The Double Life of Bob Dylan: what exactly is going on here?

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

The Double Life of Bob Dylan

Apologies, the numbering of the articles went awry last time – we are now properly organised numerically speaking. Links to previous episodes are at the end.

By Tony Attwood

Clinton Heylin is clearly a man who likes complaining. He complains about Bob Dylan’s behaviour, without relating it to the chaos that unbridled genius can bring to a life, just as he complainis about the “unseemly rush for contemporary relevance” of people such as Odetta, Judy Collins, Joan Baez and Johnny Cash, revealed (or so Heylin finds) by recording what he derisorily calls, “Dylan’s detritus” – by which I presume he means songs that Dylan wrote but did not put on his own albums.

(Which actually means Heylin misses an interesting discussion that can be had over why certain songs were included on Another Side, such as “Black Crow Blues”, the existence of which on that album has always puzzled me. Just as a reminder the penultimate verse of this 12 bar blues runs).

Sometimes I'm thinkin' I'm too high to fall
Sometimes I'm thinkin' I'm much too high to fall
Other times I'm thinkin' I'm so low
I don't know if I can come up at all

Heylin is also something of a mindreader (at least in his own mind) and he accepts without question the late Tony Glover’s comment on a concert that, “You could tell the audience was puzzled but they didn’t want to be thought uncool by anybody, so they applauded just as vigorously.” And maybe some people do that, but actually knowing that a group of people cheer and clap just to those sitting around them that the individual has a deep inside knowledge of what Dylan is up to) makes debates on audience behaviour very difficult. After all, few people like to admit they didn’t understand something everyone is cheering wildly.

Glover’s comment is in fact a throwaway line that eminent musicians and critics might make in passing, but it is important to remember that quite often they don’t actually “know”. And that is an important point in a book which purports to be telling the real inside story about Dylan. As far as I can remember, Heylin never admits he is confused or unsure, which in terms of a book on Dylan seems to me to be a pretty big failing.

But meanwhile, seemingly at random, Heylin himself can criticise another critic, as he does with Irwin Silber, who wrote in Sing Out! that Dylan has lost contact with people. Heylin in fact is playing the worst game any researcher can play with evidence: pick out the bits that support your case, and ignore the rest, and claim your case is complete.

Except it is worse than that, because Heylin, critic of Dylan though he is, appears to see himself as the absolute éminence grise when it comes to viewing Dylan, as when he writes, “Unfortunately, what these worthy critics had yet to realize was that he was no longer theirs and that their words were increasingly mere background hum…”

One might reply that Heylin in that case is unworthier still, as a critic of the other critics who has himself, no consistent understanding of what Dylan was doing and has been doing all these years. Yet Heylin portrays himself forever as the man in the know. As for example when he suggests that Jack Elliot and Bob Dylan were together when they first heard the Animals “House of the Rising Sun” and each exclaimed, “That’s my version!” Heylin’s answer is “It was neither”.

Thus the Almighty has spoken, and like the Almighty he feels he has no need to explain himself. He just says and walks on – and my guess is because Heylin didn’t actually know where Dylan got his version from and couldn’t be bothered to do a bit of background listening.

In case you are interested the song did in earlier times sound rather different. Here’s a 1933 version from Tom Clarence Ashley and Gwen Forster…

And Leadbelly’s version works around the classic three chords of the blues – click on the link if you’d like to hear it.

Commentators generally note that Bob probably learned the song from Dave van Ronk, and we can certainly here the similarities.

Heylin makes nothing of this background but instead rambles through an explanation that is somewhat confusing and so ends up saying that we can’t tell who was the donkey and who the cart, which is about as abusive a way of relating a story about one musician talking to another about a particular recording of a song, as you can get.

This abusive recounting of the tale comes at a point in the book where we get an extraordinarily tedious (to my mind, if no one else’s) reporting of a meeting between Dylan and the Beatles which ends with a letter written by Dylan being referred to as “amphetamine fuelled” (with no evidence to back this up) and which suggests he (Dylan) might write a book.

And so the tittle-tattle continues. Richard Farina was apparently envirous of Dylan, Dylan is a control freak… so it goes on, although to me Dylan continues to come across as a man of enormous talent who has no one to guide him in terms of how to develop and evolve his talent. But then quite possibly maybe that is always so. I know myself as a very, very, very, minor, minor songwriter to whom some people (who have never written a song in their lives) can be quite keen to suggest how a song could be improved. Just as people who have never run a blog can be quite enthusiastic about how this one might be improved. (Although thankfully that doesn’t happen much on Untold Dylan).

And yes it is true that maybe occasionally commentators and critics might say something that is an interesting insight.

It is a bit like the fact that Heylin sometimes notes what Dylan wears at a gig. It might be slightly interesting, but in reality what is much more interesting is the way he changes the songs. (If you haven’t seen it perhaps I might refer you back to All Along the Watchtower – oh what memories!, which takes a listen to a few versions of the song over the years. I for one had forgotten just how much Bob changed the music from year to year.)

Heylin is critical of Dylan for responding to other songwriters who might play Dylan something they had recently composed, and (it is suggested) Dylan would not respond to the music but instead say, “well have you heard this” and show off his latest piece. But really there is no evidence that he was constantly like this or that he was particularly self-centred. Even I, as a very modest songwriter like to send recordings of a new song of mine to a few pals, when I am pleased with the result. For me, its a way of continuing the conversation. I have a painter friend who sends me photos of his most recent picture which I admire. When I worked in the theatre friends would come along and be positive about the production, even if it wasn’t that good. I’d do the same for them whatever art form they were engaged in. Heylin however simply doesn’t know how to do compliments; maybe he just doesn’t get many.

Indeed even when Bob does try to explain how he has written a piece, Heylin dismisses it as “unconvincing” – although he rarely tells us a) why Heylin finds it unconvincing, and b) why we should particularly note Heylin’s point rather than Bob’s. In fact what Heylin doesn’t realise is that most creative artists find it hard to explain what they have done, and even harder to describe how they have done it. For if they could, then each new work would be as masterful and stunning as the last. But that is rarely the case.

Heylin quotes (page 286) a poem of Dylan which includes the lines

do Not create anything
it will be misinterpreted

which is probably very good advice, especially when there are people like Heylin around, especially as Heylin can dismiss “Another Side of Bob Dylan” as “the patchy fourth album” (page 287). Is it possible to create a whole album in a matter of months in which all the songs are of the standard of “Spanish Harlem,” “Chimes of Freedom,” My Back Pages,” and “It ain’t me Babe”? Probably not.

The fact is that Dylan has existed for most of his life in a world of adoration and dismissal, issued by utterly non-creative people who have never written a song in their lives. Of course he “seems to function from the centre of his own thoughts” as Joan Baez once said. and Heylin for some reason quotes twice (pages 288 and 290). But who, with this level of genius bubbling away inside his head, would not?

Yet what is so annoying (to me, for this is throughout just a personal response to the book) is how Heylin can quote what seem very important comments from Dylan on his own work, and then just pass them by. Thus the filmed comment, “How do I know I can do it again?” is a feeling that is part of the lives of most artists. OK not Bach, Mozart or Beethoven, or in other genres, Chaucer or Shakespeare, or Leonardo, but it often is for other artists still of genius, but not quite at the ultimate level.

Heylin can listen to a truly wonderful piece of music such as “Farewell Angelina”, and merely comment that Dylan “leaves imperfect, living proof he has given up any attempt at perfection.” And for me this is another key. Most artists leaving aside those on my little list above, know that each work has imperfections within it, but that they will probably never be able to resolve them without bodging up the whole work, so they leave it at that, and move on. Heylin doesn’t get this with his own writing because (and of course this is just my opinion) his whole book is a bodge.

In reality, most artists don’t strive for perfection. They strive to create the best piece of art that they can. When perfection occasionally occurs (I would start with nominating the last movement of Beethoven’s ninth symphony for example), it happens. The genius reaches the summit. There is nothing to do except either listen to (or if you are very lucky) be part of a performance of the work.

There are hints that Heylin understands this throughout the book. For example, he quotes the late Bruce Langhorne as saying “We didn’t do any rehearsal, we just did first takes.” Heylin responds, “Yet somehow everyone sounds like they are all working from the same prompt book,” without taking on board the implication of that. It just is there as a statement of Bob’s oddness and how single-minded he was, rather than a reflection of the sort of sound and emotional feel Bob wanted in his songs.

Which is rather a shame, because it means that when it comes to actual music, rather than people doing things, Heylin really doesn’t understand too much about what is going on.

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