On my way home from NigeCorp yesterday, I had an aghast text from my son, telling me that Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind - original studio version - was being used as the music track for a Co-Op TV commercial. So an hour later I get home and what's on the telly when I walk in? That very commercial. Rooted to the spot, I watched it through (it is, like so many mad commercials these days, very long). The odd thing was that this bizarre context - a feelgood extravaganza in which digitised dandelion seeds float about over ever-changing tableaux of jolly farmers, lush countryside, grinning Africans etc - focused attention on the song and threw its greatness into sharper focus. In fact I found it rather moving - and that certainly had very little to do with the visuals.
It's easy to forget - or at least take for granted - the astonishing legacy of the early, folk era Dylan. The best reminder is the remarkable documentary Dylan at Newport, which I caught (again) on BBC4 last week. This is a simple chronicle of Dylan's appearances at that festival, year on year. God he was good - and God he was huge - and God he was enjoying it! There are times when the crowd simply won't let him leave the stage and let someone else perform - all very embarrassing to the festival's organisers. Very galling too to Pete Sanctimonious Seeger, who puts a brave face on losing his folkie crown to the young upstart. Pete makes full use of his height advantage, but inside he's hurting. And then there's embarrassing Joan Baez cosying up to Bob and muscling in on every performance she can, ruining the sound with her intrusive warbling. Everyone wants a piece of Bobby - until 1965, when a suddenly mean-looking Dylan goes electric and is met by a storm of jeers and boos and catcalls. He looks pained but unsurprised. He knows he has to do this. He is right.
We are still a long way from appreciating the full greatness of Dylan and the vast riches of his work - including the prodigious early harvest of his folk years. True appreciation will only come, I imagine, in the usual way - with his death. May it be a long way off.
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Go, Nige! The ad had the same effect on me The idea that Blowin' in the Wind was seen as a simple protest song - probably perpetrated by Sanctimonious Seeger - is absurdly reductive. Blake with music more like. It also made me think, like you, about Bob's extraordinary fecundity. And, yes, the early folk stuff still sends a shiver.
ReplyDeleteThe sublime documentary, don't look back, brought me to a shuddering halt. The penny dropped, dawn broke, the mist dissolved. Pennebakers film making was a revelation, Dylans art we already were fully aware of.
ReplyDeleteWhat it revealed was the yawning gap between European and in particular, British twentieth century musical culture and that of the Americans, we were back in the dark ages.
He was, and is quite simply, priceless.
Lang may his lum reek.
Baez frigging murders 'It Ain't Me Babe' at that Newport gig, it's painful and humiliating. Dylan was in a different dimension to that folkie protest scene and they knew it and didn't like it.
ReplyDeleteI'm off to see him in Brum in April, first time live. Might be horrible but I needed to see him before he pops his clogs.
Yes – I saw the Co-op ad and the Newport doc and my reactions were pretty much the same as yours in each case. Although some people (my wife, for example) still don't get it, I think it's become clearer than ever that Dylan really is one of the great artists - great, that is, in the sense that Yeats or Cezanne are great (and not in the way that REM, say, or Springsteen are routinely said to be "great"). Agree, too, about the early material; some of the very best of it can be found on the first Bootleg Series volume, released in 1991 or thenabouts. Listen to 'No More Auction Block' or 'He Was a Friend of Mine': Dylan touches a chord or inflects his voice on a certain phrase and the backs of your eyes are prickling. It's a mesmerizing, inexplicable gift. I can imagine there being a huge reaction when he finally goes: demands for some kind of state funeral,even.
ReplyDeleteThat Pete Seeger's a strange one, surely. As with many pacifists, you sense a kind of violence locked down under the stiff benignity of manner - and a fear of letting it all out. They may be apocryphal, but I can quite believe those stories of him running amok with an axe at Newport '65.
Speaking of Madvertising, I think you need to see Bob Dylan making travesties of his tunes in a couple of recent ads. Victoria's Secret anyone?
ReplyDeleteLord yes Victoria's Secret - I'd forgotten that one Susan, and he was actually onscreen that time. I think it was some kind of joke - or maybe he's just very fond of lingerie, I wouldn't be surprised (tho there are better brands)... I've just discovered that he actually sold the rights to Blowin' in the Wind to the Bank of Montreal - maybe they've sold them on to raise some money. Tough times for bankers - the wind's blown a lot away...
ReplyDeleteSusan, Dexter, season one on order via Amazon, if your review turns out to be rose tinted then I will post the address for the reimbursement of £14.90. Although we will accept Laura Ashley vouchers.
ReplyDeleteSo sad to see Dylan sell out - again and again. He used the image of revolutionary to make lots of money. He's nothing but a Barry Manilow riding on the back of the 60s Folk wave. Repulsive.
ReplyDeleteThem's fightin' words round these parts, Voltaire.
ReplyDeleteToo right Brit - and what's wrong with Barry Manilow?
ReplyDeleteBarry Manilow, now we're cooking with gas, who can ever forget Copacabana. Well me actually but the sister in law won't let me.
ReplyDeleteDylan caused the sixties folk wave, I was there.
According to Donovan, Malty, it was all down to one Donovan Leitch, the greatest recording artist the world has ever seen or is ever likely to see.
ReplyDeleteMalty, I believe you'll like Dexter. It's a very clever show, & funny to boot.
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ReplyDeleteYes, Donovan... wasn't he the real fifth Beatle, and the true inspiration behind that band?
ReplyDeleteThey had fads, bless their little cotton socks, for a while it was considered cool to stick you fag in the guitar strings whilst performing, an action that generally brought on the response .."twat"
ReplyDeleteAnd you're right about Donny Van Brit, it started with him, he said. He also claimed the Isle of Skye as a hippy paradise.
12 years after we had.
Well blow me (in the Wind), I'll go to the foot of our stairs - we can't have these French philosopher chappies badmouthing our Bob - or Bazza for that matter. A less apposite link, on the face of it, is hard to imagine, but I know of many musicians who would be proud to have penned half of Manilow's fecund output, and thought of in this way - the great facility Bob has to just keep them coming, plugged into the grid or not - perhaps there is more to compare than we at first imagine. Tho' both are about the same age, I think Bazza has downed a bit too much of the youth serum. Bob, at least the last time I saw him at Brixton Acad, just looked like a whizened old meths addict. Sounded good though!
ReplyDeleteYes and no one's yet mentioned His Bobness's extraordinary afterlife/metalife as a disc jockey - those Theme Time Radio Hour shows are amazing. He just knows so much music...
ReplyDeleteAlso, the late trilogy of Time Out of Mind/Love and Theft/Modern Times is really very good. Gets better the more you listen to it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, a less relevant point but that cricket finale was very tense indeed.
Have you heard Alice Cooper as a DJ? He's amazing. Has a late night show I used to listen to in the wee hours, on my way home from the paper. Never hear it now I have a day job again.
ReplyDeleteThe story goes that one evening in 1988 Dylan stopped Barry Manilow at a party, hugged him, and said, "Don't stop what you’re doing, man. We’re all inspired by you!"
ReplyDeleteManilow is said to have had sleepless nights worrying out the presumed subtext, but perhaps there really wasn't any. Working musicians can be oddly respectful of one another's talents and deeply indifferent as to who is supposed to be cool and who not.
Great story Jonathan - Dylan does have the most amazingly eclectic taste, as his radio shows prove. He is just soaked and marinaded in American popular music...
ReplyDeleteHarold Bloom writes somewhere that great, canonical literature is 'uncanny', that unless you become numbed through academia you tend to feel a shiver of weirdness at it. i think this is also true of 'canonical' music like Dylan's, The Beatles', and the Stones' - there's something unheimlich, not quite everyday about it.
ReplyDeleteSo true Elberry...
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