Discovering Bob Dylan

With the US’s precarious fiscal situation, Japan’s nuclear woes and all the fighting in the Middle East, this seems to be a time of unrelenting doldrums. It was then a relief to read about something relatively less joy-challenged: Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour finally makes it to Beijing.

I know, I know. News of a guitar-slinging pensioner appearing in the post-millennial People’s Republic is guaranteed not to set the

Playfully unorthodox: Cate Blanchett, who played the folksinger circa 1966 in I’m Not There, was one of the best supporting actress nominees at the 2008 Academy Awards.

Twitterverse on fire, even if he did so after years of negotiating with the Chinese culture ministry. Now pushing 70, Bob Dylan is known foremost as an American counterculture icon, one who endeared himself to placard-wielding youth with the 1962 civil rights anthem Blowin’ In The Wind. Despite the impressive credentials, the tireless singer-songwriter has yet to be fully rediscovered by a new generation, unlike the Beatles, the Rolling Stones or Nirvana.

‘Together through life’

My own brush with the man also known as Robert Allen Zimmerman was tangential at best. I knew him as the father of Jakob Dylan, frontman of Los Angeles band the Wallflowers, who covered David Bowie’s Heroes for the 1998 Godzilla soundtrack. Sadly, that was it. Up until two years ago, the total number of Bob Dylan songs in my iTunes library was zero. It was only when I chanced upon the album art for 2009’s “Together Through Life” that it all changed.

The shot of a couple making out in the backseat of a car  taken by New York photographer Bruce Davidson in 1959  was a fitting one since the self-produced project, his 33rd studio album, was inspired partly by French director Olivier Dahan’s road trip film My Own Love Song. That led me to download the accordion-heavy track I Feel A Change Comin’ On, then the 2007 non-album single Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine) as remixed by one of my idols, Mark Ronson, then 1997’s Make You Feel My Love, which only piqued my interest because Adele’s 2008 re-recording re-entered the UK charts in 2010.

My haphazard approach

Clearly there’s no right or wrong way to discover an artist’s body of work, but the music gods must have sensed my rather haphazard approach. A couple weeks ago I came across Brian Hinton’s Bob Dylan Complete Discography, published in 2006, at a neighborhood bookstore. “It covers 43 officially released albums with extensive commentary on each track,” read the cover flap. The universe had provided a method  a reasonably-priced one  to my music madness.

From that point I helped myself to a viewing of I’m Not There. Directed by Todd Haynes, the 2007 biographical musical film employs six actors to portray the different facets of Bob Dylan’s life: Marcus Carl Franklin, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere and Ben Whishaw. As it is told in a non-linear fashion, the endless series of intersections was especially distracting for a newbie like me and so I found I’m Not There, though inventive and visually masterful, quite difficult to enjoy. Then again, the iconoclasm dovetails nicely with the singer’s idiosyncracies  his singing voice reminds me of Otto’s stoner cadence in The Simpsons  so the poetic ambiguity may have been part of the plan.

Dominated by acts like Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Ke$ha, does today’s flattened Internet world have room for someone like Bob Dylan? On the one hand, The Times They Are A-Changin’ isn’t the stuff drunken teenage parties are made of and the subtexts it carries seem woefully old-fashioned and too heavy to be digested in one click. 

On the other hand, this is exactly why Bob Dylan is still relevant. It feels slightly subversive to listen to songs that make you pause and actually think. I have a long way to go in terms of understanding his music, but the message I’m getting so far is this: While we all need to lighten up, we all need to grow up, too.

* * *

Find me at ginobambino.tumblr.com