He would go on to make his mark in writing and performing these newer songs, and he vividly recounts the dizzying, surreal spin he was in as he elatedly gets signed up by Columbia and starts his recording career. More tellingly, perhaps, is his sense of priority on the day he signed the contract: having also been given an advance record by the then-rediscovered Robert Johnson — Dylan rushes to a friend’s house, but instead of crowing about the record deal, he excitedly plays Johnson's record while barely containing his enthusiasm about this unburied 1930s-era blues treasure.
The influential Johnson also figures in Dylan’s evolution as a lyricist, though latently so. In the early ‘60s, still a folk singer, Dylan — so enamored of the blues legend’s compositions, which “seemed to come out of his mouth and not his memory” — started “mediating on the construction of the verses, seeing how different they were from Woody’s.”
Indeed, Dylan was taken with the free association and allegorical nature of many of Johnson’s lyrics, with their “big-ass truths wrapped in the hard shell of nonsensical abstraction.” Furthermore, Dylan was also fascinated by the ballad “Pirate Jenny” from a Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill musical, and did a similar deconstruction on its lyrical content and aspects of free association — again, still a few years before any stream of his consciousness imbued “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and Highway 61 Revisited.
In addition to having an intuitive grasp of disparate back-burner inspirations for possible later use, Dylan is resourceful in the face of setbacks, taking full advantage of serendipitous happenstance and tapping into long-ago lessons. In the late ’80s, for example, Dylan — looking for ways to keep playing guitar after a bad hand injury, draws upon a different technique shown to him 20 years earlier by an old jazz and blues great, Lonnie Johnson — methods that have implications for the way Dylan restructures the playing of older songs. You may think the modifications of songs performed in concert or the barely-recognizable “Masters of War” he performed on an awards show on TV a few years back was just because he has a healthy art-for-art’s sake reverence for on-your-toes perverseness. It could be that, or there could be more practical reason.
Dylan also revitalized his singing style about the same time when, taking a break in a frustrating rehearsal, he happens to stop into a bar where an older singer in a jazz band — who seemingly “had an open window to my soul” — triggered with his vocalizing style something “revelatory” that revitalized Dylan to a point where “because of the different formulaic approach to the vocal technique, my voice never got blown out and I could sing forever without fatigue.”
Article comments
1 - diana
Great review.
All through the readig of the book I was struck by the humanity of the man rather than the iconic stature. I was so happy that he wrote it as he did rather than a "travelogue" of his life. The man embodies an archtypal persona and a stuck on the earth human being both. I thought it wonderful to be reading along and remembering events that seemed one way at the time and now see that Mr. D was experiencing something else.
Judas?
never.
At this same time you speak of I was at a concert and was up front. When he came back for an encore I blew him a big kiss in an extravagant gesture... son of a gun if he didn't see it and as he picked up his guitar he turned and mirrored the gesture right back at me.
no paper cut out me! LOL
thanks for the great article.
2 - Bliffle
Someone I know who's reading the book has told me it's very interesting and engrossing. But she also related an Astounding Fact that I knew, from personal experience, to be a lie. And after she researched more she agreed with me.
Most autobiographies are full of lies, told to improve the public image of the subject. This is known quite openly in the publishing business. For example, another acquaintance of mine, a publisher, recently published the autobiography of a global celebrity, who he and his family have known personally all his life. When I asked if it were The Truth, he laughed and said the book is full of lies. "Everything we publish is full of lies". Of course, we all know that the author is usually a 'ghost' writer, but even THAT name may be a lie! There are, after all, celebrities among ghost writers. Sometimes even the name of the publisher is a lie, told to create the appearance of institutional weight behind a name.
3 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Diana--Thanks for th comment. That's a great little story about your concert experience. About the book--it's one of those great reads that have a lingering effect. I'm glad it didn't have an index--I'd be constantly looking up things, creating a hell of a disjointed and thereby a more unsatisfying read.
4 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Thanks Bliffle--I think the perpetrators of the Astounding Fact are as cynical as I am not, and, though I'm sure these kinds of things happen, in this case, I don't see Dylan being a party to such a scheme.
Hope you get a chance to read it.--GH
5 - Sondra Stewart
I really appreciate your review of this book. I just read it myself a few months ago and found it a singular reading experience, not quite prose, not quite poetry, but a peek into the mind of a legend. I disagree with you about the index ... I've spent way too much time post-reading (twice) trying to find certain passages and references. I also disagree with Bliffle ... there is no way this could have been written by anyone but Dylan.
6 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Thanks Sondra, for the comment. "Singular"--that's an apt description for such an unconventional and stellar biography. I can see how an index would help--if I hadn't been highlighting my copy (which I really didn't want to do) I would've been lost. Photos would be nice, too.
7 - Bob Strong
Hi! My name is Bob and I am addicticted to Dylan. I first started embibing Dylan at age 19, I am now 60. Ofcourse when the Chronicles came out I had to have some. I learned a long time ago that the fix I get is not the fix I wanted and I get high on just KNOWING that I will be fixed...no doubts. So I always take what the master gives because he knows what's best for me. There is no subjectivity in it, there is not any hint of personal service to me, hell, to even critique Dylan one must quote Dylan. Why would I care about how he felt about his mother? I only read and listen for the enlightenment...not a handshake or a wink, but the trip. "I am just wanting someone to help me get that wall into my plane"!!!
8 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Bob--thanks for the comments and outlook. If you don't already know, you might appreciate the fact that Dylan has--as always--a lot of younger fans. So the influence continues on...
9 - jman
nice work on this review. i enjoyed it, and i do think you have captured a lot of what its about for BD and for his fans and admirerers
10 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
jman--your comment is much appreciated. I hoped I was capturing the right sense of things, and what was an unusual but memorable memoir.
11 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!
12 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Thanks, Natalie.
13 - Richard Marcus
Gordon
Brilliant review, somehow or other you've managed to sum up almost all my feelings of frustration when it comes to Dylan, and using his words to do so. How much of his own myth does he believe, or does he debliberatly make.
I'm not being cynical when I say that, because I believe that in his way Dylan is a genuis, not because of his songwriting abilities, but in the way his mind works and the manner in which he expresses his unique thought patterns.
In a world where conformity is a virtue he has been cursed with originality; even among those who consider themselves non-conformist like folk-snobs, conventions must be adhered to, if you don't, well than you've joined some other side.
Like most people who are driven by the compulsion to create, the only side Dylan has ever been on could appear to be his own, but in reality he is subject to the whims of his muse and his struggle to be original. It's very easy to be good, but it's increadibly difficult to be true.
From what you've written about Dylan's book, that's what it sounds like he's talking about. But as always he's trying to find the right way to talk about it. Even here he sounds driven to be original, not just for the sake of originality, but because he has no choice in the matter.
To someone like him the worst crime he could ever commit would be not constantly looking for another direction home.
That's one hell of a review you've written if I could get all of that from it. Or I'm just full of it. I'll leave other's to decide.
Richard
14 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Thanks Richard, for the comments and insight. There's still going to to some indefinable qualities about Dylan that can't be pinpointed, and that comes through in this unconventional bio--that's what I meant when I mentioned lingering effects of the book--I'm still pondering some imponderables, and at a loss to articulate them anyway.
I remember years ago in an interview with Barbara Walters--she asked him if he is happy, and he answered that he doesn't think in those terms. I know what he means--or I think I do, but if I tried to articulate it, I couldn't do the contention proper justice. He even struggled with explaining it. Maybe that's why in the old days he played games with the press when it came to stupid questions: "Mr. Dylan, how many folk singers are there?" "147."