I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.
The Double Life of Bob Dylan
- Part 1: Let’s ignore creativity.
- Part 2: On the road to creativity
- Part 3: Getting Noticed
- Part 4: Creativity is a multi-faceted gift
- Part 5: Raging against a masterpiece
- Part 6: Utterly missing the point
- Part 7: The Moral Delinquent
- Part 8: Getting the basic facts wrong
- Part 9: Bringing folk music back home
By Tony Attwood
One of the constant themes in “The Double Life of Bob Dylan” by Heylin is that Dylan meets groups of people, these different people do things, Dylan moves on. He is projected (by Heylin at least) as the outside observer looking in, never the participant, never committed to the cause.
To back this up Heylin cites a comment that Cesar Diaz, a guitar technician, made to him, wherein he states that Bob is just singing and playing his songs, rather than delivering a message he believes in. Moving on from this thought Heylin concludes (page 203) that “many people were taken in by topical songs masquerading as folk songs”. He cites “Who killed Davey Moore?” as an “almost tuneless anti-boxing sermon from a man who would later own a boxing gym.”
Now this is a most important point, although I think Heylin misunderstands it totally, and I want to try and explain this in a little detail.
Most people in Western society do not confuse the actor on stage or in a film, with the part he or she plays in the movie or on stage. True, some actors can get “type cast”, through always being offered parts portraying a similar type of character and actors can resent this, but generally the actor and her/his agent will ensure they get a variety of work.
Heylin suggests that Dylan the composer is rather like actors who are taking on roles, and this is a very interesting point of view for analyses of his songs. For it is, in my experience, (as nothing more than an amateur songwriter and previously folk club performer), that in general terms the audience often assumes that a songwriter and performer is generally “telling it as he/she sees it”, whereas a novelist is generally spinning a tale.
I don’t know why this is – maybe it is the shortness and intimacy of the song that makes the audience believe that the song is the performer and/or composer and vice versa. But I can most certainly tell you that from my perspective with over 300 songs written, and having spoken with fellow amateur songwriters, this is often not the reality. Most songwriters are, most of the time, short story writers or the portrayers of emotions, not people constantly re-writing their own biography.
But most people who get to talk to a songwriter – even an amateur songwriter – who has written a fair number of songs (say 50+) still tend to believe that the songs they write are true stories. And although this is only anecdotal, I can add that several times I have had a lady friend ask me to sing my latest song, have heard my follow-up statement that “it’s like a short story, it’s not real”, and then said “Well, if that’s what’s going on, I’m off,” leaving me saying to the open door, “it’s a little story, it’s not about me or you…”
Quite why people believe that novelists and short story writers are indeed writing fiction while songwriters are portraying how they feel, or what has just happened, I don’t know, but that’s how it seems to be.
And it is true that in the 1960s with the arrival of the “protest song” a lot of people in their late teens and 20s were looking for those who would speak up for them in calling out what the politicians were getting up to. Certainly in the UK across the media we did not have voices opining that the politicians and spokespeople of the age were totally out of touch with reality. And with Dylan’s songs we suddenly found we did have exactly that view expressed. So when Dylan told parents that their sons and daughter were beyond their command, that was considered to Dylan’s call for us to rise up and rebel against the old regime, be it political or at home.
Perhaps this was because of the intimacy that the modern folk song. One man playing a guitar and facing the audience, does indeed imply that the lyrics are real and heartfelt. And of course sometimes they might be. But not always. Just because Dylan said “your sons and your daughters are beyond your command,” that didn’t make it true – especially if the parents were paying the university fees.
But when he is on a subject, Heylin won’t let go, and so he leaps forward and criticises Dylan for writing, “Who Killed Davey Moore?” and then later owning a boxing gym. He just takes it that Bob thought boxing was wrong through writing that song, but there are multiple other explanations from the fact that Dylan is acting like a short story writer, to the fact that Dylan likes boxing but agrees it should be more strictly regulated. And in the end Bob just wrote a song, just as he wrote “I want you” but it didn’t actually mean you, or anyone. It was just a song.
In short Heylin is propagating the vision that the songwriter and the singer must believe in the song – and he is doing that because that is how he feels. Not because he has any evidence and not because it is true.
This approach of Heylin, which he has picked up from others, that the songwriter inevitably believes in the lyrics of his songs, is utter nonsense. Of course songwritrers don’t write about things they utterly don’t believe in (I am not going to glorify right wing politics in a song) but I most certainly can write and sing a song about losing the love of my life and finding her again years later and being welcomed back by her, and then assert without fear of contradiction, that this is utterly untrue. I wrote the melody, found an opening line, let the subsequent lines flow, and there, and lo and behold I am reporting that I have been wandering the world in a deep lost haze thinking of no one but her. Likewise fact and fiction can merge: my last novel set in 1910 has within it the events of 1910 in London, but the characters within the story are totally invented. That’s how it goes, and songs are no different.
But somehow people can accept fiction as fiction in novels even when it is based in the real or a historic world, but not in songs.
Within Heylin’s commentary is the allegation that Bob judges the people he meets to be weird, while he himself is the only sane one. Maybe so, maybe not, but really does it matter? Does it make “Times they are a changing” a less enjoyable song if we find that Bob didn’t actually believe things were changing? I can’t really see why that matters.
Indeed I find I don’t have to believe that the human race will expand across the galaxy, ban the creation of robots, set up an empire based on the planet Trantor, then turn in on itself only to be saved by a psychologist who has developed a way of seeing into the future, to post messages to generations to come on what they must do next, just because I have read and thoroughly enjoyed Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” novels. Reading the books has given me enjoyment, but I have never had the feeling Asimov could tell me the future.
So what we find is that fiction is seen as fictioin, be it in novels, movies, poems, short stories etc. But when it comes to songs, there is a view that the composer is telling us about something real that he/she believes in or has witnessed.
But it is from this weird belief that songs reflect a real world that Heylin often suggests that Bob is exaggerating, or not telling the truth. Somehow it seems Heylin can’t accept a song as fiction. So when Heylin acknowledges a lot of the time that Dylan doesn’t believe in what he is singing, he gets rather annoyed about the fact – whereas it is a fact of songwriting.
Indeed this picking and choosing of what is true and what is not in what Dylan says quickly gets utterly out of hand as the resultant debate of (for example) whether Dylan wrote “Masters of War” in London or not becomes overarchingly important, for Heylin, which in reality it isn’t. What is important is that Dylan wrote it, and most people agree it is a superb song.
Yet the endless debate on what is true and what is not then results in what Heylin believes is true being the most important thing in the book – which obviously it is not.
Now this is not to say Heylin is making it all up. The world of the arts in London in the 1960s was a place of turmoil – and with everything looking and sounding so different from what had gone before, critics and commentators had a real problem on deciding what was good or not.
But instead of acknowledging that fact and looking for the consequences, by the time we get to page 208 in “The double life of Bob Dhlan” Heylin is warming to his theme that Dylan would write about anything if it got him an audience when there is no evidence of this at all. What is much more likely is that Bob wrote about topics that he found of interest, and he keeps the songs that seem to him to work.
When the CBS censor tells Bob not to sing his “John Birch song” Bob takes it as an insult – simply because an artist should be able to choose which of his artworks he wants to put before his audience. But that’s not how Heylin sees it; to him the John Birch argument is an excuse because,”Bob had been spoiling for a fight with CBS”. There’s no evidence that this is so, but for Heylin, once Heylin has spoken, that’s how it is. Or was.
And that is what everything comes down to. Bob is driven by the desire for good publicity. There is no evidence for that, but that is Heylin’s idea so he finds “facts” to fit his thesis and pumps these at us through the book.
And of course, by pure chance sometimes Heylin must be right. But my point is that this situation turns up over and over again in this book – Heylin speaks without properly presented and examined evidence. They are situations which can be explained in different ways, and yet Heylin proposes his interpretation, and then takes that to be what really happened, no matter how fragile (or non-existent) the evidence, no matter what anyone else says. If it fits, it’s true.
Heylin in short comes up with a view, and then from that point on that view is treated as fact when in reality all he has done is postulated one explanation which was and remains a possibility, not more. For Heylin, when he has written something which is actually just one explanation among many, that then becomes the truth.
Thus one postulation piles upon another as truth, and from this evolves Heylin’s entire theory of who and what Dylan was and is. And yes of course Heylin might be right, but then so might any other hypothesis relating to which topics Dylan chose to write about at any particular time. And I can say for sure, if I’d used that technique in my research degree both my thesis and myself would have been out of the professor’s door, and indeed out of the university, within minutes.
And ok, Heylin is not writing an academic thesis, but nonetheless he, like all non-fiction writers, has a duty to look for the truth and provide evidence to back up the assertions.
So when on page 206 Heylin asks “who exactly was trying to impress whom?” he is making a multiplicity of errors. The various folk singers involved in a dispute about what should be performed were demanding artistic freedom, as most serious artists do. But Heylin sees this movement as nothing more than grandstanding – taking up a cause in order to get attention and be seen to be on the right side. As ever there is no evidence. He just says it.
And yes maybe some were doing just that: looking for a cause on which to build their popularity, but yet again there is no evidence that Dylan was doing this, as opposed to writing about what he fancied writing about. So when CBS tells Dylan not to sing the John Birch song and Dylan walks away from the show, Heylin instantly questions Bob’s motives (without serious evidence) postulating without evidence that “Dylan had been spoiling for a fight with CBS.” OK maybe so, but also maybe Dylan just believed in his right as an artist to write and perform what he wanted.
And this is the point: Heylin regularly puts together unrelated points, often with no evidence, and then draws unwarranted conclusions. What’s worse, Heylin constantly tells us that Dylan’s own pronouncements are often highly unreliable – except when they fit his narrative. But in fact it is Heylin’s pronouncements that are highly unreliable because they are made to fit his own existing views.
So Heylin packs his prose with suggestions such as “Dylan had been spoling for a fight with CBS.” Had he? I’ve no idea, but even if he had been, that doesn’t mean that the argument about what could be sung in a concert was not real. It might be alleged that I have been spoiling for a fight with Heylin (which isn’t true, but let’s imagine it is.) That “fact” would not affect the validity of any point I make in these essays. Indeed in this case of Dylan spoiling for a fight with CBS, the one and ONLY bit of evidence that Heylin can come up with is that Billy James recalled Dylan leaving the studio seemingly in a particular state of mind. As evidence goes, it isn’t much.
True, Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary suggested Dylan did write earth-shaking songs but was “laughing all the time” which again in terms of definitive evidence really isn’t too much. Yes it is interesting, because I guess Peter Yarrow knew Dylan quite well (although I am not sure) but it is also curious. “Laughing all the time”? It seems very unlikely.
Perhaps the really big problem is that Heylin knows x happened and y happened, so he links them together in a logical sequence. But creativity itself is not logical; and life is not logical. Emotions are not logical either. Songs come out of nowhere or don’t come at all. Suddenly an artwork inspired by x turns out to reflect y. That’s how it goes. Yet in such a world of creating turbulence Heylin demands Dylan should be logical and consistent, and most bizarrely of all, not to take disputes personally.
These issues surrounding Dylan’s time in England were personal; they were about his creations – his songs – and their “validity” (which I shall come back to at the very end of this piece), and indeed the right for them to have a hearing on TV. And there is the fact that art and creativity are not logical. That indeed (and this is just my opinion) is why so many inexperienced writers make a hash of their novels – they have their characters act in a logical and consistent manner. In real life emotions abound and get in the way of actions. And that happens as much in later life, as it happens in the teens and 20s.
There is also the fact (that Heylin deals with very slightly on page 208) that there is no one consistent view of what the artist should do. Many of the creative people I have ever met while working as a writer, working in the theatre, and being on the fringes of the world of music, have contradictory views on what an artist should do. That is not only contradictory in the sense of the purpose of their art, but also on the question of being different from each other, and of over time, changing their own views.
I certainly know, and often tell my friends, (and they point out to me) how much I crave praise for my work, no matter what level it is at, no matter whether it is in relation to my songs, or my dance choreography (neither of which people pay me for), the advertisements I have written, or the books I’ve written, (which people do pay for). That desire for praise may seem awful, and indeed it troubles me sometimes, but even now after a lifetime in the arts, the fact that a lady told me in a dance club last night that I was by far the best dancer in the club, lifts me. It’s trivial, there’s no money involved, we’re not in a relationship, and it means a lot.
That may sound utterly pathetic, but from my conversations with other people engaged in the arts as a central part of their lives, I think it is not uncommon. Probably because where the arts are concerned, criticism from people who are not daily engaged in the arts is far more common than words of praise or even words of thanks. After all, when it comes down to it, how can a person who has never written a piece of music in his life, criticise the music of a man who has published well over 500 songs?
I’m going to conclude with something that could well strike you as utterly odd. I’ve put it at the end so you can ignore it; it is not a central part of my argument but an illustration. Below is a recording of me performing one of the songs I have written. In no way is this included to suggest that I am a good songwriter, but rather because of one key point:
As the composer I know for sure, that this song is not about anyone.
I just made up the lyrics and the music. But many people who have heard me perform it want to know “Who is it about?” and when I say “no one” they don’t believe me.
It’s called “She Walks Through Midnight.” And I promise, it is not about anyone in particular. It’s just a song, and it’s my note to Heylin to say, “just because it is in a song, it doesn’t mean it’s true.” I wrote it because I enjoy writing songs, that’s all. I’m also setting out the lyrics below, because this is not a studio recording (it’s recorded in my sitting room) and the lyrics may not always be clear. Again I stress again, it is purely by way of illustration. People who have kindly listened, have said “but that must be about someone”. And they are wrong. And I suspect the same thing applies to many of Bob’s songs, just as it does to my little piece below.
She walks through midnight She walks through rainbows floating by She sees the afterglow She sees each stillness as clouds all pass her by. And then I see her drift away, slip through my hand I once imagined that somehow, she might understand My thoughts about her And these whispers touched by this lasting sound These patterns carved through older patterns Collapsing on the ground. She walks through midnight She walks through rainbows floating by Did she see me? No, she’s beyond As I see her she starts to fly. There is a drifting evening rain which slows my spinning days There is the movement of the breeze a passing sound that fades. I think about her And why my time’s no longer clear These patterns carved in endless times Which are forever lost but for her are forever near. And there, as the stars rise I find I’m walking home alone. There’s no one here except for me It’s just for me the time has flown. She walks through midnight And as I drift she’s always here I once imagined But not without her being near Thinking of her life away. The pattern clear along the road I still wander far below Why I still wander far away I dream of walking side by side Inside the only land I have known She walks through midnight I see And I am so alone. She walks through midnight So far behind I’m so alone. She walks through midnight