgets about the reality of the fire. Or people in the crowd might start to act like 'fireman' too, since apes like to copycat so much, and before you know it everybody starts to show off....

This is the tragic history of sacred art.