Is Bob Dylan overrated?

LaVette is tha bomb--for one thing, she's always had a way with Dylan covers, and the all-D. Things Have Changed shows her adjusting the classics and plunging fearlessly into the 80s thicket, also w good results (me: "Now I get it!")

(For more of her UK picks, check what she does with "Talking Old Soldiers" on Scene of the Crime and pretty much all of Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook.)

Longest version of the WSJ interview that I've seen:

IN HIS 81 YEARS, Bob Dylan has seemingly lived 100 lives. He conquered the world in the 1960s as a singer-songwriter who defied convention, going on to sell millions of records. He’s earned countless awards, including 10 Grammys, an Oscar, although he didn’t even attend the ceremony to accept it, and even the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. And music is only part of his story; Mr. Dylan has also become known among fans and collectors as an accomplished painter, and his 2004 book “Chronicles, Volume One,” an international bestseller, won the National Book Award.

Last month, he added a second book to the catalog. “The Philosophy of Modern Song” (Simon & Schuster) reads both as meditation and fever dream; it is a history lesson about (mostly) songs from the mid-20th Century, but also a rare glimpse into the fertile mind of one of the most creative people of the modern era.

In a lengthy interview, Mr. Dylan ruminated on the explosion of technology and culture during the mid-20th century, when he was young, life in the TikTok age, his lockdown experience and songwriting.

I first heard most of the songs in my book: on the radio, portable record players, jukeboxes. My relationship to them at first was external, then became personal and intense. The songs were simple, easy to understand. They’d come to you directly, let you see into the future.

Nowadays I listen to music: on CDs, satellite radio and streaming. I do love the sound of old vinyl, especially on a tube record player from back in the day. I bought three in an antique store in Oregon about 30 years ago. The tone quality is so powerful and miraculous, has so much depth. It always takes me back to the days when life was different and unpredictable.

I discover new music: mostly by accident, by chance. If I go looking for something, I usually don’t find it. In fact, I never find it. I walk into things intuitively when I’m most likely not looking for anything. Performers and songwriters recommend things to me. Others, I just wake up and they’re there.

Streaming has made music: too smooth and painless. Everything’s too easy. Just one stroke of the ring finger, middle finger, one little click, that’s all it takes. We’ve dropped the coin right into the slot. We’re pill poppers, cube heads and day trippers, hanging in, hanging out, gobbling blue devils, black mollies, anything we can get our hands on. Not to mention the nose candy and ganga grass. It’s all too easy, too democratic. You need a solar X-ray detector just to find somebody’s heart, see if they still have one.

When you hear a great song: you get a gut reaction and an emotional one. It follows the logic of the heart and stays in your head long after you’ve heard it. You don’t have to be a great singer to sing it. It’s bell, book and candle. It touches you in secret places, strikes your innermost being. Hoagy Carmichael wrote great songs, so did Irving Berlin and Johnny Mercer. J. Frank Dobie, Teddy Roosevelt and Arthur Conan Doyle probably could have written great songs, but didn’t.

I can’t listen to music: passively, because I’m always assessing what’s special—or not—about a song and looking for inspiration in fragments, riffs, chords, even lyrics.

Technology is like: sorcery. It’s a magic show, conjures up spirits, it is an extension of our body, like the wheel is an extension of our foot. But it might be the final nail driven into the coffin of civilization; we just don’t know. Nikola Tesla, the great inventor, said that he could take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a small vibrator. Today, we can probably do the same thing with a pocket computer. Log in, log out, load and download; we’re all wired up.

Creativity is: a funny thing. When we’re inventing something, we’re more vulnerable than we’ll ever be. Eating and sleeping mean nothing. We’re in “Splendid Isolation,” like in the Warren Zevon song; the world of self, Georgia O’Keeffe alone in the desert. To be creative you’ve got to be unsociable and tight-assed. Not necessarily violent and ugly, just unfriendly and distracted. You’re self-sufficient and you stay focused.

Very few songs of today will: go on to become standards. Who is going to write standards today? A rap artist? A hip-hop or rock star? A raver, a sampling expert, a pop singer? That’s music for the establishment. It’s easy listening. It just parodies real life, goes through the motions, puts on an act. A standard is on another level. It’s a role model for other songs, one in a thousand.

I write songs when: the mood strikes me, not with a set routine. My method is transportable. I can write songs anywhere at any time, although some of them are completed and redefined at recording sessions, some even at live shows.

While writing my book, I read: books about songwriting and music history, like Arnold Shaw’s “Honkers and Shouters” (Macmillan, 1986), Nick Tosches’ “Dino” (Doubleday, 1992), Guralnick’s Elvis books. But “Philosophy of Modern Song” is more of a state of mind than those.

Technology doesn’t really help me: relax. I’m too relaxed, too laid-back. Most of the time I feel like a flat tire, unmotivated, positively lifeless. It takes a lot to get me stimulated, and I’m an excessively sensitive person, which complicates things. I can be totally at ease one minute, and then, for no reason whatsoever, I get restless and fidgety; doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.

I recently binged: “Coronation Street,” “Father Brown,” and some early “Twilight Zones.” I know they’re old-fashioned, but they make me feel at home. I’m no fan of packaged programs or news shows. I never watch anything foul-smelling or evil. Nothing disgusting, nothing dog ass.

To stay physically active: I box and spar. It’s part of my life. It’s functional and detached from trends. It’s a limitless playground, and you don’t need an app.

I think social media sites: bring happiness to a lot of people. Some people even discover love there. It’s fantastic if you’re a sociable person; the communication lines are wide open. You can refashion anything, blot out memories and change history. But they can divide and separate us, as well.

Lockdown was: a very surrealistic time. Like being visited by another planet or by some mythical monster. But it was beneficial, too. It eliminated a lot of hassles and personal needs; it was good having no clock. I changed the door panels on an old ’56 Chevy, made some landscape paintings, wrote a song called “You Don’t Say.” I listened to Peggy Lee records. I reread “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” a few times over. What a story that is! I listened to The Mothers of Invention record “Freak Out!,” which I hadn’t heard in a long, long time. Frank Zappa was light years ahead of his time. If there’d been any opium laying around, I probably would have been down for a while.

I keep touring because: it is a perfect way to stay anonymous and still be a member of the social order. You’re the master of your fate. But it’s not an easy path to take, not fun and games.

The style of music I first loved was: sacred music, church music, ensemble singing.

But my favorite music is: a combination of genres. Slow ballads, fast ballads, anything that moves. Western swing, hillbilly, jump blues, country blues, everything. Doo-wop, the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers, Lowland ballads, Bill Monroe, bluegrass, boogie-woogie. Music historians would say when you mix it all up it is called rock ’n’ roll. I guess that would be my favorite genre.

In the book, I thank: the “crew from Dunkin’ Donuts” because they were compassionate, supportive and they went the extra mile.

— Edited from an interview by Jeff Slate

^That seems like an abbreviated version of what's on bobdylan.com

(Some of the artists he name-checks are... unexpected. Julian Casablancas?)

it's this one?
https://www.bobdylan.com/news/bob-dylan-interviewed-by-wall-street-journals-jeff-slate/

I don't think Bob Dylan is overrated, but I fear that THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SONG could be.

The book is attractively produced, designed, full of images that tend to reflect (on) the contents and reinforce the atmosphere that Dylan nowadays implies.

The prose is lively, inventive, entertaining, humorous. You can say that he has a gift for this, a voice of his own that no-one else had quite shown, and that we saw it in CHRONICLES, though here it's (even) less earnest and more Barnum.

But ... I'm not sure that what Dylan writes here is always coherent. One recurring tendency that prompts that view is the tendency to say quite contradictory things, like "It's the end of the world, dogs are in the street, the dead are rising from their graves, and you're on top form". Possibly that particular trait is deliberately contrary, a rhetorical effect. But leaving it aside, there is a limit to the cogent and convincing messages to emerge from the book's many entries.

I'm also quite surprised by how often Dylan goes out on a limb to voice what one has to assume is actual opinion, about worldly matters. You might agree or disagree with what he says in these passages, but in taking a stance at all he is taking a risk. I was reminded of another songwriter whose musical credibility has been damaged by his statements, and realised it was Morrissey. I'm surprised that more people haven't suggested that this book might do the same for Dylan.

Examples: in a statement about the mistreatment of Native Americans with which I strongly agree, he manages to swipe at other campaigns for civil rights. In an entry on 'War', the author of 'masters of war' takes a quite ambivalent view of war as a part of human activity, not especially good or bad in itself, and praises G.H.W. Bush's conduct of the 1991 Gulf War as much as he criticises G.W. Bush's conduct of the sequel. In an entry on 'çheaper to keep her' he promotes polygamy and refers to 'women's lib lobbyists ... putting man back on his heels'. In 'witchy woman' he describes 'the progressive woman': 'The lips of her cunt are a steel trap'.

Most people couldn't get away with this.

I think Ian Penman agrees with you

https://www.city-journal.org/ian-penman-reviews-the-philosophy-of-modern-song?wallit_nosession=1

My warm Facebook take was that it read like AI-generated text that he took a brief look at and brushed up, and that the true workhorse was whoever shepherded all the artwork clearances through.

The one person I know IRL who read it didn’t like it very much.

bob's political views have always been messy

book seems about as ambitious as an episode of theme time radio hour

Theme Time Radio ruled

Penman said this is a degraded version of Theme Time Radio, which he liked.

I once read that he, similar to Loretta Lynn, had a magic hatbox full of lyrics which he would draw upon whilst writing songs. Maybe in her case it was an unplugged old refrigerator full of legal pads. In any case, writing a song is different from writing a book and if there is no magical selection process or editing process , magical or not, well then there you go. Ride on, Philistine, ride on.

needs a new pony imo

xp yeah theme time was great

but perhaps a bit of a stretch to release a greatest theme time segments in book form

The Penman piece is an excellent take. “Baggy” is an apt word for the book. I enjoy it as an interesting curiosity, & will take the time to listen to the cuts I don’t know — but the title is surely a put-on as deliberately knowing as Self Portrait. At first blush it seems like the literary equivalent of Tempest: late-period Dylan trying way too hard, while not trying hard enough where it would count.

I’ve really only just dipped into it. Maybe there’s some key buried in there that will unlock the come-on for me, but I don’t have quite enough faith in 2022 Dylan as a Great Artist With Something To Say to search too hard in that haystack.

Whoa whoa whoa… Tempest is amazing!

I got the book as a gift and have read most of it - I started with no expectations and took for what it is: a curiosity, a mood piece, a cranky opinion column, a collection of perspectives.

We don't go to Bob for accurate information or for authoritative answers or for moral guidance or for a coherent philosophy. We go to Bob for... Bobness. The book is decently full of Bobness.

Part "Old Man Yells at Cloud," part "okay, that's a nice glimpse into the perspective of someone who is a major cultural figure (albeit a deliberately idiosyncratic one)."

A little bit of "Oh, huh, I actually didn't know that" about some piece of old rootsy music. Certainly some of the obscurer tracks were worth a listen, though they will probably not become fixtures on my turntable.

I must hand it to Penman: that's an excellent, insightful review, better than any of his LRB efforts.

I think he goes wrong in complaining about the absence of rap from the book -- after all, the book contains almost nothing in any genre after about 1979, yet does go out of its way to mention rappers; there's no sense at all that this genre has been excluded more deliberately than others. It might make more sense to point out the lack of Chic or ABBA, which are closer to Dylan's apparent period.

Good Times. This is the song of the disco man, the rambling dancer. The lights are on, the crowd is hot, and you're on fire. These are the good times. That's what Nile Rodgers says. Bernard Edwards too. Nothing hoochie-coochie about this groove, nothing soulful or born-again. The rhythm is cooking like a hot dog on a spit and you're going to the end of the line.

Does he mention Prince? He seemed to have a thing about him back during the Wilburys...

Crowdfunder for Pinefox Disco Themetime Radio Hour!

I don't think he discusses, in any detail, any record from the last 40 years.

After his time, I guess.

A lot of songs are about family. It's a family affair, said Sly Stone. We Are Family - that's what Sister Sledge want to tell you. They have all their sisters with them. Probably brothers too, but they're not talking about that, it's on the down-low. They fly just like birds of a feather. If you think about it a little, it's a strange thing that their name is Sledge, because there's nothing heavy about these sisters. Sledge would make you think of a sledgehammer, like a strongman might hit to win the prize at an old-time carnival. None of that here. It's a different deal. The dancefloor is shiny with satin. Satin dolls, that's what Billie Holiday called them. She knew a thing or two about those. So did Duke, he wrote the song himself. But satin's better than a sledge, if you're going to the dancehall. You can't change your name, though, so we know them as Debbie, Joni, Kim and Kathi Sledge. Maybe they could have been like David Bowie or Vic Damone and called themselves Debbie Dynamite or Kathi Kreme. Appeal to the payola kings and sugar plum fairy manufacturers. But Sister Sledge didn't want any of that. They are family. All the sisters are here. That's what they want you to understand.

It's all Bobness, and some of it is ridic self-indulgent, long-winded, giving-us-geezers-a-bad-name-joy-of-typing-impulsivity---further spurred by knowing somebody, a lot of somebodies, incl. reviewers, will actually read it all and post comments---which puts him way ahead of most writers, most bloggers for sure, as he must be well aware, given for inst his warm, even excited comments about the World Wide Web in WSJ excerpt I posted above (thanks for directing me to his site for whole thing).
But that's when he doesn't know or care when to stop in working his material, the word-thought-impulse-memory-theme-time-spaciness that could be shared with his art studio and is with his song bodyshop. given the way he audibly and avowedly builds up his songs from others (Confederate Laureate here, public domain tune there, and recently said somewhere that he may seem totally sociable when really he's got "Tumblin' Tumbleweeds" stuck in his head and is absorbed with turning it into something else).
I think it works out fine most of the time, and I tend to mentally edit whatever I'm reading, so my process is ready for his---though yeah, what he makes of "Witchy Woman" is even worse than the song, quite an achievement.
But when he's really on it, I'm fascinated with the way he breadcrumbs me with good or at least tasty points, from one end of a thought-theme-etc. trail to another (not THE other; there's always a felt sense of alt.lines that could be taken/are still branching out, somewhere in the thicket, like those xpost early Twilight Zone and Coronation St. eps he favors). Lots of info, as YMP says, and like I said in my first post upthread about this book, points about Ricky Nelson as "rock & roll ambassador" every week in thos living room sessions with James Burton et all on (the wholesomely surreal, sometimes "pure products of America go crazy" tangents of Dad)(I say; Dylan Ozzie and Harriet. vs. the occasional appearances of Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show, in between old school magicians, ventriloquists etc, as Dylan points out, so that El and other modern pop stars (down through Beatles and after) are part of this quaint sideshow context. He doesn't spell out the contrast with Ricky's cool-rocking balancing act in context of Ozzie and Harriet's own balance of family sitcom Cold War boomtown suburban values, also every week feat. the wholesomely surreal, sometimes "pure products of America go crazy" tangents of Dad---but he leads me to it, crystallizing my own prev. impressions of the show from digital antenna TV.
Also what he says about bluegrass and metal and the Fugs and xpost "On The Street Where You Live" and "Detriot City" and "Everybody Cryin' Mercy" and "Viva Los Vegas" and "CIA Man" (and the Fugs overall) and "Where or When" and yeah even if you don't care for the text at all, it's worth checking out (especially from the library, as I did) for the art alone.

Yeah these reviews & quotes have pretty well removed any desire to read this, will check out a playlist tho.

The association with the Tarantino book is one I made too although I didn’t have quite the same instant and deep nope reaction as when I saw that one on display

Sorry! I meant to delete first placement of the "whoLesomely surreal" bit after pasting it in after Dylan's mention of The Ed Sullivan Show.

Saw some tweet today that John Wesley Harding came out 55 years ago today. Five albums in at that point! No new info in this, but somehow "55 years since he was at what seemed like a midpoint" blows the mind.

pinefox A+ as usual

Just using it for a playlist should work out OK as well (leaving off "Witchy Woman," I'd say).

pinefox A++!

I feel like ilx could crowdsource a parody version that addresses all the gaps in Bob's musicverse, but done in the same style.

So you're on a tropical island, right? Probably somewhere in the Caribbean or maybe not, maybe the Aegean.

Apparently her name is Rio, you're told. But probably not Dolores del Rio. Dolores del Rio got her start as a silent-film star back in the 20s. Anyway you're a bit sunburned and maybe you've had a few too many rum punches, plus someone keeps offering you good blow.

For some reason you're wearing a lime green suit and you're on the bowsprit of an 80-foot yacht. You hear laughter. The phone rings. Why the fuck is there a phone in the ocean?

A saxophone somewhere far off plays. She don't need to understand.

Now I am remembering this one time I saw a Robyn Hitchcock show where at one point he did a few minutes of some free assocation speaking at the end of which everybody applauded while James Redd was sitting there arms folded sceptically thinking "it's easy if you let it."

xpost i was skimming and thought pinefox was quoting from the book! very bob-like. i paused at "You can't change your name, though", and thought ", said robert zimmerman"

JR+tB, I saw Calvin Johnson in the basement of a community center in Eugene, Oregon, in about 2003. He told a very long, and frankly boring, story about driving to Fargo, North Dakota, because there was a guy who had some flannel shirts that Calvin might be interested in buying. He did this over some sparse acoustic chords for what seemed like 15 minutes. I like him fine but it was dull as fuck.

Heh. There are also plenty instances, some of them on record, maybe starting with Tom Waits, in which the story tops the song it leads into. Have thought about starting a thread about (incl. the reverse effect, amd dull-plus-chords, as YMP describes), but if anybody else wants to go ahead and start it, fine with me.

Heh, YMP, I saw something similar at an annual 4th of July thing a friend and his brother would host, during the amateur hour portion of the event. In this incarnation it was some flamenco chords interspersed into the reading of a Borges story, The South, I think. At the end there was thunderous applause, some geniune no doubt, but a lot because it was finally over.

Also could incl. call-and-response, when the artist onstage responds to audience, like the cry of "Judas!"

wau

I don’t believe you

You’re a lyre!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJeDc0coEnU

Some slightly delayed appreciation here for YMP’s take on RAZ’s take on “Rio.”

I saw an online conversation of Robyn and some music writers: lotsa bonhomie 'til they got to an record which one of them violently objected to:"That's a rock album!" Then he went to a bitter Old ILX-worthy rant. Robyn: "Well...I'll tell him you said that." Everybody else laffed, except the ranter.

What Dylan should have said to the "Judas!" guy.

The descriptions of (and excerpts from) this book make it seem like an extension of the liner notes he wrote for World Gone Wrong in 1994, although those were only a couple of pages in length and the song descriptions were unified by the connection to his own performances on the record. I don't have much interest in Bob free-associating on this or that song in the abstract.

just read that Penman piece and it really is fantastic

one thing that hit reading penman, that's interesting about dylan, maybe the biggest tribute to him, is that we still EXPECT something from him. like when he puts out an album people will talk about it and debate it and analyze it and call it out as genius or total bullshit (or this book, too) but pretty much every other star of his vintage people just seem happy they are still around.

even someone as legendary as paul mccartney, no matter what he releases there seems to be a general sense of "hey good for him, glad he's still kicking"

neil was maybe like that for a while but i don't get the sense (even I, an obsessive fan) is really expecting much at this point, hopefully some good chord changes from crazy horse for him to solo over.

pinefox in at the wire for post of 2022

Yeah, but I don't think even he (one 60s heavy whose new work people still get het up about, as upper mississippi says) really gets a pass, or meant to, altogether: he must know his beloved interweb don't work like that. Stirring the shit and the flames mean he really DOES still matter, beyond the Nobel Prize/gold star for Grandpa's glorious youth,collectible editions etc., or other new work that's considering good but mostly evidence that he's still breathing, as upper also says.

The "Witchy Woman" spree is by far the most offensive(and only unforgivable) thing in there---and---in part because it's the longest, biggest piece of shit. Otherwise, we get some crusty little speed bumps, like the one earning pinefox's first citation:

in a statement about the mistreatment of Native Americans with which I strongly agree, he manages to swipe at other campaigns for civil rights.

he makes an obvious point about the first Bush War (to use Merle Haggard's term) being (to use my term) less bad than the second, because there was so much less of it. (I'm not surprised that he got there from "Masters of War," which is not that far from the Fugs' "Kill For Peace.")

And yes, some of it is incoherent, or hits a wall, runs out of steam and keeps rolling downhill---but so far I think about 70% of the text is worth re-reading and choice x placement of pix is alllll good for all time.