The Double Life of Bob Dylan: I am not me.

Previously….

• 1: Far Away From Insight
• 2: “I looked into the bleak woods and said, ‘Something’s gotta change’. 
• 3:  If this is a bunch of noise, then it is noise that I love
• 4: Far away from the music
• 5: How to ignore important details
• 6: Making New Morning
• 7: How Bob Felt at the Time
• 8: Does Bob Dylan have a right to a private life
• 9: Where do you go when the creative spark stops?
• 10: How free is the artist to say what he wants?

One of the criticisms that is often made of critics – and quite rightly made of critics –  is that they use whatever they are writing a commentary upon, as an excuse for expressing their own personal views on a topic, rather than really investigating the book or film or music or whatever it is.

I think that is a valid criticism of critics generally – to my mind, they often spend far too much contemplating trivial details and far too little considering the artistic work overall.  And this I think is largely because they generally lack the vocabulary and knowledge to describe the artistic work in question – and so find it impossible to move on to the even more difficult concept of explaining why we might consider this artistic work to be a work of sublime genius, in contrast to that artistic work which ought to be consigned to the dustbin (trashcan).

At the same time we might note a few classical composers whose work was hardly known outside their own circle during their life times, Charles Ives, Schubert, Gustav Mahler, or indeed much of the larger scale work of JS Bach…   the fact is that the importance and value of composers’ work is reconsidered over time, and immediate judgements are often later set aside.

This makes criticism of a composer and/or performer’s work at the time of its composition and/or performance very difficult – it is hard for the commentator to get away from the immediate impact and the immediate issues surrounding the work.

But Heylin ignores this problem and instead his work is full of harsh criticisms of Dylan’s songwriting as made by others, perhaps in part because he is secure in the superlatives labelled upon his own work by reviewers (some of which are printed in the edition of The Double Life itself).

Indeed Heylin describes the writing of a critic such as Nick Kent at one point being “back to his offensive best”.  This is an interesting comment for it relates to an article Kent wrote which begins, “If Dylan really thinks this work is worth of superlatives, then both he and his ever-expectant audience better pack up their tent and forget about any future projects, because I can’t think of anything more tragic than Bob Dylan trying too hard to be Bob Dylan and consequently falling flat on his Jewish-caretaker’s mug every time out.”

It’s a clever twist because it allows the author to slip in his assertion that Dylan is trying too hard to be Dylan as a given, rather than leaving us to consider the quality of the songs as one issue, and the point about Dylan trying to be Dylan as another point of debate.  What I think we need to be doing in the light of that comment, is to ask how we would know if Dylan is trying to be Dylan, what that would mean, and would it be a bad thing?  How can we make a judgement?   We are not told nor are we helped in our understanding by the writer.  Instead, the criticism exists, and is allowed to exist, and all proper consideration of the issue comes to an abrupt halt.

Furthermore this comment implies that the critic who (in many cases) has never created any significant artistic work himself, can make a judgement that is absolute and correct.    Clearly this is not the case – the comment quoted above, like all critics’ comments, is a personal opinion, given without any detailed explanation, and absolutely no evidence to show why it might be true or how we could even know if it were true.

Even the occasional back-up comment such as “We spent more time than it took to record or mix just to sequence the record,” is based on the premise that the sequencing of the music is unimportant.  Also we don’t know if the allegation can be backed up, and no discussion as to why the sequence of tracks on an album might not be important.

Indeed why should one not consider the sequence in which the recordings appear on an album to be an issue of major concern to the artist?  I must admit that although I often do listen to Dylan’s songs individually, or on a playlist of my own creation, I do go back and consider the order of the songs as Dylan presented them.   Indeed, to jump forward, I recently wrote a little piece about the very last song in the very last concert that Dylan has performed thus far, considering – or perhaps better said, inviting readers to consider – the implication of that choice.  (The final song of the final show).  Choices can be important.

So why should Dylan as an artist not consider such matters at length?  Indeed take the vast number of novels and films that don’t tell their story in sequence, but perhaps give us a conclusion, and then take us back to the start so we find out slowly how that conclusion arose.  Or indeed the way films use flashbacks. In short, conclusions are reached without debate or discussion.

Or further consider the detective story which starts with the murder, and then works backwards to find the suspect.  Should we be invited to read the end first rather than the story as the author wrote it?

Quite possibly there is no absolute answer to the question of the order in which songs should appear on any particular album, but the creator of the songs surely has every right to decide what order he wants.  Especially Dylan, a creator who has his own views of his own work.   You only have to look at the list of songs that Dylan has played just once, twice or three times to see that.

My own little series on the songs Bob has performed just once or twice included what I consider absolute gems such as When the Ship Comes In, Caribbean Wind, Restless Farewell, Roll on John,  Lay Down your Weary Tune…  Bob obviously didn’t consider these worth playing again.  He’s the boss, and he certainly knows far more than I do about his music.

The most sensible conclusions to draw from all this are that first, artists often have a different view of the comparative merits of their work from the views of the critics.  Second, the views of critics are often overturned and ignored after a year or two.  Sometimes after a week or two.  And I would say, so they should be.

And this now leads to another point which relates not just to Heylin and his monumental “Double Life” duology.  (At least I presume it is a duology – he could go on and write a third volume course).  The artist’s work is produced and then fixed – be it a song that he records, a play, a painting or whatever.  The critic’s views appear for a moment and then are generally (quite rightly) forgotten as others come along later and reconsider the work.

This seems to me very important.  No one particularly worries what critics said about a particular Dylan work 30 years ago, for we tend to draw our own conclusions, and assuming we own recordings, play the recordings we like, irrespective of what a critic says.

Which then leads to the question: what is the point of the critic?  The fact that Dylan took a long time to write the sleeve notes for an album and kept changiing his mind about which songs were to be included and which order they might come in, is perhaps of passing interest, but really not that much.  It’s the music that counts – a fact which Heylin who seems to know nothing about music – seems absolutely unable to grasp.

Yes, it is interesting to know something about how Planet Waves, as an album, came about. And indeed Dylan’s uncertainty of how it should be presented, which meant that it was only released mid-tour rather than at the start of the tour in 1973, is also of some interest.  But surely what most of us are interested in is the music – which is the one subject upon which Heylin says NOT A WORD.

The fact that Dylan’s choice of which songs to put on any album and which songs to omit is not my choice doesn’t make Dylan’s choice wrong nor does it make my choice of any importance or significance.   Likewise, that the fact that it is not Heylin’s choice doesn’t make Heylin’s choice of importance or significance either, any more than it makes his criticisms of importance.

Nor is there any reason why we should take any note whatsoever of a comment such as “Within a week of the start [or the tour], the more interesting songs began to drop like grouse on the Glorious Twelfth.  The first to bite the dust was the opener in Chicago both nights.”  That was “Hero Blues”.

I think for me, it is the fact that Heylin constantly feels that his opinion is definitive that really does grate.  It is not that I never respect the work of experts, but on the issue of songs and songwriting, Heylin is clearly and utterly, not an expert.   If he is an expert on anything it is on digging up the minutia of Dylan’s life.

But even there he often seems lost.  Take for example, “The audience reaction certainly seemed out of all proportion to the merits of the shows.”

The audience’s reaction of which he writes was one of huge enthusiasm.  And the merit of the shows – how do we evaluate that?  Well, musically I gues.  But on music, as I have noted, Heylin says not a word.  So again, how do we evaluate?  He doesn’t say.   And by not telling us he invites us to assume that there is a measure of the merit of a show, rather as we can, should we wish, measure the exact temperature in our house at this moment.

But the fact is that I know what the temperature in my house is, because I am writing this in mid-winter and I need the heating on so I have set the temperature of the house heating system to remain at a steady 20 degrees centigrade.  The merit of my heating system is that it allows me to choose the temperature to be a comfortable temperature for me in which to write.

But what is the merit of a Bob Dylan show?  How are we going to measure that?   The critics would like us to believe that the merit of a show can be measured. they know how to measure it, and they are not going to tell us how they do it.  So why are their views important?  True, I might measure the merit of a show by whether I felt uplifted or disappointed – but that would be a wholly individual response, just as Heylin’s is.   So then I might ask, why is my judgement less valid than his?

Clearly, we are both people who write about Bob Dylan.  Heylin is famous, I am not, so does that make his judgement better than mine?   I’m not sure that fame is a valid approach to take here.

But what about enjoyment – the audience loved the show, does that not make it a great show?   Or do I judge it on the quality of the sound system?  Or the fact that Dylan did or did not play the songs I wanted to hear?  Or what about how the audience behaved?  Or come to that how the bouncers behaved?

The fact is that Heylin doesn’t define his measuring system but it does seem in part to be linked to which songs Dylan plays.  Heylin clearly has his favourites which he presents as being superior to others, although how he reaches these conclusions are often ill-defined, but he claims if Bob doesn’t play those songs the quality of the show declines.

Or is it that Heylin is influenced by what he feels is a sense of detachment in Dylan’s answers to journalists’ questions?  He certainly appears to be critical of the fact that journalists were instructed (by whom we are not told) that they should not ask questions on specific topics.  (They still did, and Dylan’s answers were as amusing as ever).

So overall there is a problem.  If you are going to critique music, or a show, or a concert, or a play or anything artistic, you need to have a basis of values upon which your critique is built.  Then the listener or viewer or reader will understand your value judgements.

But when the basis of the critiques is simply that you know, and your audience doesn’t, the whole thing becomes a bit of a shambles, because there is no consequent debate to be had.  Heylin knows, I am wrong if I think otherwise, that is all we can conclude if we take his work seriously.

I can tell you (as I have written here many times) that for me the greatest re-write Dylan has done in my opinion was to Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum, a song which Heylin describes a being about “violent men ready to explode”.