Bob Dylan in Sunday's NY Times Magazine: Why The Road Warrior Still Matters

Is that really Bob Dylan on the cover of this Sunday's October 7 New York Times magazine? No, it's actually the talented Cate Blanchett in drag, done up Dylanesque in the new star-studded film I'm Not There, which explores his various personae through a series of actors. Richard Gere and Heath Ledger, among others, take a crack at the man from Minnesota.

This begs a question: Why does the artist formerly known as Zimmerman still matter after almost 50 years in the business? His current affairs provide clues.

There's the Academy Award for Best Song in 2001 ("Things Have Changed"); there's the book Chronicles Vol. 1 that rode the best seller lists a couple of years ago; there's the weekly satellite radio program where he plays a DJ and spins eclectic vinyl. There's also the legion of fellow travelers. Just two weeks ago in Nashville at the Ryman Auditorium, the singer/guitarist Jack White popped up unannounced and joined Dylan onstage, taking over the show with his own tribute to the man.

But I found the answer when looking at the set list from his gig this week in Worcester, Mass. He's always on tour worldwide, and this show got rave reviews, with a solo Elvis Costello as opening act.

What struck me was that of the 16 songs by Dylan and his band, six were from his latest work Modern Times, which made its debut at #1 on many global music charts last year, including America. Two other songs were from the CD before that, Love And Theft, which was released on 9/11/01 and got lost in the shuffle of more pressing events.

That's right: a full half of the songs in Worcester were recent material. Dylan has always pushed his latest songs in concert. If ticket buyers aren't familiar and expect an oldies act, forget it. Hey, the guy knows retail....you slash the cost of the old threads and push the new stuff.

Of the other eight songs he did that night, two of them were decidedly obscure, leaving six songs that might be considered reasonably well-known to drive-by fans. He has almost 500 to choose from, of course, and they're frequently interpreted by singers from jazz to metal. From the beginning he was a covered artist, with Peter, Paul and Mary doing "Blowin' In The Wind" and Jimi Hendrix later nailing "All Along The Watchtower." Talk about a wide range!

On top of that, many of his classics now have different musical arrangements, and his concert vocal style -- to put it charitably -- is rougher than it was a generation ago. So even words and music one supposedly already knows may sound nothing like the original when he performs live.

This makes him bewildering to some concertgoers and reviewers (particularly if far from the stage) and explains the outright hostility some exhibit. They are insulted that he's not living up to their preconceptions and expectations.

Right...like he's never dealt with that before.

All of which is why Dylan remains vital in the 21st century. His band positively smokes on stage, and that certainly helps, but anybody who's frontloading new material in concert after damn near five decades, while totally deconstructing their big hits of the past, is artistically vital by any definition.

Nobody asked an aging Picasso to go back and paint like he did in his "Blue Period." People change, and he's not the same folkie who sang at MLK's March On Washington in 1963, or the same rocker who wore heavy mascara, or the same country crooner who penned "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight." Yet he has been those things...at one time or another.

The Recording Industry Association of America says that the top three album-selling musical acts of all time are Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and Garth Brooks. Elvis covered a Dylan song, Garth took another, "Make You Feel My Love," to #1 on the country charts in 1998, and the Beatles even put his face on the cover of their own Sergeant Pepper's album (upper right corner).

That's cutting quite a swath.

Meanwhile, in 2007, the Bard is still writing, still influencing, and still on the road, headin' for another joint.

'Nuff said.

Bob Dylan in Worcester, Massachusetts
October 2nd

1. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
2. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
3. Watching The River Flow
4. John Brown
5. Rollin' And Tumblin'
6. Workingman's Blues #2
7. High Water (For Charlie Patton)
8. Beyond The Horizon
9. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)
10. Spirit On The Water
11. Highway 61 Revisited
12. Ain't Talkin'
13. Summer Days
14. Ballad Of A Thin Man
(encore)
15. Thunder On The Mountain
16 All Along The Watchtower

Comments

[PatA]

"Time Out of Mine" came out after my divorce. "you left me standing, in the doorway crying".

Need I say more?

[BoBoBolinski]

Rock n Roll these days is like a walk through the suburbs or a stroll through the mall.

[brueso]

I began being a Dylan fan in my youth in the early 70's. I didn't get to see him live til the mid 80s backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (but at one gig in Berkeley, Neil Young just showed up to play backing guitar!). I saw him in the mid 90s and it was an off night- I didn't think I'd see him again. My brother bought me a ticket to see him last year here in Seattle- omigod, I couldn't believe how energized Mr. Z was! He stood up and played keyboards the whole night and was dancing the whole time! I wondered if in part his energy came from the fact he was facing his band the whole time so he could concentrate on their groove vs. just looking at cheering fans. Whatever the reason, it was a fantastic night!

[starboymikey]

One thing many have noted about Dylan is how his different fan bases have, over the decades, first diefied and then vilified him, when they perceived that he let them down. First the folkies, then the 60's acid-rockers, the country fans, the Christian fundamentalists. I've been a Dylan fan since day one, but I'll admit having a problem with the Christian era.

The point is that Dylan, quite apart from his musical and lyric genius, has always been a cultural chameleon, or maybe more like a child playing "dress-up" just to see what it felt like to be someone or something else.

It's just for this reason that the Dylan bio-pic (so aptly titled "I'm not there") sounds so intriguing. The idea of having such totally different actors (including a woman) portraying him feels radically and brilliantly appropriate to the subject matter. This, of course, does not necessarily mean it will be a good film. In fact, the risks the director is taking could make it a major bomb. For my part, I will see it asap, even if the reviewers tank it. After forty years as a fan, how could I not.

[sher2x4]

I first heard Bob Dylan in 1963. My life hasn't been the same since.

[JaneaneTheAcerbicGoblin]

Dylan is just a truly amazing artist, one of the greatest this WORLD has ever produced. The fact that this man had a #1 record last year (it entered the charts at #1) at the tender age of 65 is really amazing. And it is such a great record. A lot of younger people are really into Dylan, and why not? Much of modern music is tepid and lame, and to listen to such a great artist who is still going and going strong is something wonderful to behold. Dylan's band blows away bands half their age. Dylan is still making vital music.

The only other American artist you can compare him to is Clint Eastwood, who just finished directing 2 masterful WWII films back to back! That's really hard to do at any age, and Clint did it at 76. And they're brilliant films, not Dirty Harry 6.

Dylan and Clint just keep going....

That's a great setlist by the way.

[tgdonoho]

we see bob every time he gets close. he sounds different every time. sometime he is a blues singer, sometimes he is a country artist, sometimes he is just bob. you never know what bob you are going to hear. it is always a surprise and it is always great. his voice is better sometimes than others but the band is always smokin'. the song choices are always different and he does change the way he plays them but then his mind must be changing constantly, i am not an artist but i imagine that is what a true artist does.

[sheffwed]

well, having been to Worcester, I can attest that this was an extremely special concert.

Bob got on a roll from Beyond the Horizon through the end, that was hard to imagine, and I've seen him 5 times this year, and dozens of times before that.

You kind of have to see him multiple times, to have the best chance of catching his best live work.

His concerts & songs are quite amorphous and alive now, changing from performance to performance, even of the same song, dramatically.

He is in his prime.

Not to mention how good Elvis Costello is these days - his song The Scarlet Tide is one the best songs of the decade, as is The River in Reverse.

Catch them if you can.

[larstein]

Any negation of Dylan's place in the history of American song can only show the writer's ignorance of this most seminal and protein of songwriters. Because of Dylan, American song has expanded past the formal straightjackets of commercial traditions, released possibilities to other songwriters of lyric modalities hitherto unimagined, and expressed a pantheon of vernacular styles and forms. He has contributed more than any other songwriter in making the art of the song the property of both the average person and the professional songwriter. In doing so, he has helped make songwriting an art form as nuanced and profound as that of poetry, large form instrumental music, painting, and sculpture. It is hard to imagine what music would be like without him. He is absolutely our Walt Whitman, and it makes one feel very honored to have lived in a world with him in it, alive, and still in his prime.

[garyoke]

Bob Dylan - the vocal equivalent of Sir Ian McKellen's face these days - has been at the zenith of his powers this past decade. Time Out Of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern TImes are a wildly successful triumvirate of albums (if we call them that anymore)

At last nights concert in Manchester NH, a hugely diverse crowd was treated to a virtual overview of American musical styles from 20s type ukelele love songs (Spirit On The Water), Chess type blues (Honest With Me), classic rock (Rolling Stone), 70s rock and stomp (an apocalyptic Levees Gonna Break) and unclassifiable, uniquely Dylan songs (Nettie Moore).

The songs were greeted raptuously by a crowd that ranged from 8 to 80. Three 20-somethings behind me were jumping up and down at the concert's end saying "I can't believe I just saw Bob Dylan live!".

McCartney and the Stones are museum acts. The Police are raking it in on their own "filthy lucre" tour.

Bob is still a powerful creative force. the jazz analogy doesn't hold. But I'll go head to head with anyone who disagrees that Dylan is not the most important American lyricist this side of Ira Gershwin.

God bless His Bobness. May he stay Forever Young.

[Jacksonfromtejas]

A commenter asks: "What jazz artist covers Dylan, he's hardly on the level of Gershwin, Berlin, Porter."

Well, Cassandra Wilson has done Dylan covers on more than one of her CD's over the years. And Madeleine Peyroux does a great version of "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go." Or check out "Trouble: The Jamie Saft Trio Plays Bob Dylan."

Nina Simone did too many Dylan covers to list.

The Martin Scorsese documentary on PBS even had an ancient snippet of Duke Ellington and the orchestra doing a Dylan number.

Maria Muldaur, who sings jazz and folk, has a whole album of Dylan covers.

That's just a very small sampling of jazz artists who've covered Dylan over the past 45 years.

[arethabaez]

Unless an artist changes the arrangemnt of the standard material it's always more interesting to here new or obscure stuff if the artist is a good performer and Dylan is that.

[arethabaez]

What jazz artist covers Dylan, he's hardly on a the level of Gershwin, Berlin, Porter etc. And Chronicles was one of the phoniest books I ever read.

[songtraveler]

make that "went" down on one knee, obviously

[songtraveler]

Bob's in his prime.

At the New Orleans Jazz fest in `03, he absolutely was the King of the Musical Universe in front of a very savy crowd of over 100,000.

At the end of that show, he walked up to the edge of the stage, and, I swear by all that lives, when down on one knee to the crowd.

I had trouble believing what I'd just seen, but I saw it.

"Time Out of Mind," "Love and Theft," and "Modern Times" are all majestic--melancholy, poetic, full of longing, wildly comic.

May the Never-Ending Tour never end.