 |
|
|
 |
|
What's your reaction to this column? Share your thoughts on the MESSAGE BOARD
Also From Modern Humorist: Colin Powell's Pop Pals Dear Dick: A Letter From George W. Boredom in the Court Behind the Music Napsteropoly Macdonna's Wedding Box Set of the Year Rock 'n' Roll Factory Worker Phish Fan Resume |
|
Dylan: A Late Train Coming by C. Bottomley Don't bother scrolling to the bottom to look for the moral, because here it is: Dylan will always get you in the end. I'd like to think, though, I led him on a merry chase. Raised on Tchaikovsky, I caught up to pop only in the mid-'80s, when the Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls" topped the charts. A rapping Noel Coward? Yes, please. My stereo would rock to the clatter of stiletto heels on a London pavement, and months later the oily-surf feedback of the Jesus & Mary Chain, but the scratchy rantings of the senile frontman for a Midwestern jug band held zero appeal for me. Dylan never did a great job of servicing my generation, unless you somehow ended up along Desolation Row because somebody like Bruce Springsteen had pointed you there. Albums like Knocked Out Loaded and Down in the Groove sounded as if their maker was barely interested in recording them. And while Daniel Lanois lent some of his ambient sheen to Oh Mercy, leading to overuse of the phrase "his best since Blood on the Tracks," Dylan followed its polish with the execrable Under the Red Sky. Dylan repeatedly sang like sh*t, recorded with listless outfits who sounded like they shared a needle, gave rare (and crummy) interviews, and didn't seem to have ever read The Face. Springsteen could make me feel for the blue-collar guys who on a good day would probably beat me up; R.E.M. combined enigma with punk attitude; Oasis could make me raise a lighter for drunken soccer hooligans. Even the older acts I fell for could occasionally pull a masterpiece out of their butt; Lou Reed and Neil Young were guilty of all Dylan's crimes, but thanks to glorious if momentary stuff like New York or Freedom, we forgave them. My best friend during such formative years, on the other hand, was a Dylan freak. He looked like him, dressed like him, and smelt like he hadn't washed since Planet Waves. He tried to convert me, without success. While the Jesus & Mary Chain could find an infinite number of words that rhymed with "head" and still be ridiculously awesome, I felt that rock's greatest poet had no business writing lines like "Just like old Saxophone Joe/ When he's got the hogshead up on his toe/ Oh me, oh my/ Love that country pie." I bought Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited because they were going cheap and I religiously read magazines that told me what to buy (Astral Weeks was another recommended stinker). And yeah, "Like a Rolling Stone" was OK, but God, could Dylan ride a repetitive melody until it bore right out the other side of your skull. My life became filled with books, and T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound; the gaggle of Italian poets from the 13th century were as much my spiritual mentors as they were Bobby Zimmerman's. But I still couldn't stand the guy. His disciples, however, were valued additions to my record collection - the Byrds, Joni Mitchell, Dire Straits, Public Enemy, Nick Cave ... er, Guns N' Roses. OK, I kinda liked "Tangled Up in Blue." Somebody told me he had written a song with Michael Bolton and I laughed. The fool. Much later I was living in London and doing the dishes when I turned on the radio. And it was f*cking Dylan. This time, however, I didn't change the dial. He was telling a story over a driving beat of congas and acoustic guitar, with a violin occasionally playing a counterpoint to the lyric. His voice was hectoring, but I was drawn into the narrative about Hurricane Carter, arrested in my faraway home state of New Jersey, and central to a murderous stitch-up involving dudes named Bello and Bradley. I was floored. "A cop pulled him over to the side of the road/ Just like the time before and the time before that"; "'Think it mighta been that fighter that you saw runnin' through the night?/ Don't forget that you are white." Dylan himself has been known to box, and each word landed like a body blow. Endlessly. |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
