Down the Highway, page 54
There was another surprise that spring when Dylan appeared in a television advertisement for the lingerie company Victoria’s Secret. In the ad Bob was seen prowling around Venice to the tune of ‘Love Sick,’ intercut with images of the model Adriana Lima in her undies. The effect was comical and a little creepy, considering the age difference between Dylan and the girl. How wonderfully and typically Bob-like, though, to do something as unexpected as selling panties.
After this absurdity came something of much more substance. Dylan’s memoir had been in the works for more than three years when publication of Chronicles Volume One was set for October 4, 2004. David Rosenthal at Simon & Schuster in New York had acquired world rights for his company, and sold sublicenses to many countries, generating considerable income (UK rights to four new Dylan books sold for an advance in the region of $500,000, for example), but Chronicles was slow in coming. Unlike so many celebrities who purport to ‘write’ their memoirs, but employ a professional writer to do the work, Bob was going to write his own book. He started well, working on his old manual typewriter, discovering that he could remember a lot about his past, and in remarkable detail, ‘what people looked like and what they were wearing and even how particular rooms were furnished.’ Some of his foreign publishers scheduled Chronicles for release, eager to get the book to the market as soon as possible. They had to reschedule when Dylan got bogged down in editing his manuscript. ‘What I didn’t like about it was the constant rereading and revising, because I’m not used to that.’
When word came from Simon & Schuster that Dylan’s book was finally ready there was further frustration for his publishers. Although almost every showbusiness memoir has a photograph of its author on the front cover, Dylan wouldn’t allow a picture of himself on the front of the hardback of Chronicles, insisting that his publishers use a black and white photograph of Times Square instead. As a compromise, he agreed that a picture of his young self could appear on the back of the book.* So he wasn’t making life easy for his publishers. And because his previous forays into the book business had been slightly disappointing, there was some trepidation about how Chronicles would be received. This time, however, Dylan exceeded expectations. Chronicles, more than anything in this eventful late decade in Dylan’s career, reaffirmed his status as a great writer.
Dylan began his life story in the early 1960s, describing the picaresque characters he met in New York, whom he evoked in vivid detail, giving an account not only of what people did and said, but what the weather was like, even what was cooking on the stove when a conversation took place, as if he possessed a photographic memory. Perhaps he had contemporaneous notes. Maybe he supplemented some of the detail, like a novelist, to help bring his story to life. Bob explained why he was different to other folk singers in Greenwich Village at the time. ‘Most of the other performers tried to put themselves across, rather than the song, but I didn’t care about doing that. With me, it was about putting the song across.’ He cheerfully admitted to telling his first Columbia publicist lies about his past. ‘He took out a notepad and pencil and asked me where I was from. I told him I was from Illinois and he wrote it down.’ Bob gave his readers some of the true back story of how he’d come from a middle-class home in Minnesota to Manhattan, emphasizing how he felt fated as a young man: ‘I’d come from a long ways off and had started from a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.’
In the second chapter, Bob revealed how important an influence literature had been on him as a young man, and how widely he’d read, especially the classics, from the Greek historian Thucydides to Dante, Tolstoy to Faulkner. All these writers left their mark, but their books were overshadowed by Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, which became like a Bible to Bobby Zimmerman. Having long evaded the question of why he chose to forsake that name for Bob Dylan, the author finally confessed, as most people already believed, that his professional name was inspired by the poet Dylan Thomas, because Dylan looked and sounded better than Zimmerman. Dylan characterized himself in Chronicles as a ‘poet musician,’ tellingly, rather than a folk, rock, or pop star. Clearly he saw himself in a literary tradition, as well as a musical one.
Fascinating though Chronicles had been so far, it was not a straightforward or complete narrative. Dylan told his story in a roundabout way, filling in details about his childhood and youth. Among the tidbits, it was interesting to learn, for instance, how big an influence his maternal grandmother had been, the author going so far as to describe Grandma Stone as ‘my one and only confidante [as a boy].’ Yet he missed out a great deal, skipping the entire story of his rise to fame, his mid-sixties career, first marriage and early retirement from public life. Picking up the narrative after the death of his father in 1968, he wrote poignantly that, ‘my father was the best man in the world and probably worth a hundred of me, but he didn’t understand me.’ One of the surprises with Chronicles was how candid Bob was prepared to be at times like this. He didn’t tell all, but there was no sense that he was being less than sincere in what he did reveal. A joy and indeed a lust for life also pervaded the book, with the author coming across as much more alive to the world than one might imagine from reading the jaundiced comments of Victor Maymudes.
Dylan touched briefly on his 1966 motorcycle crash, again confirming what most people had long supposed: the Woodstock accident was a minor incident used as an excuse to ‘get out of the rat race.’ Becoming a father that year had changed Bob’s life, and he resented being used by the hippie generation as its spokesman. ‘I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of.’ He complained about the wild hippie characters – the ‘moochers … goons [and] gargoyle-looking gals’ – who came to Woodstock looking for him, and wrote that he made albums like Nashville Skyline, music that was ‘a bit more humdrum‘, to shake off his followers, attempting to trade artistic integrity for a quieter life. ‘Art is unimportant next to life … My family was my light and I was going to protect that light at all cost.’ Bob wrote precious little about his marriage to Sara Dylan. He didn’t even use her name in the book, referring sparingly to ‘my wife.’ But what he did write was affectionate, describing her as ‘one of the loveliest creatures in the world of women.’ This, the third chapter of Chronicles, concluded with the making of New Morning, after which Dylan skipped another seventeen years.
‘Always prolific but never exact, too many distractions had turned my musical path into a jungle of vines,’ Dylan wrote of his middle-aged self, circa 1986-87. ‘I felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck … I was what they called over the hill.’ Dylan was also nursing a hand injury, which made it difficult to play guitar, and he was depressed about the wreck of his boat in the Caribbean. Resting up at Point Dume – while Jesse Dylan, Jesse’s fiancée, Mom and Aunt Etta were all visiting – Dylan turned his mind to the future. Part of him wanted to give up his career and invest in a new business, mentioning no doubt facetiously an opportunity to buy into a wooden leg factory. But Bob also had a mind to go back on the road with a new band, playing his guitar in a style he described as ’triplet forms,’ touring the same cities for three years straight, to build a new audience, one that wasn’t fixated with his image as a sixties guru.
One night, sitting at his kitchen table in Point Dume, while the rest of the household slept, Dylan started writing ‘Political World.’ More songs followed. Bono paid a visit. After a few glasses of Guinness Bono put Bob on the phone to U2’s producer Daniel Lanois. Dylan went on to describe the torturous process of making Oh Mercy with Lanois in New Orleans, which led to one of the most engaging passages in Chronicles.
‘After being in New Orleans for about a month, I was up early and I rooted my wife out of bed,’ Dylan wrote. ‘“What’s wrong now?” she said. I hadn’t thought that anything was wrong.’ Bob was now writing about his second wife, Carolyn Dylan, his first public acknowledgement of that marriage, though as with his first wife he didn’t name her, apparently wanting to shield his spouses from the public eye. This snatch of domestic conversation – What’s wrong now? – is therefore a rare glimpse into Dylan’s matrimonial life, and he comes across as a difficult man to live with. One can imagine the long-suffering look on Carolyn’s face as she opens her eyes two hours before dawn to find her restless husband wide awake and bothered about something. The reader learned from Chronicles that Dylan lived nocturnally much of the time, up and about, writing, drinking, recording, thinking, while his wife was asleep.
He seemed to be difficult in other ways. One night Bob was persuaded to take his family to a New Orleans restaurant for dinner. He wrote that he left after the soup, anxious to get back to work.
So what’s wrong now?
Actually, Bob just wanted Carolyn to come with him on an early morning motorbike ride, to blow the cobwebs away. He described their road trip in detail, including the reactions they got from people they met. Asked by a stranger in a gift store if he prayed, Dylan replied interestingly: ‘I pray that I can be a kinder person.’ Here was an indication of self-knowledge, as if Dylan was well aware of the personal shortcomings Victor Maymudes had pointed to.
In the fifth and final chapter of Chronicles Dylan returned to his youth, describing himself as a boy as ’slight, introverted and asthma-stricken,’ and emphasizing his difficult relationship with Dad, whereas ‘Mom, bless her … Had always stood up for me.’ He moved on to describe the short time he spent in college, the effect Woody Guthrie’s songs and book had on him, returning magnetically to New York City and the people he met there in 1961, including his girlfriend Suze Rotolo, whom he described candidly as, ‘The most erotic thing I’d ever seen.’ Chronicles ended with Dylan about to face the ’shit storm’ of fame, a story to be continued. Closing the book, the reader was left with the impression of a lively, exceptionally well-written and honest memoir, even if Dylan had made up some of the detail. Chronicles was unconventional in structure, and it was not the whole story. It was just volume one, a slim one at that, little more than a prologue to the life. Yet what he had written was revealing and endearingly frank, the book having less in common with generic show business autobiography than a work of literary fiction.
Praised highly by critics, Chronicles Volume One became an international bestseller. Dylan was pleased with its success and agreed to a rare television interview to promote the book as Christmas approached, sitting down with Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes. Awkward as always in front of the cameras, almost squirming in his seat at times, Bob gave Bradley typically gnomic answers to the usual questions, few of his replies more interesting than when he was asked why he was still on the road at sixty-three. ‘Well, it goes back to the destiny thinnggg,’ Dylan drawled. ‘I made a bargain with it, you know, long time ago, and I’m holdin’ up my end.’
‘What was your bargain?’
‘To get where … I am now.’
‘Should I ask who you made the bargain with?’ asked Bradley, no doubt wondering whether Bob meant to reveal a Robert Johnson-type pact with the Devil.
‘Hahha. With, with, you know, with the chief … the chief commander.’
‘On this earth?’
‘Hm, hmmm,’ Dylan snuffled as he considered his reply. ‘On this earth, and in the world we can’t see.’ What a fabulously odd and poetic answer this was. No other rock star spoke of ‘The world we can’t see.’
*
THE NEXT ALBUM, Modern Times, was recorded as before in New York with Bob’s road band, which now included guitarist Denny Freeman and Donny Herron (on guitar, violin, viola and mandolin). Larry Campbell had left after seven years. Once again Bob produced himself, and partly as a result Modern Times sounds like its pre-decessor, though it is technically different in that Dylan allowed his engineer, Chris Shaw, to record the tracks digitally, using ProTools, after years when Dylan insisted on working in analogue. He soon learned to value ProTools, which allowed him to swap verses round while keeping copies of everything, helping him work even faster than normal, to the extent that he came to expect technical changes to be made almost instantly. ‘He‘d be like, “OK, let’s swap the second and third verse.” And ten minutes later he’s like, “Are you done yet?”’ recalls Shaw of Dylan’s impatience. ‘I’m like, “Bob, don’t you remember the last record we did, it took me about an hour to do that, can you give me somewhere between zero and an hour to get it done?”’ There was another difficult conversation when the computer crashed and Shaw had to tell Bob nothing he was playing was being recorded.
Despite the new technology and the album title, the ten songs on Modern Times sound antique, being Dylan’s customary mixture of blues, waltzes and country shuffles, some quick, some slow, with lots of words, many seemingly borrowed, again from Henry Timrod in ‘When the Deal Goes Down,’ while almost half the song titles were inspired by older tunes of the same or similar names. ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin‘’ is a blues dating back to the 1920s, recorded by Muddy Waters and others; ‘Someday Baby’ was initially a Sleepy John Estes song; Dylan’s ‘Workingman’s Blues #2’ was evidently inspired by Merle Haggard’s ‘Workin’ Man Blues‘; while ‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’ originated with ‘When the Levee Breaks’ by Kansas Joe McCoy.
The outstanding tracks on Modern Times included ‘When the Deal Goes Down,’ which found Bob wandering through a world ‘full of disappointment and pain,’ and ‘Nettie Moore,’ which stood apart from many recent songs in that it was about a specific character, who came across palpably. A more typically generalized late Dylan song was ‘Thunder on the Mountain,’ in which Bob unexpectedly name-checked the attractive young singer Alicia Keys as if he planned to ask her out next time he saw her. Although Dylan had been reticent about his faith since being born again, ‘Ain’t Talkin‘’ can be interpreted as being about the Passion of Christ as he is betrayed in the ‘mystic garden’ (of Gethsemane) and separated from ‘my loyal and my much-loved companions.’ The song might also be read as an insight into Dylan’s personal journey through life, much nearer the end now than the beginning, especially where he sings that, though the fire has gone out, ‘fame and honor never seem to fade.’ Was the listener meant to take such references as autobiography, or was Bob inhabiting stock characters of the American songbook, including the lovelorn traveler walking a ‘long and lonesome road‘? In the past Dylan had denied his songs were about him. Now he insisted the opposite was true, asserting in a 2009 interview that: ‘The people in my songs are all me.’ In which case he seemed a very sorry old fellow. But as we know, Dylan’s interviews are not to be relied upon.
Some listeners heard Modern Times as the third in a trilogy of records that started with Time Out of Mind, Rolling Stone of the view that the new CD was Bob’s ’third straight masterpiece.’ Other reviewers heaped praise on the disc, which sold well enough to become Bob’s first album since Desire in 1976 to make number one in the US charts, as well as winning two Grammys. These achievements should be seen in context. Modern Times made number one without selling that many copies. Rather, its chart success was a reflection of the fact that a large proportion of Dylan’s audience was older people who still bought albums from record shops, as opposed to downloading music. And Grammys were given out in all manner of nomination sub-categories these days. Dylan won for ‘Contemporary Folk/Americana Album’ and ‘Solo Rock Vocal Performance.’
If Modern Times is listened to as the third work in a musical triptych, and Dylan himself rejects the notion of a trilogy of albums, it is surely the least impressive of the three CDs in question, a much slighter work than Time Out of Mind and less compelling than ‘Love and Theft‘. Rather it seems that after years when critics commonly undervalued Bob, failing to see the glimpses of his greatness in the 1980s and early 1990s, almost everything the aging artist did now was slightly over-praised. Age itself brings respect, of course. His raised status and profile was also maintained by a stream of high-quality supplementary product, including Chronicles, additions to the Bootleg Series of historic concert performances and outtakes and now, excitingly, an authorized Dylan documentary.
The notion that Bob had agreed to talk on camera about his career was even more surprising than the publication of his autobiography, considering how uncomfortable he usually was on screen, so the broadcast of No Direction Home over two nights in September 2005 was eagerly anticipated. The film had clearly been inspired by The Beatles’ 1995 Anthology whereby the surviving band members were persuaded to tell their story in their own words. The result was fascinating to watch as well as being lucrative for The Beatles. In a similar way, Jeff Rosen had persuaded Dylan to tell him his story on camera. The interview tapes were then given by Rosen to Martin Scorsese who, without dealing with Bob directly, mixed the Dylan interviews with interviews conducted with his contemporaries, including, most significantly, Joan Baez, Bobby Neuwirth and Suze Rotolo, the last two never having spoken at length in public about their friend before. Talking heads were further intercut with period footage of Bob on tour, including superb color film shot by D.A. Pennebaker of the 1966 UK tour with The Hawks.
