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By Tony Attwood
Dylan has long been fascinated by the concept of the multiplicity of the self, evident in everything from his fondness for Arthur Rimbaud‘s phrase “Je est un autre” (“I is another”), which he said caused bells to go off when he first read it in the 1960s, on to more contemporary expressions of the same concept.
Bob’s subsequent claim has been that “I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else. I don’t know who I am most of the time. It doesn’t even matter to me” – something he professed both in the song I and I and in an an interview to promote Time Out of Mind in 1997.
So is that true? Is that normal for a songwriter or author? Is it just another way of saying one has a vivid imagination?
I have been pondering that for some time – and it is something that has interested me as I have for myself often felt I can move from one person to another: something which seemed to contradict the very basics of everything I was taught in school. I had to learn to be good and honest and hard working, and that was how I had to be.
And yet the thought that I was several people and could move from being one to another at different times, stayed with me. I suppose this was encouraged by the fact I would go to watch football (soccer) matches each weekend and get very emotionally involved in supporting my team, but could also sit at home quietly for hours writing books and articles.
Plus of course the view of an ever changing person is one that is very challenging if one is bringing up children – they seem to benefit from consistency and continuity in their upbringing.
And yet because in my own small way I knew I had changed depending on the part of my life I was in. A father, a writer of hundreds of songs that no one else has ever performed, author of quite a large number of books, a grandfather, chairman of a plc, writer of hundreds of adverts, some of which were (thankfully) rather successful).
Now I know that is dangerously on the verge of being a tedious boast but it is there to allow me to ask the question “Do I contain multitudes?” And from there “Do lots of us contain multitudes?”
Certainly I am not like Dylan who in a Time out of mind” interview in 1997, said, “I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else. I don’t know who I am most of the time. It doesn’t even matter to me.”
So maybe I’m just a middle-of-the-road person who does change what he does in life as he goes along, and maybe it doesn’t mean very much. Some of us change, some of us go into a line of work at 16 and stay in that line of work until retirement, and there’s nothing special about either of us. Just because I’ve done lots of different things ranging from failed folk singer to moderately successful author that doesn’t actually have to mean anything.
And then there’s another thing. I can remember being reprimanded by my parents and by teachers at school, for changing so often. It was made clear to me that I would only get anywhere if I followed a consistent path. Which I suppose one could say Bob has done as a songwriter and performer, even though his style and approach to music has changed radically over the years.
And I ask, is that so very rare, or is that something that a lot of us involved in the creative arts go through? Is it a requirement of being a successful creative artist? Do some great artists slowly evolve their work, while others jump dramatically from one form to another?
Certainly we must all have come across pop and rock artists who seem to have a very limited repertoire from which they can’t move on. Is that why Bill Haley slipped from fame so quickly – he only had one style and couldn’t change, while the Beatles were able to reinvent their musical approach, over and over again? Listen to “Yesterday” and “Love me Do” one after the other.
Now I don’t in any way compare myself as a songwriter to Bob Dylan or the Beatles, of course not. But I have through most of my life written songs, books and articles – and while I think the books have been varied in style and content, the lyrics and the music of the songs have tended to sit within an established pattern. A pattern which is related to myself and my own views of who and what I am am, what I have experienced and what I believe.
Yet what I have noticed and what I have commented upon before is just how quickly Bob transformed his lyrics. If we take Talking Bear Mountain – Dylan took an existing format and used it in one way, while then taking a melody and chord sequence that are clearly based on the Woody Guthrie song “1913 Massacre”. That was a complete shift in style and approach which was not a bad move for a 20 year old. But “Song to Woodie” although not original music, is nonetheless a rather profound way to start your career as a lyricist.
But I think by the end of the year Bob was expressing himself – whether it was his real self or another self, he was expressing a self in the song I was young when I left home – a song which processed the tragedy of the lonesome traveller.
So yes, maybe Bob’s ability to change dramatically from one collection of songs to another has been a significant part of his success as a performer and composer. And maybe through focussing on individual songs I have missed something important – that a part of Bob’s genius has been his interest in jumping from one style, one approach, one format, directly into another. Because when he does that, he tends to bring something very new to the next style and approach that he adopts. Maybe a review of Bob’s changes in style and approach from one set of songs to the next is what I’ve been missing all this time.