Tag: Bob Dylan

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Flight 93: The Movie

Am I supposed to feel good about the fact that the makers of the upcoming film, “Flight 93”, have received “cooperation” from all of the families of the passengers?

Some of these families were concerned that earlier accounts of the flight only paid attention to the “heroes”. They want to ensure that their family member gets some exposure as well. This smells of political correctness. Maybe some of the people on this plane were assholes? We’ll never know, because that is not the kind of “exposure” the families want.

I don’t hesitate to acknowledge the terrible sufferings of the families and victims of 9/11. It was a traumatic event, unprecedented in scope, certainly deserving of respectful acknowledgement and a certain degree of sensitivity from the media and film-makers.

But they are not the only ones who have died in the world in the last five years, and not the only ones who have died tragically. And I am sure the the families of all victims, whether of violence, inflicted by misguided governments or fanatic organizations, or the random violence of criminals and psychotics, or the horror of illnesses that strike without reason or logic, all feel that their sufferings are unique and unparalleled and deserving of deferential respect.

But nobody seems willing to publicly challenge the families of the 9/11 victims, whether on the issue of the preposterously excessive compensation they receive (why on earth are they and they alone entitled to millions of dollars in pay-outs when even the families of soldiers are not?) or, in this case, on how history looks at the event.

“Flight 93” is being directed by Paul Greengrass, who directed “Bloody Sunday”, about the 1972 riots in Ireland that resulted in the deaths of 13 unarmed demonstrators. He is a good director, and the film seems promising.

But, is Mr. Greengrass making a home movie? Is Mr. Greengrass making a movie that these family members will be proud to show at family gatherings in the future? Or is he making a movie that strives for accuracy and truth?

It all fits with a trend. We are now inundated with biographical films that are approved by the families or friends of the subject. Not one of these films would admit that they are dishonest in any way– the people who approve of them (and sell the rights to the stories) love to tell Oprah or David or Conan that the movie will show “warts and all”. But they usually only show the warts you don’t mind people seeing, or the warts everyone already knows about. Ray Charles didn’t mind that you knew how many women wanted to sleep with him or that he did drugs and Johnny Cash doesn’t mind if you know that he did pills and alcohol and chased June Carter. But if either of these guys, or Mohammed Ali or Patsy Cline or Buddy Holly or Loretta Lynn or even Jerry Lee Lewis did anything really reprehensible (that you don’t already know about), it aint going to come out in the film.

It is partly due to the onerous provisions of current copyright laws. It has become nearly impossible to make a biographical movie without getting permission from the various stakeholders, whether it is the copyright owners (of the music or images), or families. When the “Buddy Holly Story” was filmed, they actually had to use fictitious names for the Crickets because they had sold the rights separately from the Holly family. That is bizarre. If that is really the result of current legislation on copyright, the legislation needs to be changed. As his highness said in “Amadeus” (a movie without the problem because all of it’s principals were long deceased), “this is stupid”.

Can it be done otherwise? Check out “Backbeat” about the Beatles’ early career. It’s a great film.

On the other hand, I just realized that I hadn’t applied my own theory: who is shown most flatteringly in the movie? Without a doubt, Astrid Kirchherr, depicted as a fascinating, sophisticated, clever, sexy fan-savant.

I just checked a few web-sites. According to this one, Astrid was indeed involved in the production. How about that.

I do not look forward to the inevitable biopic of Bob Dylan, even though the story of one of the most compelling artists of our age should be an important and significant film. Bob Dylan controls the rights to his music. Nobody will be able to make a film without the music, thus, without the approval of Bob Dylan or his estate. I have no doubt that when it comes, the owners of the rights will proclaim, loudly and insistently, that the biography will be “warts and all”. And I have no doubt that it will really be a highly selective and probably distorted picture. [2008-05: I was wrong. The Dylan film, “I’m Not There”, was brilliant. Dylan, after seeing “I Walk the Line”, let it be known to director Todd Haynes that he could have all the rights he wanted and make the film he wanted because Dylan was not going to demand approval of the script or the film. He didn’t want a typical “biopic”. He wanted to leave the judgement of how the film was made to the director. Hallelujah!]

A fair question is– is that any better or worse than the type of biography we get from Albert Goldman,

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Dud Lyrics

I’m talking about songs that might or might not be sound, otherwise, but which contain at least one clunker, one dud, that mars an otherwise charming experience.

I always liked Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”, for example, but one line always grated on my nerves. “They sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say, ‘man, what are you doing here?'”. What does he mean? He has just described the brief, pathetic lives of several bar patrons, all of whom seem to be deluding themselves. But even they know that that the narrator, Billy Joel himself, presumably, doesn’t belong in this seedy little joint. It’s an embarrassing line. I hope Joel deletes it when he releases the tenth edition of his greatest bestest collected gold hits, director’s cut.

I also liked “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her” by Mary Chapin Carpenter. It’s about a woman who lives the traditional life, marrying, having kids, keeping house, until she is 37. Then she decides to leave her husband. The song doesn’t tell you what the husband did wrong. It just keep repeating the chorus, “he thinks he’ll keep her”. That obviously comes from a phrase some men might use to describe a fish they did not throw back because it was too skinny or young or tasteless. It’s a patronizing phrase of course. He deserves her contempt. But she’s a strong, independent woman: she leaves him.

But wait a minute– she doesn’t leave him. I had always misunderstood the last line. She doesn’t pack her suitcases and wait at the door! She packs his suitcases.

In other words, he’s worked for 17 years paying the mortgage and all the bills just so she can scam him out of the house, and probably the car, and probably some nice juicy support payments too. Then she joins the typing pool at minimum wage, proud, one supposes, of the fact that she is no longer a “kept” woman.

Does Carpenter even realize how utterly hypocritical this line is?  She packs his bags.  I’m keeping the community property.  Go sleep in a hotel.  But don’t forget to pay the mortgage.

Well, let’s look a little further: she lists a multitude of tasks that she, as a woman, does for the family, implying, of course, that he doesn’t do anything.  Sure, if pressed, Mary Chapin Carpenter will probably admit that he does more than just pay the bills.  We could add a verse:  he fixes the car, he fixes the stove; he deals with spiders; he investigates strange noises at night; he deals with aggressive sales people; he understands taxes; he assembles bookshelves; he takes the kids fishing, whatever.

I find this little twist annoying. If she has decided that after only seventeen years of patronizing attitudes, she is going to get out from under his paternalistic domination and strike out on her own, she should be the one to pack the bags.  Not feminism’s finest moment.  Here’s a whole gang of empowered women singing an anthem to the idea of taking a man for everything he’s worth.  Oh wait– there’s at least four men in the band, let alone behind the mixer console.  Oh shit– and it was “co-written” by a man, Don Schlitz.  Just like “I am Woman” and “You Don’t Own Me”, the other great feminist anthems.

Okay.  That’s just plain cheesie, girls.  Write your own damn songs of liberation from dependence on men.  That said– it’s a great song, as is “Passionate Kisses”. written by Lucinda Williams.

Both these cuts are actual live recordings.  Here is the original.

My favorite lines:

pens that won’t run out of ink /and cool quiet time to think.

A heart-breaking song by Lucinda Williams.  This is a real break-up song written by a woman.

In “Things Have Changed”, Bob Dylan tells you about a woman sitting on his lap who is drinking champagne. She is obviously part of the degraded landscape he find so appalling. She has white skin and “assassin’s eyes”.

My question is, then why is he letting her sit on his lap? Maybe he wants it both ways. Maybe he finds her sexually enticing, but still reserves to right to condemn her moral lassitude. Take a hike, Bob.

Paul Simon’s “Feelin’ Groovy” is one long bad lyric. It is quite possibly the worst lyric ever written by a self-respected singer-songwriter. And it contains the single worst, lamest line ever written: “Life, I love you; all is groovy”.

“all is groovy”

Well, I guess he couldn’t fit “everything is groovy” into that phrase.

Bob Dylan could have. He would have created something interesting out of it too. “Everything is twisted cat slicked back silver sack groovy– everything…”

You wouldn’t want to say, “I am groovy”, would you? And you’ve already said, “Life, I love you”, which makes me picture a fat drooling golden-haired choir-boy running from tree to tree embracing everything and waving his sparkly wand. All is groovy. Not, “it” is groovy, or “life is groovy”, but “all” is groovy.

And as if it isn’t enough to have written and copyrighted the worst line of all time, Simon and Garfunkel give a saccharine little vocal twist to the words, the literary equivalent of dumping four heaps of sugar into your lukewarm tea.

Finally, there is Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love is”.

This mountain I must climb
Feels like the world upon my shoulders.

What we have here is a simile used to give us a metaphorical impression of a metaphor.  The rest of the lyric is as lame as you might imagine.  

Please note the fake video– this is not the recording of the singers that you see.  They are obviously posed and coached to look passionate and inspired but the recording is definitely a studio job dubbed for this stinking video.

Bob Dylan (“Is Your Love in Vain”):

Can you cook and sew/Make flowers grow

Really Bob?  Yes, even Bob has a few duds.  Very few.

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Two Great Movie Ideas: You’re Welcome, Hollywood!

All right, these ideas are copyrighted– okay? So you can’t steal them. They are going to make me a lot of money.

There are two absolutely magnificent, wonderful movies out there just waiting to be made.

First of all, a movie biography of Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan grew up in Minnesota and wanted to be a rock’n’roll singer like Elvis. He didn’t see the fact that he sounded like a chorus of drowning weasels as an obstacle. He hitch-hiked to New York, found out that folk music was what was happening, man, and began playing at open mic shows at several local folk clubs, sounding more like Woody Guthrie than Elvis Presley. In fact, people used to say he sounded more like Woody Guthrie than Woody Guthrie did. (You can check this out by downloading some Guthrie tunes through Napster– the resemblance to early Dylan is uncanny.)

He wrote some of the greatest folk songs of the century. He was noticed by New York Times folk critic Robert Shelton. Bingo– Columbia (now Sony) signed him to a recording contract. For a while he was known as “Hammond’s Folly”, after John Hammond, the A&R man who signed him. But Joan Baez took him along on tour. Peter, Paul, and Mary covered his best songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All right”. He became big. Very big. Even the Beatles were listening to Bob Dylan. (But Elvis wasn’t– he was in the army, and then he was making crummy “B” movies in Hollywood.) He became the “spokesman of generation”. He didn’t want to be the spokesman of a generation. He shifted to rock’n’roll in 1965, with a bunch of Canadians known as “The Hawks” (later known simply as “the Band”) backing him. He wrote more great songs. Then, in 1967, he was almost killed in a motorcycle accident. In the meantime, the Beatles and Rolling Stones released several massively over-produced behemoths of albums, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Her Satanic Majesties Request. Everyone eagerly awaited Dylan’s response. Would he top them?

Dylan shocked the music world by releasing a very folky, very laid-back album called “John Wesley Harding”, featuring drums, bass, guitar, and harmonica. He retreated into a simpler, more introspective style.

It’s a great story. It covers the most fascinating period of American history this century: the 1960’s. It’s got everything. Everything except… the rights to Dylan’s songs.

Bob Dylan– unlike most musical artists today– actually owns the rights to his songs. If someone were to make a movie of Bob Dylan’s life, he would have to get Bob Dylan’s permission, or make a movie about the greatest song-writer of our century without using any of his songs.

Bob– if you’re listening– I have a great idea for you. Call Martin Scorsese and tell him that he can make a movie about you and you will give him the rights to use any of your songs in the movie. Tell him that you won’t even look at the movie or the script or anything until after it’s all done. Tell him he can do whatever he thinks is best with the story.

Come on, Bob. You gave “The Times They Are A’Changin'” to the Bank of Montreal. It’s the least you could do for your fans. You owe it to them.

The results would be a great movie. It would not always be flattering to Bob Dylan, who sometimes acted like a jerk, and who was known to stand aloof from his friends. But the most flattering thing about it would be that Bob Dylan was big enough and brave enough to do the right thing and let someone else make this movie and to let the director have all the control over the material, the way Bob has full control over his own recordings.

Are you listening, Bob? I ask a measly 1% of the gross in exchange for permission to use this idea, and the right to meet Uma Thurman, if she could be given a bit part, perhaps as Nico.

Okay– my second great movie idea: a remake of the 3 Stooges. This time, they are computer programmers working for Microsoft. While they’re not coding new applets for Office 2003 1/2, they are off creating mayhem at the Department of Justice Hearings, or directing U.S. negotiations at the WTO.

I’m serious. People are ready for unsophisticated, trashy, vaudeville-type humour. The baby-boomers will love it. Young people always find obscure retro-acts hip and amusing. Anyone who has ever used Microsoft Windows will immediately appreciate the humour of Curly trying to figure out how “plug’n’play” works, or writing little Java applets for the Microsoft Web Page or finding ways to make Word Perfect crash.

Well that’s it. Are you listening, Hollywood Moguls? Call me and make me rich.

Who should star in a Bob Dylan Movie:

Sean Penn as Bob Dylan
Robert Deniro as Albert Grossman
Anne Hathaway as Joan Baez (yes, Anne can sing).
Ronnie Hawkins as the ghost of Elvis
Tom Waits as Woody Guthrie
Uma Thurman as Nico
Al Pacino as Leonard Cohen
Winona Ryder as Sarah Lowndes

10 years after I wrote this, Bob Dylan did exactly what I suggested– except, he gave it to Todd Haynes instead of Martin Scorcese. The result was the exquisite “I’m Not There”.   You’re welcome, Bob.  Call me sometime and we’ll work out a gratuity.  [2011-03]

Correction: Todd Haynes was the director, not P. T. Anderson as stated earlier. [2014-09-16]

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Bob Dylan’s Voice

Bob Dylan performed a concert in Montreal on July 8th, 1988. He was so bad the audience booed him off the stage. Humiliated and disgraced, he retired from all public performances, though he continued to write brilliant, searing songs like “The Man in the Long Black Coat” for other artists who knew how to sing, like Joan Osborne.

Yeah. Right. Never happened.

It almost happened, once. In 1965, in New York, an audience expecting an acoustic, folkie Dylan, rebelled when he brought the Hawks, an eclectic electric band, on stage with him, and drilled into “Like a Rolling Stone”. He survived the heckling and came back for an encore, with his acoustic guitar, and played “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. On a subsequent tour of England, he encountered more booing and heckling. Still, the majority of the audiences sat back and listened and applauded at the end of each number. More importantly, they paid for their tickets. Dylan sold out every venue.

There is something bizarre about the 1988 concert in Montreal. He is not as bad as you sometimes think he is—his version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is fascinating and passionate—but he certainly is not “singing”. He shouts and honks and garbles and inhales and mumbles and wails and barks. Is he really good at shouting and honking and garbling and inhaling and mumbling and wailing and barking? It wouldn’t be hard to find someone who is way better at it than he is.

If Dylan is so bad, why does he continue, in 1999, to sell out every venue? Maybe I’m stupid. Maybe I’m completely wrong about singing. Maybe this shrieking from the bowels of hell really is quite beautiful and interesting.

It is interesting that he is currently touring with Paul Simon, who wrote this cute little tribute in 1966:

I knew a man whose brain’s so small
Couldn’t think of nothing at all
Not the same as you and me
Doesn’t dig poetry
He’s so un-hip that when you say “Dylan”
He thinks you’re talking about Dylan Thomas,
Whoever he was. Why the man aint got no culture!
But it’s all right ma, everybody must get stoned….
… I lost my harmonica, Albert….

“Albert” is probably a reference to Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman (who also managed Peter, Paul, and Mary). The song, “A Simple Desultory Philippic”, was one of those petty, vindictive little pieces that result when an artist is jealous of the recognition given to a rival. Simon also once commented that he wanted to earn more respect from critics but couldn’t train his voice to scream with the proper intensity. Artful sarcasm from a man accustomed to accompanying Art Garfunkel, one of the truly gorgeous voices of pop music.

Dylan responded a few years later with a hilarious parody of “The Boxer”, doing both Simon and Garfunkel’s voices, equally preposterously. For the record, I should inform you that some critics believe the Dylan version, released on the disastrous double-album Self Portrait, was a “tribute” to his “good friend” Simon. Hmmm. It might well have been both.

It was the Beatles who first noticed that the audience no longer cared about the musical quality of the live performance. It came to them at the height of their career, when they were selling out Shea Stadium and other acoustic hellholes. They discovered that the audience screamed and howled during their entire sets. If you are screaming and howling you aren’t listening. You certainly aren’t trying to notice pitch or rhythm or harmony. You aren’t thinking: “hmmm, seems to me Ringo’s lost a fraction of a second on his timing there…” In other words, they discovered that audiences did not actually come to the concert to hear the music. They were there to see their idols live, on stage, and scream, and get hysterical, and experience the phenomenon of super-stardom up close and personal. Well, as up close and personal as you get when the nearest seat that is available to the general public is about 100 feet away from the stage.

Thank you pop fans. It is because of your mindless devotion that many musicians feel quite comfortable ambling out on stage an hour or two late. You can tell when the concert is about to begin: the rich and privileged take their seats, at last, directly in front of the stage. The seats that you can’t get even if you camp in front of the primary ticket outlet for three days and buy the very first tickets (and pay an exorbitant “handling” fee). You will find that the very first tickets are for seats x and y in row 66. Where did all the other tickets go? The parasites and vampires who run the ticket agencies have them. You think they’re actually going to sell them to you? No way! Not even after charging you preposterous “service” fees to take your money and make you wait. (Kudos to Pearl Jam who has been fighting this system, without much success, for years).

Dylan discovered that he could be rude and snarly and arrogant, and people would still be wild for him and the critics would still worship him. He discovered that he could treat his friends like dirt and still be admired and respected. He discovered that he could be selfish and annoying and hypocritical, and it didn’t matter: his fans would line up on schedule and fork over their $25 or $35 or $45 or $65 to see him live. He discovered that he could paint! No kidding. He did a cover for “The Band”, and for his own “Self-Portrait”. It’s this kind of cubist pastiche that you are supposed to think is the product of genius because it breaks so many rules of conventional art. Actually, his paintings are crummy. He must have realized that eventually– you don’t see many Bob Dylan art shows lately.

And he discovered that he could sing like a howling weasel and it still didn’t matter.

Of course the critics were not fooled….

Well, of course they were.

You see, at one time, Dylan could sing. Quite well, in fact.

But in the 1960’s, people who admired Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett thought that Dylan couldn’t sing. But these people didn’t know a thing about the blues or folk, so they could be readily dismissed as narrow-minded and ignorant. But more sophisticated jazz and folk critics like Robert Shelton, Nat Hentoff, and Greil Marcus lauded Dylan for his originality and brilliance. And they were right, about the Dylan of the 1960’s. Listen to him on his early albums, on “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” or “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All right”, or “Motopsycho Nightmare” or “Visions of Johanna”. He is not merely good. He is often brilliant, astonishing, breath-taking. He was the most original talent of his time. He could even be tender and melodious—listen to all of Nashville Skyline and “Tangled up in Blue”.

So let’s not get confused here—I’m not one of those people who believe that Dylan never could sing.

In the 1980’s, critics who admired Nat Hentoff and Greil Marcus and didn’t understand the difference between audaciousness and audacity, took up the torch and praised Dylan’s art. The more obscure and obtuse and incoherent, the better—the less likely the common man was going to mistake their admiration for mere pretentiousness.

Now, I’m going to tell you a very shocking and amazing fact: Bob Dylan, today, sounds like garbage. No, it’s not your ears fooling you–he really does sound like garbage. He sings with the melodic artfulness of a blast furnace. He sings with the rhythmic inventiveness of a stuffed fish. He sings with banality and monotony. He’s not even clever with his phrasing anymore.

What happened? Dylan has always lived an insular life and has never had the self-respect to associate with people as smart or smarter than himself. Think of the enormous stress the adulation he received in the early 1960’s put on his personal relationships. He cast aside Joan Baez. He ridiculed Phil Ochs. He dumped loyal friends and associates who dared to imply anything less than full-hearted worship and admiration. He surrounded himself with people of unquestioning loyalty and mindless devotion. So when he finished a concert or a new album or some particularly weird movie performance and asked these people, “how’d I do?” I doubt very much he heard anything but comments like the following:

“Great, Bob.”

“Brilliant again, Bob!”

“Had ‘em eating out of your hand, Bob.”

And Dylan sits there thinking, “Man, I thought I stunk, but I guess I was really great. Must have been great—sold out again, in 40 cities.”

Dylan now plays Vegas. Dylan now belongs in Vegas.

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Bob Dylan Sells Out

AmDylan.gif (54973 bytes) I too harsh on people?

 

In the movie, The Magic Christian, a worldly-wise millionaire (played by Peter Sellers) adopts a destitute young man (Ringo Starr) as his own son. He decides to impart to him all of the great wisdom he has accumulated over the years. The first and most important lesson is that everyone– without exception– can be bought. In the unforgettable climax of the film, Sellers scatters numerous British pound notes over the surface of a swimming pool filled with the most disgusting, offensive substances imaginable as dozens of extremely well-dressed financiers and bankers are strolling by on their way to work in their gleaming towers of steel and glass. They stop, stare, try to reach the money. One of them finally steps right into the sludge, and soon all of them are splashing around in it trying to grab the money away from the others. Yes, everyone can be bought.

I just picked up the latest edition (March-April 1998) of the Utne Reader, a bi-monthly compendium of articles by the “alternative” press. On the back of the cover, there is a picture of a very young Bob Dylan. That makes sense. Who better defines “alternative” than Bob Dylan, especially a young Bob Dylan? Think of those songs from the early 1960’s: “God on Our Side”, “Only a Pawn in the Game”, “Like a Rolling Stone”, “Masters of War”, “Visions of Johanna”… Dylan, unintentionally, perhaps (you could write a whole book on the subject), became a spokesman for a generation of young people who seemed to reject plastic, phony materialism, the consumer ethic, the idea that everything could be bought and sold, and that the ultimate goal of life was a home in the suburbs, a zillion appliances, Tupperware, and a two-car garage.

If you were born too late or too early, you probably have no idea of how powerful his mystique was. No one before or after has had anything near the pull he did in his prime. Every other major artist was acutely aware of what Dylan was doing. Even commoditized performers like Sonny and Cher included Dylan songs in their repertoire.

He was the very definition of “alternative”, because, at the time, the wholesale commoditization of life was well under way and he was one of the first and most powerful voices of popular culture to mock it. His performances were utterly compelling, because he was powerfully eloquent and uncompromisingly savage in his rejection of moral hypocrisy and glib righteousness. [notes on Dylan film]

The trouble is, there is an Apple Computer logo at the top left-hand corner of the page. And under the logo, these words: “Think different”.

Yes, everyone can be bought.

Well, I guess most other folk singers would have regarded selling out as the wrong thing to do, so, yes, I guess Bob Dylan thinks different.

I wish I knew how much he got for the ad, and why he needed the money. I do NOT wish I could hear him explain why I’m an idiot for thinking he should not have taken the money, should not have sang for the pope, should not have taken part in the tribute to Frank Sinatra, should not have allowed “The Times They are a Changin'” to be used in a Bank of Montreal ad, and should not have treated Phil Ochs like dirt way back in the 1960’s. I don’t want to hear it because it is so entirely predictable and self-aggrandizing and phony and I don’t think I could stomach it coming from Bob Dylan even if almost everything else he’s done in the past ten years should have prepared me for this.

This may sound absurd, but does anybody still need an explanation of why doing a commercial endorsement is wrong? It’s not all that complicated.

If the role of art, music, poetry, drama, and fiction, is nothing more than to entertain, then, yes, I guess there is no problem, since consumer products are just another form of gratification. And if you believe that the gleeful consumption– conspicuous or otherwise– of material goods is about as meaningful as life gets, then yes, there is no problem.

But if you believe, as I do, that there is a higher purpose to art, that it should also enlighten and stimulate and provoke, and should in some way expand our knowledge of what it means to be human, of what it means to love, of what it means to be alive, then a commercial endorsement is the anti-thesis of good art. It is a sell-out. It is betrayal of the very idea that human values are above simple self-aggrandizement.

A great artist stands out because he has the courage and integrity to observe and reflect and illuminate the weaknesses and strengths of human behaviour. When an artist agrees to accept money in exchange for the association of his image or persona with a commercial product, he shows that his integrity is compromised, because his endorsement is the result of a bribe. And when he accepts accolades and awards from people whose whole lives are dedicated to dishonesty and materialism, then he shows that he has no courage, for his acceptance is the result of his desire to become like those who thusly honor him.

When Bob Dylan first came to prominence, one of his most attractive qualities was the way he stood apart from the establishment toadies and drunken crooners that dominated the entertainment world of the 1950’s, singers like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, who sang meaningless love ballads to addled over-weight pant-suited matrons in the crassest of American cities, Las Vegas. Today, Dylan takes part in a tribute to the King of Crass, Frank Sinatra. How long before Dylan himself plays Las Vegas?

In defense of Dylan, I have heard people say that it’s just no big deal. Just because he endorses Apple computers doesn’t mean “Tangled Up in Blue” isn’t a great love song. In reply to that, I have to say that even if it wasn’t a big deal, it’s still a cheesy, tacky, contemptible thing to do, and you have to wonder about why Dylan would do it. Dylan’s income from song-writing royalties alone must be enormous. Did he manage his money so badly that he is desperately broke? Are the alimony payments getting out of hand? Is his exclusive Malibu mansion in need of repair? Is he so isolated and surrounded with sycophants that there is no one to tell him that, considering his stature as a songwriter of uncommon power and intensity, the commercial endorsements look petty and stupid?

Well, maybe we all should be as humble. What if someone offered me, say $100 a week if I agreed to display his product logo on my web page (as if…)? I could argue that journals and newspapers have always carried advertising so it’s really not “selling out”, it’s just the business of writing. If I sold my writing to a journal (which I have done, in fact, on a regular basis for many years) who do I think pays for the checks I receive? Right– advertisers. Dylan’s music is played on radio of course, so his royalty checks really come from the same source.

So is it really such a big leap from a royalty check to a product endorsement? The difference is that we all understand that just because a Miller Lite ad follows a Dylan song on the radio does not mean that Dylan drinks Miller Lite, in the same way we know that a General Motors ad in a newspaper doesn’t mean that the newspaper believes that General Motors cars are any better than anyone else’s cars. There is a line that is being crossed.

The bottom line, I guess, is that it is ridiculous to believe that Dylan needs the money so badly that he will allow such questions to be raised about his integrity as an artist. The answer is that Dylan, singing for the Pope and Frank Sinatra, and flogging his reputation on the Grammys, is after something other than artistic achievement. The answer is that Dylan doesn’t believe himself anymore, and therefore, why should we?

Songs from the Old Dylan:

” you used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat/who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat/Aint it hard when you discover that/He really wasn’t where it’s at/After he took from you everything/He could steal..”

“…businessmen, they drink my wine/Plowmen dig my earth/None of them along the line/Have no idea of any worth…”

“Dear Landlord, please don’t put a price on my soul…”

“…but even the President of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked…”

A Playlist for Bob Dylan when he finally goes all the way and plays Las Vegas.
  • Opening number: Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again
  • Mood Piece: Dear Landlord
  • A love ballad so all those Amway salesmen can get off their duffs and shake out their double-knit pants:  Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine
  • For those who really appreciate the décor:  Visions of Johanna
  • For those who wonder if this is the same Bob Dylan who used to do those protest songs: My Back Pages
  • For the maids and kitchen help: The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
  • And the waiters: Serve Somebody
  • To his former wife, Sara, if she happens to drop by: It Aint Me Babe
  • To patrons who favour the Black Jack tables:  Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts; Black Diamond Bay
  • To those who wished it was Elvis instead: I Want You
  • Just before Milton Berle comes on: Motopsycho Nightmare
  • To a convention of Dupont engineers: Hard Rain
  • To contestants for the Miss America Pageant:  Just Like a Woman
  • After a Fashion Show:  Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat