[Many guises: During 1975’s Rolling Thunder tour, when I first saw him.]
Bob Dylan’s genius & oceanic work have been on my mind.
He not busy being born is busy dying.—Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” 1965.
Bob Dylan’s work is like barbeque or Mexican food—some is better, but it’s all good. It was news last week that he got the Nobel Prize for literature. It hasn’t been news for a long time that he’s a genius. But then, genius is simply brilliance plus output. Then again, he’s a genius among geniuses. I count it as my good fortune to have lived during a time when an artist on the order of William Shakespeare has been belting it out for us.
He’s written timeless gems like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changin” and surreal masterpieces like “Desolation Row” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,” and born-again testaments like “Slow Train Coming” and “You’ve Got to Serve Somebody,” along with too many love songs to count. He created one of my favorite sub-genres: his own spooky Mojave stories like “All Along the Watchtower,” “Senior (Tales of Yankee Power),” and “Man in the Long Dark Coat.” And, always, shooting through everything, the blues.
There’s something for anyone in Dylan’s phases. You can start anywhere, and work forward and back. But I might suggest Blood on the Tracks. If you demand his prettiest voice, there’s Dylan’s wonderful Nashville Skyline, recorded with Johnny Cash. Critics are fun, though uneven as guides except for maybe Greil Marcus. Most of them utterly missed the beauty, power, and risk of Dylan’s overtly Christian period.
• • •
Perhaps it’s the color of the sun cut flat
An’ cov’rin’ the crossroads I’m standing at
Or maybe it’s the weather or something like that
But mama, you been on my mind—“Mama, You Been on My Mind”
Sometimes it’s Dylan’s smaller songs that stick in your mind and reveal the bones of his lyrical and musical greatness. For me, this week it’s been his celebrated love song “Mama, You Been on My Mind.” Recorded for Another Side of Bob Dylan, in 1964, it wasn’t included and wasn’t released until 1991. The song is revered for its sentiment, colloquial snap, and catchy tune. Just looking at the language in the opening line, the diction is simple but arresting. How is the sun cut flat? Then there’s the soft internal off-rhyme and assonance within the line:
PerhAps it’s the color of the sUn cUt flAt
The second line cements the singer in place at a literal crossroads, the hobo boy:
An’ Cov’rin’ the Crossroads I’m standing at
The more usual word would be “flooding,” but “covering” is interesting and gives Dylan the alliteration of those delightful Cs. This line isn’t strictly necessary, but it partly explains, without ruining, the magic of “sun cut flat” in a visual image. You can picture very low early or late sun rays strafing the poor suff’rin’ singin’ waif.
Or maybe it’s the weather or something like that
Well what can I say? How about Freaking perfect, Bob! So simple, and gives him a rhyme with “at” above—but most of all gives the singer’s wistful, puzzled state. We’ve been there, or want to be. The end of each stanza deepens that feeling: for whatever reason, ex-lover, you’ve been on my mind.
The song’s last stanza—what an ending! Dylan so catches youthful yearning, arrogance, and wounded pride:
When you wake up in the mornin’, baby, look inside your mirror
You know I won’t be next to you, you know I won’t be near
I’d just be curious to know if you can see yourself as clear
As someone who has had you on his mind
• • •
[Handwritten “Tambourine Man” lyrics.]
Dylan reportedly still hasn’t acknowledged his Nobel Prize or told the academy he plans to attend the awards ceremony. He’s ornery. And busy, so very busy. Currently on tour as a singer, he’s also a painter who’s recently been featured for his work as a sculptor. According to a September article in the New York Times, he built the iron archway for a $1.3 billion resort casino at Maryland’s MGM National Harbor. As he told us in 1964’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “It’s just a shadow you’re seeing that he’s chasing.”
So much choice in Dylan; so many songs for every mood. Naming “Tambourine Man” my favorite Dylan song is fraught. But the stunning beauty and depth of his artistic pledge makes it special to me. Dylan swore to follow his muse even in the “jingle jangle morning,” even after his dreams of night had vanished, and he has. No one can doubt he would’ve died in the gutter for his art. Instead, he’s a Nobel laureate and still cranking it out at age 75. His songs feel perfectly handmade—while any one being sung, and sometimes recorded, might be rough as a cob. I bow down to this trickster troubadour and his oceanic work. Here’s to you, Bob.
Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow—Bob Dylan, “Mr. Tambourine Man”
Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” was an album I came of age with (a little late) in my first year of college. His songs are ones that you don’t have to have similar experiences in order to enjoy (which can’t be said of every songwriter, by far).
That was my first album too, Victoria. Then I went back and forward . . .
Richard, thank you for this timely reminder of Dylan’s greatness as an artist. I have read several articles about him since the announcement, but none has touched me as this has. He has been such a fixture in my life for so many years—I am exactly his age. After being enraptured in my youth, I went to a concert in the early 70’s and was turned off by his (I’m sure this was just a phase) complete rejection of musicality, seeming to sing every song, even his older ones, in an almost defiant monotone. So I tuned out, which I now regret. Because of this post, I am going to make it a habit to regularly crawl YouTube and really listen to him anew, and read the lyrics. I can’t imagine anything more evocative of the ethos of my youth than that last video of Mr. Tambourine Man.
Thanks, John. I’d like to say the way Dylan sings his songs in concert isn’t an issue for me, but it can be. He defiantly refuses to reproduce the studio versions, usually, and the mood or phase he’s in can produce new depth—or grating butchery. You never know. One of his most delightful albums, the two-volume Bob Dylan at Budokan, recorded during his 1978 world tour, features delightful reggae versions of his greatest hits.
Thanks, Richard, for this tribute to Dylan. You have a far broader and deeper understanding than I, though way back then I was singing Blowing in the Wind at peace rallies. My knowledge of his work isn’t quite that narrow but you have helped me to realize that I missed a lot.
I think you’d like his early ’80s work, especially the album Slow Train Coming.
Nice tribute to Zimmy, Richard!
I’m still moved by Joan Baez’s line in “Diamonds and Rust”:
“You who are so good with words, and at keeping things vague.”
Yes, great song. Thanks, Lanie. The latest news is at least one of the Swedish Academy is annoyed with his silent treatment. Dylan is not “nice!” That’s maybe too much to expect, the complete human package, when his kind of genius comes along once each century.
Maybe Dylan’s just “keeping things vague”….
Ha! There ya go . . .
It was great to stumble on this piece! I’m in an area that doesn’t have a lot of Dylan fans, inexplicably so. I love the trickery in his persona, his refusal to be pinned down like a dead insect specimen, his poetry, his gracious letter of acceptance that brought that rascal Shakespeare back as a model.I even loved Patti Smith’s stumbles in her performance of “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” at the awards ceremony Dylan wouldn’t attend. Thanks for your thoughts; they brightened my day.
Thank you! I think you hit on something. He’s a trickster. From the start, the joker. I agree on Patti’s performance—her stumble didn’t ruin it, not did she really lose her composure; what a pro.