Is there a more important singer-songwriter? Has there ever been? When first I heard Dylan was writing a book — another book — I worried. Would this be Tarantula revisited? I remember Tarantula all too well. In 1966 the bookstore where I shopped had a window promoting Bob Dylan’s new novel months before it ever appeared. They had Tarantula shopping bags, coffee cups, book jackets when there was no book! I imagine these collectors’ items are valuable now, making lots of money on Ebay. The book itself? It’s being reissued to accompany Chronicles, and you can check it out. A slight volume of free verse with wacky rhythms and wordplay, that was too dense to read . . . and not dense enough to apply much meaning to. Would Chronicles follow in those spidery footsteps? Dylan’s reputation has had its ups and downs, but combine his most recent recording (Love & Theft) with the SACD reissues of classic albums (Blood On the Tracks, etc.) add an Academy Award winning song (“Things Have Changed”) and a successful film performance (Masked and Anonymous) and you might think he’s at the top of his game. Judging from this mesmerizing first volume of autobiographical reminiscences you might be right!
What a book! I could hardly believe the voice he chose to tell his stories. Warm, countrified, a sort of a “gosh-a-golly-gee” tone which continues from page one to the end. It’s almost as though Bobby was sitting there across from you, with a fire going, telling you his tales. I thought it was just me, but I checked with a friend who bought the book the same day I did and he said, “Yeah, isn’t it fantastic . . . it just sounds like him talking.” Of course it’s all perception. It’s what we THINK he’d sound like if we were sitting there in a cabin talking to Bob Dylan. Based on interviews I’ve seen it wouldn’t be like this at all, except it’s so darn well written . . . even knowing that you’re biting into a fiction doesn’t stop you from taking all the bait.
Dylan tells three stories: His first days arriving in New York City, scuffling days, finding work at the little clubs, hunting for Woody Guthrie, meeting the other folk singers. Then he looks at the recording of Oh Mercy in New Orleans with Daniel Lanois. And finally back to New York. These three things are held together with fragments of anecdotes, bits of philosophy, and memories of stuff. Not really important stuff. Just stuff, like what songs were playing on the radio that he liked. Stuff like what books he was reading. Stuff like that.
He remembers that Goddard Lieberson, then president of Columbia Records, gave him a gift of a first edition copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses. He says, “I couldn’t make hide nor hair of it.” And then he wrote Tarantula. He attempts to downplay the definitions people have saddled him with over his career. “Wherever I am, I’m a ’60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows. I’m in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion. You name it. I can’t shake it.”
He refers to the famous motorcycle accident, but you will glean no details. Read it for yourself (it’s on page 114). It’s almost as though he just wanted a reason to take a break. Maybe being in the “bottomless pit of cultural oblivion” just became too much for him.
“Being true to yourself, that was the thing. I was more cowpuncher than a Pied Piper.” But as one of the generation who followed him, I would disagree. I don’t recall the cattle prod, or branding iron . . . but I do remember “Mr. Tambourine Man” calling to me. Perhaps we expected too much, just as we did from John Lennon. After all, Dylan reminds us, “I really was never any more than what I was — a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze.”
This is engaging stuff, and the chatty insouciance adds to our enjoyment. Sometimes Dylan drifts into denser language: his own pseudo-philosophy of guitar playing and song-writing. There are several pages where he describes a guitar technique that left my head spinning as I tried to physically reproduce on my guitar the style he was describing. It didn’t work. Unless it did and I just didn’t realize it. Again, his description of the creative process tells me that he simply cannot describe inspiration. “The semantic meaning is all in the sounds of the words. The lyrics are your dance partners.” Then they can lead. . . .
There are plenty of books which have sought to detail the daily life of Bob Dylan. We’ve reviewed many of them in GMR. Chronicles is not one of those books. Maybe you’ll want to have one of them by your side when you read Chronicles, just to check a date, or a place, but if you want to feel like you know Bob Dylan a little better, forget all the others . . . and run out and pick up Chronicles. You won’t be sorry, except that the wait for Volume Two and Volume Three is going to seem interminable!
(Simon & Schuster, 2004)
