Posted on 10/17/2005 9:50:45 AM PDT by nuconvert
Not Dark Yet: In Search of Bob Dylan #4: A Direction Home
JARED BLAND
Perhaps it's the recent chill in the Toronto air, perhaps it's the old ‘starting a new life phase' bit, or perhaps it's the unavoidable preponderance of media attention on the man lately, but these past few weeks I've found myself re-entering the world of Bob Dylan in the way that I imagine all truly obsessive people do from time to time after being dragged away by other preoccupations, musical or otherwise.
Since I'm a romantic, I like to cling to the first reason, and imagine that my—and others'—connection with Dylan is cyclical, that it turns with the rain and the wind, somehow more primal, more true, than the way I feel about other music. And to this end I must admit that I listen to Dylan in fall more than any other time, winter being a close second, and I barely touch my records— Nashville Sykline 's employment in a good old-fashioned summertime chicken-dance hoedown excepted—during the repulsive smog haze of Toronto summer.
But in all likelihood it's the last of these reasons. Since the release of last month's Bootleg Series Volume 7, and in anticipation of and ecstatic critical rapture over Martin Scorcese's compelling, maddening cut and paste job No Direction Home , Dylan's been unavoidable, haunting magazine and newspaper pages, filling my inbox with limited-edition-Columbia-records-raritites-purchasing opportunities, and again topping the bestseller lists with the divine Chronicles Volume One , this time in the more-affordable but less-handsomely-designed paperback version.
And so it's happy for me that he's unavoidable this September. But it's even more happy for me that he's more than unavoidable: thanks to Scorcese's documentary, and its compilation soundtrack, Bob Dylan has been made tangible for fans in an entirely unprecedented way. Sure he's still an asshole, sure he's still cryptic, and it's true that over the course of the three-and-a-half-hour documentary most fans don't learn anything all that new. But it's also true that No Direction Home gives us the man in all his impish glory, smirking his way through hours of interview, beamed into our homes in all his Vincent Price glory.
I can't review No Direction Home , nor do I feel the need to; I've read too many press-release paste jobs in the past few weeks to want to attempt such an exercise in futility. That said, I've got my favourite parts like anyone else, and one more voice in the choir isn't going to hurt anybody. Seven things to love about No Direction Home.
1 :: “Like a Rolling Stone”
God Bless Martin Scorcese for having the brains to lead with what we're all dying for. No Direction Home begins with a quick rumination by Dylan on the nature of his career, or voyage, as he would have it. But before his commentary even registers, there's a quick cut to footage from the 21 May 1966 Newcastle concert. While the 17 May Manchester “Like a Rolling Stone” is the famous one—and for good reason—there could be no better way to begin the movie than with Dylan spitting and howling his way through his anthemic ‘fuck you,' and this performance is surely one of the nastiest things on record. He says he's setting out to find his home that he left a while back, and I take it that we're to understand that this is what he's looking for. And it feels like home to me: after listening to bootlegs of this tour for years, seeing it so vividly is uncanny. The footage itself is disorienting and chaotic, its colours almost carnival vivid, its meandering camera work perfectly staged to place us somewhere in between the band and the audience, but still entirely in the moment. After a verse or two there's another quick cut, this time to a hazy shot of a snow-blown treescape, and all of a sudden we're thrown back to the anonymous and impressionable start of a voyage whose destination we already know.
2 :: “This Land is Your Land”
This 1961 performance of Woody Guthrie's anthem — the highlight of the first disc of No Direction Home 's soundtrack — is sad and beautiful enough to make a non-American wish he were one, or at least an expatriate wish he could go home for a time. In an age when American patriotism is so perverse, Guthrie's lyric is a reminder that there was once genuine connection to the land, and that that connection was once articulated without artifice or manipulative agenda. Dylan's performance of it is so understated, so flat, that it somehow becomes a towering mass of emotional concentration. His voice has rarely sounded so mournful, and if you close your eyes you can almost convince yourself that his sadness is anticipatory, that his performance is an epitaph for a country that will come to lose itself. When I first heard this track, I couldn't help but stop what I was doing, and once I stopped what I was doing I couldn't help but tear up a bit, saddened by the fact that no one can mean things like this anymore.
3 :: Rubbish
As the Newcastle show ends, the camera follows Dylan on his mad dash through the venue to the car. Once he's settled in like a caged animal, we're treated to footage of fan interviews as the audience leaves the venue. Seeing these young people so divided, so passionate in their disapproval or their admiration, reminds me of after-show conversations overheard at Dylan concerts I've attended. There's something to be said for a career that still causes controversy among those dedicated enough to shell out for a concert ticket. “I think he's prostituting himself,” one young man says. “It makes you sick, listening to this rubbish now,” says another. His friend looks at the interviewer for a moment and pronounces, “Bob Dylan was a bastard in the second half!” with such authority that I can't help but feel that I'm a bit of a bastard myself for liking the electric-set footage so much. I wonder if these kids' sixty-year-old selves have reconsidered the music they heard that night. Watching their judgmental earnestness is certainly enough to make me think twice before dismissing something new when I hear it next.
4 :: America
I'm not sure who conducted the interviews with Allen Ginsberg shown in the film, but seeing the poet who died in 1997 is one of the greatest surprises No Direction Home offers. Towards the end of “Part One,” Ginsberg comments on the first time he heard “A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall”: “When I got back from India, and got to the West Coast, there was a poet Charlie Plymell at a party in Bolinas, played me a record of this new young folk singer. And I heard “Hard Rain,” I think. And wept. ‘Cause it seemed that the torch had been passed…” The truly beautiful thing is that Ginsberg, in recollecting the story, again weeps, welling into tears as he remembers the moment. It's one of the truest scenes in the whole documentary, and a moving testament to the power of Dylan's songs. Here is a man choking up at the mere memory of how a song affected him the first time he heard it. This is music that, for Ginsberg at least, matters, music that stands eternal in one's life, unforgettable and inescapable.
5 :: Topical Songwriting
The footage from three consecutive Newport Folk Festivals happily fleshes out the mid-section of No Direction Home. The obvious highlight is the tape of the electric “Maggie's Farm” with the Butterfield Blues Band, but my personal favourite is the take of Dylan playing a deliberate and taunting “Mr Tambourine Man” at an informal session called the “Topical Song Workshop” at Newport '63. Dylan is visibly amused by the juxtaposition of his surrealistic masterpiece and the work-shirt and plastic-glasses crowd sitting earnestly around him. His presence on the makeshift stage is understandable: despite his protestations, the man did write some topical songs. But his fame, not his song, has brought him to the stage here. Of course, it's always possible that ‘being really, really stoned' was a focus for the workshop that year.
6 :: Wisdom
I don't think I'm alone in finding Joan Baez's jilted-lover schtick annoying in her interviews, but handy editing involves her in one of the most charming and spontaneous moments in the documentary. Speaking of the '65 British tour, Baez admits that she “assumed, that since [she'd] invited [Dylan] on stage in the States, he would invite me on the stage there.” But, as she realizes, “He had no intention of doing that.” Dylan's take on the situation follows Baez's: “You know, it was probably a stupid thing to do, not letting her play.” His rare moment of personal reflection continues, proving that the man can be more eloquent and profound in a given instant than most of us could hope to be in a lifetime: “But you can't be wise and in love at the same time.” Amen.
7 :: “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”
My favourite track on disc two of the No Direction Home soundtrack, this early version of the Blonde on Blonde classic crawls along at a slow, bluesy lope, slinking its way across the back of the room on legs made of nervous organ and scratchy electric lead. The notes list this as “Take One.” Clinton Heylin's The Recording Sessions pegs it as recorded on 25 January 1966, with the lead guitar being laid down by Robbie Robertson and the organ—a lovely touch excluded in the album take—being picked out by Al Kooper. The song has always struck me as a perfect encapsulation of the irrational, obsessive jealousy into which relationships can unfortunately devolve. Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't consider myself a jealous guy, but everyone knows the fixations that can grip a vexed heart. “Take One” is almost twice as long as the Blonde on Blonde version, mostly because of the inclusion of two final verses that really add to the whole perverted control-freak aspect of the narration. I find their playfulness chilling, and their presence adds a new level of menace to a song that's usually foolish enough to dodge analysis:
Well I don't drink whiskey; no, I don't drink gin. But I'm so dirty honey, I've been working all day in the coal bin. Right now I wanna see you, honey, will you let me in? Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat. Well, can I be your chauffeur, honey, can I be your chauffeur? Well, you can ride with me, honey I'll be your chauffeur just as long as you stay in the car. If you get out and start to walk, you just might topple over in your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat.
Jared Bland's "Not Dark Yet: In Search of Bob Dylan" column appears frequently in The Ratio.
here ya go
Great read. I saw the show on PBS a few weeks ago. A must see for any Dylan fan.
I thought Scorsese's documentary was terrific. I imagine Dylan is pleased with it. My favorite part was during the 1966 tour when Dylan turned to The Band and defiantly told them to "play loud."
Good advice.
My best Dylan memory was seeing him crank out a 10 minute version of Cold Irons Bound in concert. Awesome, I must say.
"Put some bleachers out in the sun, and..."
I found this link for a video from that 1966 tour, this is from the Mickey Jones home movie video dvd,I have no way to post the dvd to you, but here is a bit of it....
http://us.video.aol.com/speed.adp?msg=large&url=%2fvideo%2efull%2eadp%3fmode%3d0%26pmmsid%3d1415831%26restartUrl%3dhttp%253a%252f%252fus%252evideo%252eaol%252ecom%252fvideo%252eindex%252eadp%253fmode%253d1%2526pmmsid%253d1415831%26mode%3d1
sorry, walk thru it and sit thru the stupid commercial : )
I LOVED the DOCUMENTARY!
I'm not a Dylan fan, but I liked the documentary and enjoyed the footage of the 1965 Newport Festival, with Mike Bloomfield & the Paul Butterfield Blues band wailing away behind him. Bloomfield was a talented guitarist, he was the American Eric Clapton before Clapton had been heard of. Bloomfield played with Dylan at the Warfield in San Francisco (I heard the bootleg) in Nov. 1980 and gave him a ten minute introduction. Three months later, Bloomfield was dead of a drug overdose (some suspect foul play behind it), a casualty of the 1960s lifestyle.
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