Bob Dylan at 80: An Appreciation

 

Bob Dylan, June 2009 (Kevin Winter/Getty Images for AFI)

"Bob Dylan is the father of my country." 

So wrote Bruce Springsteen in his autobiography, Born to Run, back in 2016. He continues:

Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home were not only great records, but they were the first time I can remember being exposed to a truthful vision of the place I lived. The darkness and light were all there, the veil of illusion and deception ripped aside. He put his boot on the stultifying politeness and daily routine that covered corruption and decay. The world he described was all on view, in my little town, and spread out over the television that beamed into our isolated homes, but it went uncommented on and silently tolerated. He inspired me and gave me hope. He asked the questions everyone else was too frightened to ask, especially to a fifteen-year-old: “How does it feel… to be on your own?” A seismic gap had opened up between generations and you suddenly felt orphaned, abandoned amid the flow of history, your compass spinning, internally homeless. Bob pointed true north and served as a beacon to assist you in making your way through the new wilderness America had become. He planted a flag, wrote the songs, sang the words that were essential to the times, to the emotional and spiritual survival of so many young Americans at that moment.

Today the great Bob Dylan turns 80. He is, without question, the greatest songwriter of the rock era, a period that now encompasses more than 65 years. He is a living, breathing museum of Americana and roots music in all its forms―country, rockabilly, and especially the folk and blues that populate so much of his recorded output. In the 21st century he has even dabbled in pre-rock popular music, both writing original songs in that style and recording albums of songs sung by none other than Frank Sinatra. His lyrical sensitivity and profundity likewise famously won him the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. 125 million of his records have been sold between the release of his eponymous 1962 debut album and his notable 2020 release, Rough and Rowdy Ways. All this while sporting a singing voice described by David Bowie as "sand and glue" and, somewhat less charitably, by bluegrass bassist Mitch Jayne as sounding "very much like a dog with his leg caught in barbed wire" (others, for example the estimable Mick Jagger, beg to disagree). Over the past 59 years, many a "new Dylan" has come and gone. Only one, Springsteen, has forged a career approaching Dylan's greatness―and that only after abandoning his Dylanesque verbosity after his third, and in my opinion still his best, album.

As a somewhat late-born Baby Boomer, I, unlike the Boss, wasn't around for the beginning of the Dylan phenomenon. Indeed, by the time I got around to following "popular" music in 1970, Dylan had already released his first 9 (!) classic albums in 1962-69, when he was all of 20-27 years of age. He had begun as the darling of the Greenwich Village folk revival set, releasing timeless albums like The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in 1963, socially conscious songs like "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," and performing "Only a Pawn in Their Game" at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s March on Washington on 28 August 1963. His 1964 single, "The Times, They Are A-Changin'," even served as an unofficial generational anthem.

Then, in what would prove to be the first of many re-imaginings of his persona and musical style, Dylan made an abrupt about face, going "electric" on side 1 of his March 1965 release, Bringing It All Back Home, leading off the record with the blistering "Subterranean Homesick Blues." When, on 25 July 1965, he appeared on stage with Al Kooper and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Newport Folk Festival and ripped into "Maggie's Farm," the crowd, feeling betrayed by their erstwhile folkie hero, almost drowned out the performance with boos and jeers worthy of the old 700 level Eagles fans at Philadelphia's late, hardly lamented Vet. Never mind that his next two releases, 1965's Highway 61 Revisited (featuring the immortal "Like a Rolling Stone") and 1966's Blonde on Blonde (featuring my own favorite, "Visions of Johanna"), both full-on electric blockbusters, remain Dylan's two greatest albums, both of which, in my estimation, rank among the 20 top records in rock and roll history. He then promptly changed tack with the much quieter John Wesley Harding in '67 and the country-laden Nashville Skyline (with the classic, crooning "Lay Lady Lay" and the Johnny Cash duet, "Girl from the North Country") in '69. 

By the time I started following music in earnest in 1970, Dylan was, along with the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, and Led Zeppelin, one of the dominant forces on the airwaves, initially on WIBG-AM and later on WMMR-FM and WYSP-FM in Philly. Over the years, I have purchased dozens of his albums, both the sublime (1975's Blood on the Tracks, 1975's The Basement Tapes [with The Band], 1976's Desire, 1997's Time Out of Mind, 2001's Love and Theft) and the not-so sublime (most of his 1980's output, except for 1989's rather good Oh Mercy, 2009's Christmas in the Heart). This past year's aforementioned Rough and Rowdy Ways, featuring the epic "Murder Most Foul" and "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)," is, in my judgment, his best work since 2005's Modern Times, despite the toll the ravages of time have exacted on his voice over the years. Of all my heroes in this musical genre, Dylan is the only one whose late career work even comes close to that of their creative and/or commercial peak. That in itself is the mark of genius and an ever-fertile mind.

Dylan's body of work is so prolific and so well known that Sony's official series of "Bootleg" recordings, consisting of live performances, alternative versions (sometimes quite revealing), and outtakes of songs that never before saw the light of day, now numbering 13 multi-disc sets, has taken on increasing importance as a retrospective of Dylan's remarkable legacy. As I wish Bob a Happy 80th Birthday, with well wishes for a long and profitable future, I leave you with three such outtakes, "The Death of Emmett Till (from a 1962 live performance on Chicago's WGES radio), "Blind Willie McTell" (from the 1983 Infidels sessions) and the heartbreakingly beautiful "Red River Shore" (from the 1997 Time Out of Mind sessions).