By Tony Attwood
As you may have noticed, Untold Dylan doesn’t advertise anywhere – we just sit here publishing between five and seven articles a week, with almost 4000 articles published and still online.
So occasionally, as we have approached the 4000 milestone, I have taken to looking back at what we have done – not least because this website represents quite a bit of my life as I endeavour to keep the blog running and somehow relevant – irrespective of what Bob himself is up to.
And as I have mentioned before we’ve meandered into all sorts of by-ways – some of which are still commemorated on the home page. Just scroll down and down past the list of current series and you’ll find older series, some of which are obviously still relevant, and many of which I, at least, still find contain interesting insights.
And it was in fact in doing this that today I came across a listing called “Bob Dylan’s Themes,” which I obviously set up and contributed to, but I have to admit, don’t remember.
In taking such a meander I stumbled across a series – Bob Dylan’s Creativity which did ring a bell as I’ve recently been trying to explain what happened to Bob’s songwriting powers when he recorded the Basement Tapes, which resulted in a series of recordings that, for the most part seem to me (and as always I stress this is a personal reflection) not to match up to his compositions of earlier years.
And in looking at the other articles on this topic I returned to a piece on the origins of Bob’s approach and style.
Now I don’t want to re-write an article I published years back – obviously it is still on the site and you can read it if you like, but I would like to add a point.
I really do think that at the time of the Basement Tapes, Bob got stuck, didn’t quite know which way to go, and found that his “muse” had slipped away from him and he couldn’t create another “Desolation Row” or indeed anything with that level of significance. And indeed, for his next album, he returned to the notion of much simpler, much shorter songs.
But more than that. For by the time he came back, at the end of the decade he was focussed on much shorter songs of a very different nature. He wasn’t trying to be the “Bob Dylan” of the past, but was writing what he wanted to write, and it was very different.
Now I intend to keep my series on “No Nobel Prize for Music” running for a few more episodes yet, but at this point when the Basement Tapes were recorded and Bob effectively stopped trying to write the songs for his next album, I think the Basement Tapes played an important part in his musical evolution, for they allowed him to clear his mind, by simply letting go of the notion “could this go on the next album?” He was not trying to write another “Visions” or any other masterpiece, or even a filler track, come to that. He was just playing music.
Which brings me to the whole question of “creativity”. Bob is, or at the very least, most certainly has been, just about the most creative writer of songs of the modern age.
But of course, there have been great songwriters prior to Bob Dylan. And certainly in terms of writing multiple songs that appeal to mass audiences, he is not unique. One only has to think of Irving Berlin, for example, who wrote getting on for three times as many songs as Dylan, and who, according to Walter Cronkite, stated he “helped write the story of this country, capturing the best of who we are and the dreams that shape our lives.”
Whether that is true or not, this is not to say that Dylan should be compared with any other songwriter – clearly he has travelled his own direction – but I do think we can contemplate his body of work in the same way that other great songwriters have been considered. Irving Berlin, for example, cannot be reduced to a handful of words in summary, any more than Dylan can. But I do think we can see each one as a symbol of his age.
For example, Berlin songs such as “Putting on the Ritz” symbolised the feelings of millions when it was used in the film of the same name in 1929.
And in case you want to hear a more modern version, it has indeed survived….
My point is that just as the songs of 100 years ago such as “What’ll I do,” “Always,” “Blue Skies” and “Putting on the Ritz” symbolise their era, so I suspect Dylan’s songs will symbolise this age that we are in now, to listeners (if there are such people) in 100 years time.
And just as we don’t have an absolutely clear vision of what life was like 100 years ago, but can still enjoy the music (or at least some of us can), so in 100 years’ time Dylan’s songs could well be used as a backdrop to understanding the final quarter of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st.
That doesn’t mean that the songs give a clear impression of what all life was actually like at the time, but it will give an impression – a view through one person’s eyes, which many, many people found to be a suitable symbolic representation of the era.
Of course, we can go back to pictures of appalling poverty and deprivation in Europe and America 100 years back, just as if one wishes to, one can view the most awful scenes from today. But the music of each era adds something else to each image, and I suspect that, assuming civilisation somehow survives (which I am not always sure it will) in 100 years, people will be using Dylan’s songs (as well of course as those of others) as a symbol of life in the early 21st century.
Just which songs will survive and be used in this regard of course, I don’t know, but if I were to be pushed to nominate not just one song but one particular performance of one song to represent our age to future generations it would be this
Oh, a false clock tries to tick out my timeTo disgrace, distract, and bother meAnd the dirt of gossip blows into my faceAnd the dust of rumors covers meBut if the arrow is straightAnd the point is slickIt can pierce through dust no matter how thickSo I'll make my standAnd remain as I amAnd bid farewell and not give a damn