Fear of Dylan

July 4, 2007

I’ve been a Dylan geek since my college days, when I found a stash of his songbooks in the attic of our student co-op. After learning to play a few on guitar, the lightning struck: Bob Dylan is the Bill Shakespeare of our time.
Since then, I’ve found that there are two types of people in the world: those who think that Bob Dylan is the cat’s ass, and those who just don’t “get” him and haven’t a clue as to what the fuss is all about.
Let me explain it to you. The guy has poetry in his bones. Old test-of-time stuff, riddled with a wry wisdom, like what‘s in the Bible. He‘s got the same thing Ernest Hemingway had: “A built-in, shock-proof bullshit detector“ that comes through in his music. He‘s a reed, channeling songs from a divine source, with his feet planted in America‘s distant past -- he hears echoes of the Civil War and the murmer of our country‘s soul. Listen to his radio show and you learn that Dylan knows most everything about American music that matters, and then some.
Dylan is the most literate and influential strummer of all time. He took the literary side of folk music and its anger over the mistreatment of powerless people and knocked pop music on its head with a new direction.
In the early ‘60s, he sang about the torture and murder of Emmet Till, a black boy accused of making a pass at a white woman down South. He sang about the beating death of a kitchen maid: “William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll, with a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger...“ He sang about nuclear war in “A Hard Rain‘s Going to Fall“ in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis. Few songwriters had been down that road back then -- or since.
He had a profound impact on The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, and the most influential musicians that came out of the golden age of music in the ‘60s, elevating pop music to an art form with literary songs that took on war, racism and injustice. His influence extends to punk, worldbeat, reggae, grunge and hip-hop.
Even rappers owe him tribute, since Bob Dylan swayed the pop world with the idea that socially-conscious lyrics could be elevated with a sense of poetry that ranges from street level to the rhythms of the Bible. That’s why when music critics heap their highest praises on the likes of Eminem (or Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, The Clash or Kurt Cobain before him) it’s with the ultimate honor of stating that he could be “the new Dylan.”
Like Shakespeare or Chaucer, some of Dylan’s lyrics have made their way into everyday language: “The answer is blowing in the wind”; “Everybody must get stoned”; “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”...
Someday, perhaps 500 years from now, scholars will give Dylan the same incredulous treatment that Shakespeare gets today. They’ll argue that there’s no way that a working class kid from the iron mining hills of northern Minnesota without a college degree in comparative literature could possibly have written the poetry of his songs with their insights into the human character.
So it’s pretty cool that Big Bob is coming to Northern Michigan for only his second go-round this July 10.
I’m not a Dylanphile (a Trekkie-type who’s so obsessed that he needs to “get a life”), but I’ve read a half-dozen biographies along with his autobiography. I’ve seen him perform six or seven times and have even performed several well-attended Dylan tribute shows myself on guitar.
Yet, even though I‘m a huge fan and make a living as a writer, the (extremely) remote chance of ever interviewing Bob Dylan has always seemed rather terrifying.
I’ve read many interviews in which Dylan complains that he hates inane questions from journalists. And in his autobiography, Chronicles, he also wrote of how much he hated being stuck with the label of being the “voice” of his generation.
Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything but dumb questions in my fantasy interview.
When you already know the nuts & bolts of someone‘s life story, what‘s left to ask but the dumb stuff? What’s it like living on a tour bus for the past 10 years? Have you ever played in a pick-up wedding band, and if so, were you forced to play “Mustang Sally” or “Proud Mary”? Ever thought of getting married to Madonna? Stuff like that.
But I’d add a couple of serious questions too:
Bob, could you still make it in today’s world of “American Idol,” when the singer-songwriter thing seems as dead as the poetry readings of 150 years ago? If you had to give up your life of riches and fame, would you still sing on street corners and outside BBQ stands and gas stations in obscure poverty like Blind Willie McTell back in the Depression in Georgia? (The subject of one of Dylan’s best songs, by the way.)
And I can’t believe that anyone who wrote “Masters of War” believes that George Bush is any kind of Christian, but since Dylan was famously “born again“ from his Jewish roots, I’d ask what he makes of our born-again president and the evangelicals who put him in power.
And Bob, having been all over the world, what do you think is the best place on the planet? Have you checked out Benzie County yet? I mean the shoreline.
The answers are likely to remain blowing in the wind. Better I should wish to someday play a song or two with Bob Dylan -- he would certainly be welcome in my home, and we’ve got a nice patio out back with plenty of cheap wine of the sort that folksingers drink. Chips and salsa too. Stop by anytime. I only fear the hands on my guitar would be shaking too much to play.

Bob Dylan performs Tuesday, July 10 at Interlochen‘s Kresge Auditorium.