Dylan & Us: Beyond America

1. Amuse-bouche

Everybody knows by now that there’s a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.

(‘To my fans and followers’, 13 May 2011)

Entire libraries could be filled with the books that have been written about Bob Dylan, a fact to which the artist himself personally has no objection (as the above citation shows). Perhaps his rationale goes something along the lines of: the bigger the library, the more certain my legacy. He is a human being like the rest of us, after all. And so, I hereby add my book to the pile. I enjoyed writing it very much; it represents my attempt to explain, to the interested layperson, why I believe that Dylan’s art is of global significance – a mission that is only achievable by also discussing matters other than Bob Dylan. Failing to do so would also make things a little dull, I dare say.

Over the sixty years that have passed since that day in December 1964 (just shy of my thirteenth birthday) when I heard my first Dylan song, ‘All I really want to do’, I have keenly followed the development of Dylan’s oeuvre. When captivated by an artist, the quality of their new work is not so relevant anymore – it is their development that becomes exciting. Once under their spell, I also followed Georges Brassens, Joni Mitchell and Steve Winwood, to name but a few famous international songwriters. But I have never felt the need to write about the work of any other.

Now that the appearance of this book in 2024 marks the near-completion of Dylan’s own body of work (the man cannot be immortal, after all, although some harbour serious doubts in this regard), the publisher has evidently deemed my account worthy of dissemination, and he is a sensible individual whose opinion I greatly esteem. He even granted me my own moment of Dylan-hysteria, and refrained from interfering with chapter 14, making him also a man of forbearance; a quality that humanity has lacked in increasing measure ever since the rise of social media. On the subject of social media, I say: do away with it, take civilisation back into your own hands, and reclaim the time necessary to contemplate the opinions of others. For criticisms of the substance of this book, you will be required to deal with me in any case.

For the first twenty-five years in which I followed Dylan’s oeuvre, I rather haphazardly read almost everything I could about him, since I did not always understand his work effortlessly, not by a long shot. It was not particularly helpful: some aspects of his work are still a mystery to me. You will encounter several such instances in this book, and if you do have some understanding to offer, please do not hesitate to get in touch. As the years passed, I therefore left more and more books about Dylan unread. Scanning their indices for key words and reviewing the relevant passages in the bookstore usually proved adequate to determine that I did not need to read them: either I already knew what I was looking for, or I could not find it anyhow. This technique saved me much in the way of ‘expenses’. Now it transpires that I am also vain enough to believe that my own book has something to offer, even to the expert reader!

I believe, furthermore, that it is possible to convert poetry-lovers to Dylan’s work who have never given it much consideration, and to do a service to those who are largely unfamiliar with his work, but who would not be averse to reading an unimposing volume on ‘What Bob Dylan is all about’, the man who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. And while I certainly do not need a lengthy book to do so, I do occasionally require a lengthy sentence, an expressive device that seems to have fallen out of favour in recent times. When making the final revisions, I therefore categorically refused to carve up my paragraphs into sentences of twenty words or fewer ‘to aid readability’. My occasionally elongated phraseology has its purpose, and those who feel their ‘reading comprehension’ is lacking are advised to contact the headmaster of their primary school and/or their local council representative, and lodge a complaint concerning inadequate literacy education. There, dear reader, is where my responsibility ends regarding the (in)comprehensibility of any book.

This book is both a treatment and a story – my story. You may think of it what you will, that the author is a truculent baby-boomer, for example, or that his account is outdated or devoid of anything new, though he himself believes otherwise. And who even reads studies anymore? As I have already noted, however, this book is not exclusively about Bob Dylan – and the reader must know how many tedious books have been devoted entirely to him. Let me put it this way: those wishing to write a biography have my blessing, but a monograph? That is a specialist area, and when it comes to Dylan’s art, dear reader, with your kind permission I will content to designate myself an ‘enthusiast’. I will, however, personally include you in my exegesis, a pleasure that I hope reaches you from within the confines of these lines.

My understanding of the core of Dylan’s work, moreover, has remained unchanged since the end of my thirteenth year in February 1966, when I first formed a notion, however embryonic, of what it had to offer me. Taking a pessimistic view, one might therefore say that my views fossilised very early on: all I have done here is elucidate them. The sole justification for this book, therefore, is the fact that I have never encountered my perspective on Dylan’s work elsewhere; that, plus the inevitable fact that nobody else can tell my story. It is my simple wish to weave some music around it, which is one of the reasons why I have dispensed with the use of annotations. The kind reader will forgive me for doing so, on the understanding that I have availed myself of countless data sources, none of which – apart from Dylan’s own work – I collected myself, and that I have correctly presented the facts of his life and career that I have deemed relevant to the interpretation of his art. Though I can read and write with comprehension, I am no doctoral or presidential candidate. As such, I wholeheartedly concede that the scholarly pedants who claim to know Dylan better than he knows himself will also know him better than I do, and for them, nothing I do will be satisfactory.

I will honestly confess whenever my analysis and narrative feature the insights of others – the rest is of my own invention. My firm conviction, I have come to realise, is that one cannot write about Dylan without exposing oneself, warts and all: any interpretation of his work is too dependent on what has happened in one’s own life. Those who refuse and keep themselves out of the firing line, will never be anything but pedants. So if after reading a while, you think: this book is less about Bob Dylan and more about the author himself, and one who fails to hold my interest – by all means, put it down. On the other hand, who would ever want to read the myriad insipid volumes mentioned above, written by those who dare not step out of the shadows? The choice is yours!

From Dylan’s extensive oeuvre, which numbers over five hundred songs, I shall illustrate my personal connection with his work using a selection from barely twenty-five sets of full or partial lyrics. For reading convenience, I have listed the titles of these songs below, in the order in which they appear in this book. The reader should, however, not expect any attempt at a literary justification as to why Dylan deserves a Nobel Prize. Though I believe he does – and you will certainly be presented with some verses that I find especially beautiful, while the rest of his oeuvre contains many more – you must nevertheless decide for yourself whether, and if so, how much Dylan’s work does or does not merit the award.

What fascinates me most is the meaning that his art can bring to the personal, day-to-day lives of people like you and me – a metric for which, alas, no Nobel Prize exists. I must therefore ask you to venture into the lyrics with me, down to the sentence level, for there is no other way for me to elucidate the significance of his work. I issue this warning for the benefit of all those who have an aversion to ‘close reading’, and also for those whose younger years left them with a distaste for cultivated books in general, and for poetry in particular. In such cases, my advice would be: save yourself the trouble. It is an inevitable fact that without these texts, my book would never have become a reality: they are the foundation on which my thesis is built.

Any attempt to understand ‘what Dylan is all about’ by those unwilling to undertake such analysis is doomed to failure. But this prospect is no cause for despair: while it is true that I interpret the songs’ substance and relate it to Western society in the era in which they were born, I do so using ordinary language and in my own individual manner, so as not to take the enjoyment out of it. Furthermore, I hope to have succeeded with my approach in telling a story that will prove of interest not only to my own generation of baby-boomers, but also to subsequent generations (provided they have not forgotten the art of reading comprehension).

In the midst of all this, it would seem adequate for me to state only once that I consider Dylan to be an incredible singer and a highly competent songwriter. The technicalities of his music, however, will feature little or not at all in what I have to say. As we delve together into his lyrics, you might do me the pleasure of listening to the relevant songs while reading about them. Talk is cheap, after all, but songs are there to be heard, and listening to them will place my ramblings in the right perspective.

For your convenience, along the journey you will therefore encounter online recordings of the songs in question. Often these recordings contain ‘official audio’; some that include visual footage may also be of unknown origin. Make the worthwhile effort of reading and listening simultaneously, for without doing your part, half of the power and value of Dylan’s work will pass you by, rendering impotent anything that I have to say. It was as the composer of his own song lyrics, after all, that he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

The 25 Songs

• 1962: Mixed-up confusion – failed debut single
• 1973: Don’t think twice, it’s alright – B-side of the late new debut single ‘Blowin’ in the wind’
• 1964: All I really want to do – hit single for others
• 1964: It ain’t me, babe – hit single for others
• 1964: If you gotta go, go now – failed single release; hit single for others
• 1965: Subterranean homesick blues – first international hit single
• 1965: It’s all over now, baby blue – hit single for others
• 1965: Like a rolling stone – first international top-hit single
• 1965: Positively 4th Street – less-successful international hit single
• 1965: I wanna be your lover (fragment) – failed single release
• 1965: Can you please crawl out your window? – worldwide flopped single
• 1965:Visions of Johanna (fragment) – no single
• 1966: She’s your lover now – failed single release
• 1966: One of us must know – single that did not even appear worldwide
• 1966: Rainy day women nos. 12 & 35 – second and final international top-hit single
• 1966: Pledging my time – B-side of previous
• 1966: Most likely you go your way (and I’ll go mine) – non-international single
• 1966: Tell me, momma (fragment) – no single
• 1968: Dear landlord – no single
• 1979: Gotta serve somebody – non-international single
• 1989: What was it you wanted? – no single
• 1962: Song to Woody – no single
• 1963: The times they are a-changin’ (fragment) – non-international single, appeared late
• 1963: Restless farewell (fragment) – no single
• 1964: Guess I’m doin’ fine – no single

continued: Dylan & Us: Beyond America. 1. Who this book is (not) for – part 1

 

Wouter’s book is only available in Dutch for now:

Dylan en wij zonder Amerika, Wouter van Oorschot | 9789044655179 | Boeken | bol

Previously, we published two chapters:

What you really don’t want: reconsidering “It ain’t me babe” and All I really want to do: What you really want.

We plan to publish a few more chapters from it in English on Untold Dylan in the near future