"When I was fifteen and I heard 'Like a Rolling Stone,' I heard a guy
like I've never heard before or since. A guy that had the guts to take
on the whole world and make me feel like I had 'em too..."
- Bruce Springsteen
The Grammy Awards ceremony in 1991 was not all that different from those which preceded it. A crowded auditorium littered with the beautiful people of Hollywood and the music industry once again gathered in Los Angeles to honor the year's most popular recording artists. However, at the time of this year's awards the country was in the midst of its first significant military action since the Vietnam conflict. The threat of a full-scale ground attack loomed on the horizon and the nation seemed overwhelmingly united in favor of war. At one point in the evening the wily Jack Nicholson rose and made his way to the podium to present the year's lifetime achievement award. This year's recipient was somewhat of a sharp contrast to the high profile event that the Grammys had become. The 1991 Lifetime Achievement Award for music went to none other than Robert Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan, a musician whose monumental contribution to contemporary music had occurred nearly thirty years prior to this evening. After a brief introduction the lights were dimmed and all attention was directed to a slight, haggard-looking gentleman dressed in black. He faced the audience solemnly holding a guitar, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. Behind him a band began whaling a tantric and ferocious melody, yet not an eye shifted from the prophet who stood before them.
"Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks"
His voice that evening snarled with an enflamed bitterness so appropriate to his most passionate antiwar song. Bob Dylan's lyrics that evening were dated. But, no doubt to his great dismay, they were no more less relevant on this evening in 1991 then they were when he wrote them in the midst of then President Lyndon Johnson's controversial deployment of American troops to Vietnam. The audience that evening wasn't watching some fly-by-night hipster playing senseless fluff. They were caste in the shadow of the most prophetic musical figure of the last fifty years. A man whose inner fire forged a new musical frontier and shaped an entire generation of American youth.
Background
The man affectionately known as Bob Dylan to millions of fans
worldwide was actually born Robert Zimmerman on May 24, 1941 in
Hibbing, Minnesota. Hibbing is a desolate mining town on the
outskirts of Duluth, near the Canadian border. Zimmerman's father
was a local business owner, operating an appliance and furniture
store in Hibbing. As a boy, young Robert was introverted and
secretive. As he reached adolescence Robert became a talented
storyteller with a tendency to fabricate stories about his past to
such an extent as to make the truth difficult to decipher. With age
came the renouncing of his Jewish faith, just one of many rebellious
stands taken in that period. Those closest to Robert at that time
attributed his rejection of Judaism to the boy's dislike for the
small-town business community that his father represented. Robert
fashioned himself in the mold of James Dean and became somewhat
of a leather-clad, motorcycle-riding 'greaser'. Even in the midst of
such emulation, Robert remained a social outsider with few friends.
Any identity problems that Zimmerman may have incurred during
childhood were no doubt addressed in the countless musical and
poetic verses which he had penned starting at the age of ten. Robert
played in several bands in high school but as he remembers, " ... lead
singers would always come in and take my bands because their
fathers would have connections, so they could get a job in the next
town at a Sunday picnic. And I'd lose my job. I'd see it all the time."
Young Robert Zimmerman had a vast array of stylistic
influences in both music and literature. The former included
everything from the scorching blues rifts of Muddy Waters and John
Lee Hooker to the straightforward rural simplicity of Hank Williams.
Critics have pointed to his early musical tastes as a melting pot of
racial and stylistic ingredients. His taste in written verse was no
less varied. William Blake and Allen Ginsberg were two of
Zimmerman's early poetic favorites. However, it was the work of
two lesser-known writing talents, namely Bertolt Brecht and Arthur
Rimbaud, which had the most profound effect on the young man's
unique combination of poetic and musical interests. Rimbaud was a
French poet who used surrealistic imagery to promote self-imposed
exile as a release from the grind of modern industrial society.
Brecht wrote incisive, politically-motivated verse which was often
set to a strummed guitar and read aloud. Later in life Zimmerman
would pool the poetic arenas of each into a hybrid of contemporary
American verse. This seemingly random set of unique influences
combined to form the foundation of Bob Dylan's musical background.
In 1959 Robert Zimmerman enrolled at the University of
Minnesota in nearby Minneapolis. It has been said that from the
beginning he spent more time taking in the local folk music scene at
campus coffee houses than he did in any classroom. Robert was
apparently very sharp for his age but appeared mildly rebellious
when it came to his professors, who he saw as members of the
Establishment. After three semesters of college Zimmerman dropped
out and began to play in clubs around the Minneapolis area, most
notably the Purple Onion Pizza Parlour. He received less than rave
reviews. It was around this approximate period that Robert
Zimmerman became Bob Dylan. The prevailing opinion, which has
neither been confirmed nor denied by Dylan himself, is that the name
derives from Dylan Thomas, the Welch bardic poet and perpetual
outsider in his own right.
Around September of 1960, while still playing local college
venues, Dylan reads "Bound For Glory" by Woody Guthrie. Guthrie was
a living legend of the American West. He lived the life of a
romanticized hobo, traveling haggardly around the country with only
his wits, verbal skills, and keen musical ear. Upon reading this work
Dylan identifies strongly with the author and immediately becomes a
disciple of Guthrie. He quickly adopts the persona and playing style
of the old folk legend, playing Guthrie songs almost exclusively. In
true hobo fashion, Dylan dropped everything and traveled to Denver.
It was in the Colorado blues and folk scene that Dylan began
sculpting his style and stage presence. He emerged from Denver with
the Guthrie-like Okie twang and rough, weathered appearance that
have been a trademark ever since. The next destination for Bob Dylan
was clear, he was to travel to New York City and meet an ailing
Woody Guthrie (who at the time was dying from Huntington's
disease) and ultimately assume the role of the master's protege' in
the folk Mecca of Greenwich Village.
Bob Dylan hitchhiked to New York City, arriving on January 24,
1962. He had a sudden and remarkable impact on the Greenwich
Village community. Playing at clubs like the "Cafe Wha?" "The
Gaslight," and "The Limelight" and then eventually "Gerde's Folk
City" Dylan made an instant name for himself and quickly
familiarized himself with local headliners such as Fred Neil,
Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and eventually John Lee Hooker and Joan Baez.
On October 26, 1961 Dylan signed a contract with Columbia Records.
He had placed himself square on the path to Sixties superstardom.
Cultural Impact
In order to fully appreciate the impact of Bob Dylan on music
and culture, one must be familiar with the events surrounding his
greatest works. America in the early 1960s saw a new generation
coming of age. The parents of this generation had fought tirelessly
and unquestionably for the societal ideals of peace and the "good"
life. This elder generation had high expectations for their children to
continue on in their tradition of idealism and what they considered
societal evolution. However, the older generation was also
unknowingly passing on less noteworthy legacies such as continued
racial prejudice, severe anxiety over the threat of nuclear
obliteration, and marked socioeconomic inequality. Somewhere
amidst the supposed rapid progress, the ideals of truth, justice and
equality had been compromised. The children began to question the
machine.
Enter folk music, which had been driven underground by
conservative forces in the 1950s but was enjoying a 60s resurgence.
Performers such as Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary had given
folk music a bit of a political tint, but the youth of the early 60s did
not completely identify. Folk music was providing the pedestal for
the voice of a generation but, as of yet, there were no takers.
Enter Bob Dylan, folk music's shining star. Dylan was not just a
songwriter, he was a creative force capable of transferring the
thoughts, questions, and issues of an entire generation into written
verse. The man composed absolute folk masterpieces such as
"Blowin' In the Wind", "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and "The Times
They Are A-Changin,'" from which the following is taken:
Come mothers and fathers throughout the land,
And don't criticize what you can't understand,
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command,
Your old road is rapidly aging,
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand,
'Cause times they are a-changin'
Dylan had created songs the likes of which had never before been
seen. It was as if he were holding a mirror up to the face of society
and forcing America to take a good hard look at itself. His style was
so unique, so individual, so very much his own that it has been
emulated ever since.
Despite his great success in folk music, Dylan soon felt
restricted by the rather stiff musical style. As talented and
prophetic as he was, Dylan yearned to appeal to a mainstream
audience. The new generation needed a figure reminiscent of Elvis
and rockabilly in the 1950s. Unfortunately for Bob Dylan (and folk
music for that matter) a folk musician could never amass such a
following. Dylan watched as the more lively blues-rock bands such
as the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Animals grew quickly in
popularity. It was clear to Dylan that he needed to liven up his act in
order to reach broader audience. On July 25, 1965 Bob Dylan took the
stage of the Newport Folk Festival and forever changed the face of
pop music. Dylan, backed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, donned
an electric guitar and proceeded to play what would become the
battlecry for the 60s generation, not to mention his most famous
song, "Like A Rolling Stone." The song perfectly voiced the feelings
of a generation of young people trying desperately to live by their
own rules and values and feeling increasingly cut-off from
mainstream society. An excerpt from that earth-shattering tune:
Oh you've gone to the finest school, all right Miss Lonely
But you know you only got juiced in it.
Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street
And now you're gonna have to get used to it...
How does it feel?
How does it feel?
To be on your own
With no direction home,
A complete unknown
Like a rolling stone.
The folk music crowd greeted Dylan's stylistic metamorphosis with
a chorus of boos. They may not have realized it at the time, but what
they were really jeering that afternoon was the departure of a hero
who was too big for folk alone.
Dylan's electric era completely changed the established rules
for pop music. All of the sudden pop music could cover any subject
which a writer had the courage to address. It is fair to say that
without the Beatles influence on Dylan, that there could never have
been a "Like a Rolling Stone" or any other hit in Dylan's brief but
fiery electric period in the mid-1960s. But it is equally fair to say
that without this period in Dylan's career there could have been no
"Eleanor Rigby", or "A Day in the Life," or even "(I Can't Get No)
Satisfaction" for that matter. Dylan opened the door, and the rest of
the music industry entered the new world of music according to Bob.
The ramifications of this movement are awesome. Dylan is
credited with enabling the latter half of 60s rock& roll to occur.
This accolade is one which Dylan could do without. In years to follow
he would be unwillingly crowned as a godfather of sorts for the
entire generation. As such he was often held responsible for the
affiliation of drugs with music which, at first was seen as a
doorway to creativity. Later, however, it was seen as the
destruction of many a bright mind and the sure way to an untimely
end.
The Godfather Restores Order to Chaos
One morning in July, 1966, in Woodstock, New York the back
wheel of Bob Dylan's motorcycle locked and he was thrown over the
front handlebars. He suffered a concussion and broken vertebrae in
his neck. What resulted was a two year hiatus from the rock&roll
scene in which Dylan watched in isolation as the music world which
he helped to create exploded first into beautiful youthful bliss and
then decayed into complete and utter insanity and chaos.
By late 1966 all the talk of individuality and personal
integrity resulted in a number of alternative communities and
political movements in America and Europe. Most notably was the
attempt to form a utopian society based on music, sex, idealistic
love, and mind-altering drugs in the Haight-Ashbury district of San
Francisco. In 1967 the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band, an album which refined the concepts set up by
Haight-Ashbury and united youth in a communal effort for utopian
society. It was a magical, but painfully brief time in American
history and rock music reflected the principles of the moment,
concerning itself with defiance, love, and spirituality. It didn't last.
Haight-Ashbury was one of the first of the dominoes to fall.
Drugs like heroin, cocaine, and speed infested the utopia, and it
began to draw a shady crowd of rapists, thieves and murderers.
Public backlash was soon to follow as a media and generational
panic resulted in the blaming of rock for society's ills. The older
generation began what amounted to an anti-youth campaign in an
effect to restore whatever order they saw as lost. The insanity of
the moment was invigorating in one sense, and terrifying in another.
Bob Dylan returned to the popular music scene in early 1968
and once again exerted a colossal impact on both the music industry
and the American society. From his isolated home in Woodstock
Dylan was virtually the only major pop star not completely
immersed in the moment. During his months of recovery Dylan
worked tirelessly in the basement studio of his good friends The
Band. The result was the January, 1968 release of John Wesley
Harding, an album which essentially set out to salvage all the good
that remainined in America. Harding focused on the values of family
and history which have endured through recent times with the hope
of applying these priceless notions to heal the current title wave of
turmoil and despair. It was as if Dylan were trying to work against
the era's tide of rebellion and contempt, a tide to which he himself
had contributed tirelessly only years before. The album painted the
image of an America which was decaying from within. Rock & roll
had entrenched itself behind the tarnished ideals of spirituality and
individuality for too long and the entire industry was being buried
under the societal rubble. John Wesley Harding was Dylan's fiery
critique to a rock world which had gone awry. The album was so
deceptively simple, returning to the most basic of rock's tenets,
that it caused a full-scale reevaluation of the industry's basic
principles.
Dylan had watched the venomous state of pop music alienate a
large sect from the population. He realized that in order to salvage
the many lessons of the 60s revolution, the youth must cool their
heated alienation of the middle- and working-class peoples. The
youth of America could never emerge victorious from a battle waged
directly on such a huge force in the American population. Thus Dylan
staked a claim for sanity and order in music and society, and his
claim was heard. All of the sudden popular music was emerging from
places previously considered terminally "unhip." Blues, gospel and
even country and western came into vogue as Harding carried the
banner for what would later be called the Southern Rock movement.
Soon bands that could not have killed for radio play two years before
were a fixture on the dial. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young were
among the first to capitalize on this movement. Lynyrd Skynyrd and
The Allman Brothers Band would follow in the years to come,
displaying a rural sound which scoffed at the overt political lyrics
of rock's late 60's chaos period. Dylan's varied rock influences in his
youth and his position on the fringes of society had combined to
forever alter the path of rock music one more time.
The release of John Wesley Harding and the follow-up
Nashville Skyline marked Bob Dylan's final major impact on the
music world. That is not to say that the next three decades were any
less colorful than the previous. However, later songs shied away
from the political arena and tended to deal with more domestic
issues of family, love, and self. Some of Dylan's most memorable
songs and albums came in this period which critics often casually
refer to as a decline. "Hurricane," released in 1975, detailed the
story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a black heavyweight boxing
contender who was wrongly imprisoned for a murder which he did
not commit. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," was another mid-Seventies
Dylan classic which was later covered by Eric Clapton to the tune of
major commercial success. The 1977 release of Blood On The Tracks
is considered by many to be Dylan's most moving and powerful
album. Tracks details the painful separation of Dylan from his first
and only wife, Sara Lowndes, with tunes such as the smash hit
"Tangled Up In Blue." 1980's single "Gotta Serve Somebody" earned
Dylan his lone Grammy Award in the midst of his brief conversion to
fundamentalist Christianity. As 1997 draws to a close Dylan
continues to disprove critics who have been awaiting his decline
from the ranks of music's elite for the past twenty odd years. His
1997 release Time Out of Mind received rave reviews and is widely
considered to be his best work since the mid-Seventies. In addition,
Dylan was recently nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, the
first such nomination ever given to a pop musician. There is no other
figure in rock's history more deserved than Bob Dylan.
Dylan's Multiple Intelligences
The fact that Bob Dylan has earned fame as a musician in no
way limits his gifts to the musical realm exclusively. In fact,
Dylan's musical talents are often the subject of ridicule for their
straightforward simplicity. The truth is that nothing could be
further from the truth. Dylan exhibits an uncanny ability to
construct a sweet and inviting melody in even his most politically
rancorous tunes. The simplicity masks a superior ear for soothing
and uplifting melodies, posing as a sort of eternal optimism
throughout every song.
Still more than any of his intellectual gifts is Dylan's ability
to communicate in written verse. He transcended the art of rock &
roll with lyrics which destroyed the boundaries of the music and
alluded to a greater meaning. Dylan is truly America's lyrical rock
poet, as he is affectionately known.
Dylan also ranks high in interpersonal intelligence as shown in
his relations with the culture in which he was a part. Although an
outsider, Dylan knew people inside and out. What has made Dylan
legendary has been his ability to view a large scale movement and
forsee its immediate future. This ability has been illustrated again
and again in his works. He has related on a personal level to entire
generations of music lovers and continues to do so today.
But perhaps the key to Dylan's supernatural longevity in the
face of time and changes is his incredible knowledge of self. He
always seemed to know when his heart was into a musical and when
it was not. The Beatles have often been criticized for The Magical
Mystery Tour as a foiled attempt to recapture the spirit of Sgt.
Pepper. By constantly remaining on the societal fringe, Dylan was
able to create music that was exclusively his own, as opposed to
being part of some great rock movement or era. Even in today's video
age, Dylan has managed to stick to his guns and remain his own
person. He has distanced himself from the countless trends and fads
which have come and gone in recent years, never once compromising
his artistic dignity. The result is a Time Out of Mind album which is
a fresh breath of reality from a man whose concern is neither style
nor popularity, but music in all its glory.
Works Used for the Paper:
Edmunson, Mark. "Tangled Up In Truth." Civilization. October, 1997. p.
50-55.
Gilmore, Mikal. "Bob Dylan at Fifty." Rolling Stone: May 30, 1991. p. 56-60.
Gilmore, Mikal. "60s." Rolling Stone: August 23, 1990. p. 61-65+.
Larkin, Colin, Kenny Clarke and Jackie Gleason. The Guiness
Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Guiness Publishing: New York, 1985.
Loder, Kurt. "Bob Dylan." Rolling Stone: October 15, 1992. p.
110-113.
Millers, Wilfred. A Darker Shade of Pale: A Backdrop to Bob Dylan. Oxford University Press: New York, 1984.
also
ftp://ftp.cs.pdx.edu/pub/dylan
http://www.rio.com/~ryans/influence/dylan