National Post (National Edition)
WHAT ABOUT BOB?
THOUSANDS OF WORDS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT DYLAN, BUT NOT MUCH IS KNOWN ABOUT THE ICONIC SONGWRITER
We live in the time of Bob Dylan. The great singer-songwriter who turned 80 on Monday. He released his first album in early 1962 when he was just 20 years old. From the firebrand folky and surrealist rocker of the 1960s to the gypsy troubadour of the 1970s and reflective ancient bard of last year's masterful Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan has been a singular giant of popular music for the whole of his adult life, almost 60 years in the spotlight, the greatest living figure of the most universally pervasive art form of the modern era.
Yet for someone so famous, Dylan is surprisingly elusive. There are more than 1,000 critical books and biographies about him, but it is not known for sure how many times he has been married (at least twice) or how many children he has (five or more). He has written an acclaimed memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, and given many interviews, but there is a mischievous aspect to his public utterances, seeded with deliberate mistruths. I once asked his former lover, singing partner and early champion, Joan Baez, how well she felt she knew Dylan. Her answer: “Bobby's unknowable.”
It is a strange statement, but Dylan's enigmatic personality presents challenges even to those who might call him a friend. ELO's Jeff Lynne, who made two albums with Dylan as part of the Traveling Wilburys in the 1980s, described him to me as “a very mysterious guy.” He wrote a poem for Marianne Faithfull in 1965, then tore it up when she declined to sleep with him. “That was a shame. Mad poet in terror!” noted Faithfull. “It's very hard to say what Bob's like, because he changes so much. He's a very grand old man now, but in his youth he was really a shape-shifter.”
The Eurythmics' Dave Stewart summed up that elusive quality when he told me about going for a stroll through Camden Market with Dylan in 1993. Passersby reacted with slack-jawed shock, as if they could not believe what they were witnessing. “It was like walking with a ghost,” was Stewart's memorable phrase.
His son Jakob has grown up to be a fine singer-songwriter himself as the frontman for the American band The Wallflowers.
“When I was a kid, he was a god to me for all the right reasons. Other people have put that tag on him in some otherworldly sense. I say it as any kid who admired his dad and had a great relationship with him.”
I never pass up the opportunity to ask musicians about personal encounters with Dylan. He shows a lot of generosity toward other artists, reaching out to tell Patti Smith, Nick Cave and Mike Scott of the Waterboys how much he admired their work. Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard was just 23 and rehearsing with his band The Frames in Dublin in 1993 when, to his complete shock, Dylan “stuck his head in and said, `That's good!'” Dylan subsequently took The Frames on tour as his support act. When Hansard's guitar developed problems, Dylan gave him one of his own. “I have it at home, but I'm actually kind of afraid to play it,” says Hansard. “How do you write a song on a guitar that belongs to the greatest songwriter in the world?”
There is a certain unquantifiable loneliness in being Bob Dylan. After a lifetime of being the object of other people's fascination, he projects a powerful sense of privacy. He drives himself around in a Big Black people carrier, or rides a motorbike and wears casual clothes, with a hoodie pulled up over his head. The unspoken rule is that if the hoodie is up, do not approach. If the hoodie is down, he may be open to conversation. “You learn in his company to ask for nothing, leave everything to him, and then he will surprise you,” says Hansard. “He's definitely tuned to a different frequency.”
Marcus Mumford was intrigued by a quicksilver quality, when his band Mumford & Sons was asked to back Dylan at the Grammy Awards in 2011, performing a rowdy version of the 1960s classic Maggie's Farm. “He can be aloof, but it's like a switch, and suddenly he's the most engaged, intelligent, articulate person in the world. And then the switch will go off and he'll just grunt. It's so badass.”
I was with Bono when we met Dylan in 1984, and the two have since become close. He often remarks on Dylan's kindness and wisdom. “He means more to me than anybody living in music or art. He was the lightning rod in my spiritual quest as a musician.” During the recording of U2's Rattle &Hum in 1988, Bono was invited to Dylan's house in Malibu, where they wrote the song Love Rescue Me together in half an hour, with Dylan extemporizing fully-formed verses. “He just sings fantastic stuff off the top of his head. He came up with the line `I'm hanging by my thumbs, I'm ready for whatever comes.' Best line in the song.” A studio session was quickly arranged, with Dylan playing keyboards and singing backing vocals. The band were making good progress when Dylan suddenly announced that they would have to scrap one of his verses. “What's the problem?” inquired Bono. “I used it before,” Dylan admitted.
I love that story. When you think of all the incredible songs swirling around Dylan's head, you can forgive him occasionally mixing them up.
Behind whatever wall of secrecy Dylan musters for his own protection, we know him to be a man driven by art and creativity. He is a voracious reader, an obsessive music-lover who, when not writing and performing, spends much of his time painting and sculpting in iron. He plays more than 100 shows a year on what has come to be known as “The Never-Ending Tour.” And though it was derailed by COVID last year, who would doubt that he's got his bags packed and is ready to roll it out again?
Is Bob Dylan unknowable, as Baez suggests, or merely inscrutable to a world where his fame looms so large, and to which he presents so many different facets? “What's important isn't the legend, but the art, the work,” Dylan said in 1984. And as for the legend? “I don't think I'm gonna be really understood until maybe 100 years from now.”
Happy 80th birthday, Bob.
I don't think I'm gonna be
really understood until maybe 100 years from now.
— BOB DYLAN IN 1984