I always wanted to stop when I was on top. I didn’t want to fade away. I didn’t want to be a has-been, I wanted to be somebody who’d never be forgotten. I feel that, one way or another, it’s OK now, I’ve done what I wanted for myself.
—Bob Dylan, Interview with Jonathan Lethem, Rolling Stone, 2006
A hierarchy exists among celebrities in the United States, making up a veritable Mount Rushmore (or, perhaps, Mount Olympus) of stars that transcend every attempt at definition or understanding. These few are popular culture’s best and brightest, stars so bright that industry heavyweights, dignitaries, big names in other genres, and even presidents bow to their might. While many could vie for the limited spaces carved into some far-off mountain, Bob Dylan is one of the few who would be universally acknowledged. Over his long and illustrious career, Dylan has become more than just another famous celebrity—he is celebrity. If Dylan did not exist, it would take the world’s finest creative minds to invent him.
Yet, despite Dylan’s overwhelming celebrity, he remains guarded and intensely private. Venturing to a live Dylan show, whether on the infield of a minor league baseball stadium or down the road at a university arena, one is struck by the limited interaction between Dylan and his fans. He does not banter between songs or even say much at all, preferring to let the music flow.
The experience of watching Dylan live, actually, is a little off-putting and speaks to an interesting peculiarity in thinking about what he means in contemporary American culture. Here is a man who has had so many books written about him, which taken together, the collection would cram many fine oak shelves. Likewise, the number of articles, essays, journalistic and Web pieces, and interviews is impossible to calculate. In spite of that, one wonders, if is there an individual more written about, yet more mysterious than Dylan.
We have a mountain of information about him, but still the feeling lingers that we simply do not really know anything about the actual, authentic Bob Dylan. We simultaneously know everything and nothing about him, even though his career spans more than half a century. “Getting to know Dylan can be tricky,” concludes scholar Eric Bulson. “Even at his most down-to-earth moments, he can be ironic, detached, evasive, and cagey.”1
Thus, Dylan is a true enigma, a fact alone a wonder in today’s celebrity-obsessed world driven by cataloging every minute detail of the lives of those who exist in the public spotlight. Looking up at the almost frail-looking Dylan, a smile occasionally flickering and his eyes still devilish, it is as if we see him and do not see him at the same time. Dylan exists on this plane of being—we imagine that he is made of flesh and bones like the rest of us—but he also seems almost ethereal a specter floating above the proceedings of mere mortals. Like the fictional character Darth Vader from Star Wars, does he even know what is under the mask? Could anyone retain his or her soul under the relentless pressure of being Dylan? Countless musicians, artists, and performers have fizzled under less harsh lights.
After reading, studying, and analyzing Dylan for decades, however, one realizes that he would probably find this talk of his existence as a spiritual body inane. But, even considering his potential guffaws, how else can he be described? On one hand, he is viewed as the “voice of a generation” for his role in encapsulating (some would say creating) the 1960s, even though he rejects the label and consequences of his protest songs. At the same time, over the past decade, Dylan seems to be everywhere, from Victoria Secret and Apple commercials and his “Never Ending Tour” to a slew of new award-winning CDs, a satellite radio hosting gig, and even a best-selling memoir.
How can we wrap our collective minds around this public or private Dylan? Perhaps Dylan’s wry smile represents his satisfaction in pulling one over on all of us.
Rolling Stone hailed Dylan’s 70th birthday by placing him on the cover and counting down his 70 greatest songs. Fellow rockers wrote many of the essays in the countdown, from Mick Jagger and Bono to Keith Richards and Sheryl Crow. The laudatory articles took a personal perspective, in several cases, examining what a particular song meant for them as individuals and then attempting to place the song within a broader context.
All told, the Rolling Stone issue served as a feel-good way to celebrate an important milestone in music history. However, it also revealed a growing trend in contemporary culture, which is to use nostalgia as a way to sell products. This notion is on the rise in modern America based on numerous factors, not least of which is the size of the Baby Boomer demographic and its disposable income. The fact that Baby Boomers have money to spend fuels a great deal of popular culture, including appealing portrayals of the 1960s and things associated with that era—when they were growing up.
For example, the Rolling Stone cover does not feature Dylan at 70 years old; it celebrates his birthday by showing a black-and-white picture of him against a stark white background. One’s immediate thought goes to the young—almost angelic—image in which Dylan is not only handsome, but also seems thoughtful, as if in the middle of an important idea. Thus, the viewer is triggered to think about the young Dylan, his 1960s’ era, and see that he is thinking, which is all juxtaposed with the cover text that uses the word “Greatest” and then lists the artists who will be featured. Since these figures are also household names, they serve as independent validators of the cover and its topic. The reader is pushed to think: “Well, if Bono and Jagger see this as important, I should too.” The photo of Dylan, without any context or explanation provided, is meant to pull on the viewers’ nostalgic heartstrings.
Nostalgia is a contested term in popular culture and academic studies. One person’s winsome view of the past is another’s interpretation of exploitation, pain, and anguish. Often, nostalgia is viewed as a simple, romantic vision of the past. Alternatively, it is considered a fanciful belief that earlier times were somehow better—a vague notion of then being more attractive than now based on a feeling that in the past people held more conservative and family-oriented perspectives. A reason that nostalgia is viewed negatively is that commentators, historians, and others reveal that memories of the past often do not hold up under further scrutiny. For example, scholar Michael Janover explains, “Nostalgia is the pain of homesickness” and defines it as “the pangs of longing for another time, another place, another self . . . almost certainly romantic in seed and, potentially, corrosively decadent in growth.”2 The Rolling Stone subscriber or casual reader who buys a newsstand copy is asked to equate the cover with the romance of the 1960s when young Dylan ruled the cultural landscape. This is Saint Bob hagiography at its finest.
Scholars Jason P. Leboe and Tamara L. Ansons address the romanticism of nostalgia (as exemplified in the Dylan cover), explaining, “Nostalgic experiences represent a distortion of both the past and the present. The ‘good old days’ may not have been as good as they seem in retrospect. In turn, the present is only as bad as it seems when compared against an unrealistic ideal.”3 Given the state of the world during Dylan’s 1960s’ heyday, filled with unrest and warfare, one might find today’s scene similar, yet there is no significant peace movement today or leader to emerge within a broader protest movement, like Dylan did in his era.
Depending on the reader’s interpretation, Rolling Stone may be sending out a message by featuring Dylan, yet couching the significance within an examination of his songwriting. This potential becomes more compelling when one considers the left-leaning politics of the magazine and its role as a leader in credible subversion. The image of the young voice of a generation standing out against the stark cover signifies an attitude and symbol to readers, particularly the Baby Boomer demographic it is meant to attract. Nostalgia plays a critical role in how one perceives Dylan and the era the magazine heralds by placing him on its cover.
From a different perspective, Dylan the small-town boy from Hibbing serves as a trope in another enduring theme—the American Dream. The accompanying essay for Rolling Stone by New York Times writer Jon Pareles equates Dylan’s stature as a songwriter with the way his work overturned the existing norms. Here, Dylan arrives in New York City, begins writing songs that others can record, and reaps the benefits of that success until he can launch his own career singing his own lyrics. According to Pareles, this is the “Tin Pan Alley songwriter mode” and typical of how one might achieve the American Dream from a songwriting perspective.4 Dylan’s genius is in exploiting the traditional method and then bending it to fit his new narrative.
Furthermore, the image Dylan created in the early 1960s, first as a kind of next-coming of folk hero Woody Guthrie, then as the singer of protest anthems, places him firmly in the antiestablishment, antiauthority vanguard. Dylan, it seems, never concerned himself with money or fame. Here the nostalgia for the 1960s intersects with the American Dream (and perhaps even buries it a bit) as Dylan again symbolizes an era for aging Boomers. The idea of Dylan enables them to remember the good old days when they themselves may have been broke and happy versus the current status as angst-ridden, anxious homeowners, parents, and adults within the broader context of the 21st century.
While few (if any) critics, commentators, or scholars have discussed Dylan and the American Dream, I contend that his work is filled with visions of how everyday people may rise up to claim their slice of the Dream. Furthermore, the musician himself is a version of the idea, which is characterized by his earnestness in achieving his aspirations, and then his relentless authenticity. Even Dylan’s famous ambiguity plays a role in exemplifying the American Dream. Writer Jim Cullen explains, “The American Dream would have no drama or mystique if it were a . . . scientifically demonstrable principle. Ambiguity is the very source of its mythic power, nowhere more so than among those striving for, but unsure whether they will reach, their goals.”5
In one of his most famous songs, “Like a Rolling Stone,” for example, Dylan denounces “Miss Lonely” for her high fashion and jewelry, having money to burn, taking education for granted, and living an entitled lifestyle. But, despite these idols tied to wealth, she is lost and alone, completely directionless. The narrator sneers as he asks again and again: “How does it feel?”6 The ability to feel, not only one’s situation, but also the societal context, he intones, allows for people to achieve deeper meaning in their lives. By contrasting what Miss Lonely does not have with the implication that the narrator possesses the ability to feel and contextualize, the listener is led to believe that this ability leads to enlightenment. In other words, a person does not need baubles, a fancy education, or spending money. The important notion is not taking the world for granted, kind of like achieving the American Dream by living an ethical, compassionate life. This is not only a pronouncement that one could ably live by, but is also a nostalgic viewpoint, taking us back to a more compassionate time. It is this commitment to opposition, or perhaps willingness to confront an issue from all sides, that exposes audiences to postmodern Dylan.
Some large percentage of Dylan’s representation of the 1960s from a nostalgic perspective for people today is that he is viewed now (and seemed to live then) as an authentic individual. As an icon of that generation, Dylan is a walking symbol of the idealized vision of that era, often portrayed as a peace-loving time, in which misunderstood beatniks championed love and compassion versus the state machine that forced the world into warfare and depravity.
Dylan, for instance, comes of age initially in the public mind during the heyday of the Camelot era. His folksinger persona, while addressing the hardships of blacks and working people, is viewed retrospectively as a part of the new era that President John F. Kennedy brought to the nation. Scholar Axel Honneth explains, “Unlike so many other songwriters of his generation, through the polyphony and musical dissonance of his songs he conveys an experience which, subtly and nearly invisibly, defined the affective rhythm of his entire generation.”7
Later, as he turns protest singer and then mod, Brit-infused hipster, Dylan mirrors the move to a more aggressive antiauthoritarian position, which replicated the movement’s hardening against the war in Vietnam. Thus, Dylan’s very existence today creates an emotion that triggers the audience’s nostalgic feelings about the early to mid-1960s, even if these memories are fanciful. Leboe and Ansons explain, “Many instances of nostalgic experience represent distorted perception, leading to an appreciation of the past that is more fantasy than reality. Out of this bias to distort the past in the positive direction emerges a biased characterization of contemporary circumstances.”8 Fantasy, then, is a way that Dylan’s fans utilize his persona, but more than a fantasy figure, he is the real thing and considered an authentic representation of the ideas they hold so dear.
Like most iconic figures, there is a strong contingent of people in the world who hate Bob Dylan, or at best, have a deep-rooted love or hate relationship with him. Thumbing his nose at these critics, though, Dylan acts as if he could care less. Biographer (and sometimes Dylan confidante) Robert Shelton, for example, exclaims: “What about my own anger with him? It gets intense, sometimes, because he can be selfish, mean, petty, ungrateful, self-obsessed, heedless.” However, Shelton also sees the corollary viewpoint, asking rhetorically if he has any right (if any of us are entitled) to ask anything of Dylan.9
As consumers, we demand too much. More importantly, as fans we want him to give us what it is that we felt when we first grew to love him or his music. That thunderbolt might have hit, like it did with rocker Bruce Springsteen, on the snap of the drum that launches “Like a Rolling Stone” or for younger fans, been the nostalgic vibe of “Love and Theft” or Modern Times. Regardless, we turn Dylan into a trope that holds meaning for us as individuals and then want him to go back there over and over again. Shelton admits, “Being a Dylanite is akin to being a religious zealot or a wounded lover. And the Dylan-bashers won’t stop bashing him.”10 The critics just keep piling on, asking ludicrous questions about his voice, his personality, his transgressions, as if the singer exists so far into the stratosphere that nothing is beyond the bounds of good taste in evaluating his every public move.
Dylan responds by pointing out the senselessness of asking such mighty questions to a musician. At different points, he has mocked people who attempt to read too much into his music. Discussing mortality, for example, Dylan explains how simplistic some people put it, asking rhetorically, “‘I mean, Dylan, isn’t he an old guy? He must be thinking about that.’ You know what I say to that. . . . I say these idiots don’t know what they’re talking about. Go find somebody else to pick on.”11
Way back in 1964, after Dylan hit the global stage with “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changin,’ ” his fame seemed inexhaustible. People around him pushed to get closer and those outside his circle seemed content to plaster lofty labels on him, from “voice of a generation” to “savior.” Yet, he was only 23 years old and looking for an escape. He hoped it would all wear off. “Now there’s this fame business,” he told journalist Nat Hentoff, “I know it’s going to go away. It has to . . . mass fame comes from people who get caught up in a thing for a while. . . . Then they stop. And when they stop, I won’t be famous anymore.”12
He sounded almost wistful. Yet, as we know now in looking back, the fame never really stopped. Dylan remained one of the most famous people on the planet for the next 50 years and will continue to be long after he’s left.
Imagine . . . Bob Dylan breezed right by 70 years old! Yet, in spite of his age, one could argue that Dylan has taken a more public role in the years since 1997 than at any time before he burst on the scene in the 1960s. His career since Time Out of Mind would itself encompass a span several times longer than the average popular musician or group today.
In this timeframe, Dylan has been the celebrity face for advertisements pitching Cadillac, Victoria’s Secret, and Apple. He turned DJ and hosted an acclaimed radio show (“Theme Time Radio Hour”) on XM Satellite Radio. Dylan published Chronicles in late 2004, the first of a rumored multivolume memoir. Dealing with the early years the singer spent in New York City and flashes of later years, the memoir is told via a nonlinear path through his career. It not only enticed readers, but also received significant critical acclaim. Chronicles then spent many weeks atop bestseller lists, both nationally and regionally, and was nominated for several prestigious book awards.
In 2003, the film Masked & Anonymous, which Dylan cowrote (using a pseudonym) with television writer and producer Larry Charles, made its way into theaters, starring Luke Wilson, John Goodman, Mickey Rourke, and a host of well-known actors. Most thrilling for Dylanologists was that Dylan himself starred as former rock legend Jack Fate, who is bailed out of jail to perform a one-act benefit concert in a society spiraling out of control. People either loved or hated the film. In typical Dylan fashion, the movie either confounded viewers or just presented another vision of the musician’s unique view of a nation at the end of its rope.
Bob Dylan performing at the “Les Vieilles Charrues” Festival in Carhaix, western France, in Summer 2012.
(AP Photo/David Vincent, File)
Dylan served as the subject of two other projects in the new millennium. Famed director Martin Scorsese released a two-part documentary, No Direction Home, in 2005. The film, which featured taped interviews with the singer himself, focused on his early rise to fame through his near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1966. In 2007, the film I’m Not There, written and produced by Todd Haynes, used six different actors to represent various parts of Dylan’s life, including Marcus Carl, a 13-year-old African American actor and Academy Award-winning actress Cate Blanchett, who won widespread praise for portraying Dylan’s mid-1960s’ mod phase. The daring film earned critical acclaim and spots as one of the year’s 10 best films at The Washington Post, Premiere, The Village Voice, and many others.
Taken as a whole, this body of work speaks to Dylan’s continuing (and continuous?) role as an iconic trickster purposely bewildering and confounding audiences for more than five decades. Remember, in the early years of his career, the young singer and songwriter spent a great deal of time purposely misleading the media about his background and being evasive when people moved too close. When Newsweek finally published an expose on his actual past in November 1963, Dylan went deeper into a postmodern vibe, peppering the media with prevarications, silly statements, and outright lies. For example, in early 1965, when asked if he had any important philosophical statement for the world, Dylan replied:
Are you kidding? The world don’t need me. Christ, I’m only five feet ten. The world could get along fine without me. Don’tcha know, everybody dies. It don’t matter how important you think you are. Look at Shakespeare, Napoleon, Edgar Allan Poe, for that matter. They’re all dead, right?13
One might argue with Dylan on this point, though, explaining that although everyone does die, thus leaving their earthly body, artists live on, particularly in the media-saturated contemporary world. What the singer could have never imagined in the mid-1960s was just how pervasive the celebrity obsession would become or the countless channels dedicated to spreading it. Thus, someone like Dylan, who is as big a star as popular culture has ever produced, can retain his importance and fame long after death. Like Shakespeare, Napoleon, and Poe, Dylan exists in the history books, thus becoming essentially immortal.
Over the years, he has perfected this sing-song, satirical speaking style, negotiating between a put-on drawl and hipster modernity that leaves most interviewers shaking their heads. David Dalton sees this as part of “Dylan’s ambition” and likens him to a “possessed egomaniac.” The singer’s goal, according to the rock writer, “was to implant an indelible image of himself in our heads.” Dylan did such a good job that the image replaced whatever became of the real person beneath it all. Dalton explains, “A hologram of Bob Dylan—that hair, the shades, that affectless hipster cool—came spontaneously to life as soon as the needle touched the vinyl, the laser scans the polycarbonate.”14
In an interview published in Rolling Stone in late 2012, Dylan told writer Mikal Gilmore that his music “is always speaking to the times that are recent.” Pressed on the notion of being the spokesman of the 1960s and its consequences, Dylan responded, “The thing you have to do is make people feel their own emotions. A performer, if he’s doing what he’s supposed to do, doesn’t feel any emotion at all.” He calls this “alchemy.”15 Thus, one sees in this exchange how Dylan positions himself in two important ways: first, as a musician who represents the present; and second, as an entertainer with some subtle hints of magical realism.
The interview then takes a wacky turn when Dylan announces that he’s been “transfigured” in the form of a Hell’s Angels biker who was killed in an accident in 1964 (the magazine later uncovered that the biker had been killed several years earlier in 1961). Dylan tells Gilmore, “So, when you ask some of your questions, you’re asking them to a person who’s long dead. You’re asking them to a person that doesn’t exist. But people make that mistake about me all the time. I’ve lived through a lot.”16 This form of mysticism seems to be a central facet of his personal worldview. Magical realism infuses his songs, his personal narratives, and the answers he at least semi-willingly provides to journalists and others in interviews.
* * *
Bob Dylan occupies a unique space in American cultural history. In an alternative “What If?” sense, his career could have taken a completely different path, particularly if he would have embraced the “icon of a generation” label. It does not take much of an intellectual leap to see Dylan in this alternative reality as a leader in the Martin Luther King Jr. vein. At a moment in time, Dylan could have turned his fans into followers and played a historic role in the nation’s evolution. One must consider, however, what this calling would have meant. How many of these transformational leaders have existed in America’s history and how many of their lives have ended in tragedy?
As I even consider this otherworldly possibility, I wonder if it is even fair to contemplate. Dylan never aspired to this position and, from what can be derived from his actions, when it got too close, he ran away from the idea as fast as he could. As scholar Nancy Bunge explains, “Bob Dylan has persistently turned down the job of cult leader, insisting that he is a singer and songwriter, not a messiah.”17 Is the burden simply too much to ask of any individual?
Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s girlfriend in New York City when he first became globally famous, offers a unique insight into his personality and how he shielded himself. In her memoir, Rotolo writes, “The paranoia and secrecy that were part of his personality early on were essential for his survival later on. He was becoming prey. Either people wanted to devour him or they offered themselves up for him to consume.” Suddenly, she says, people treated Dylan like he was a priest or prophet, asking for his benefaction or just some words of acknowledgment. “It made him uneasy,” Rotolo explains. “He wanted to make music, not address a congregation.”18
Who is Bob Dylan? How has he persisted? The answers, my friend, are blowing in the wind, but my own assessment is that somewhere under the costume and mask that Bob Dylan dons each time he walks out onto stage or shows up for an interview exists the real person, Bobby Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota. In other words, Dylan has retained the Zimmerman, which enables him to cope with the kind of celebrity and fame that would send everyone else over the edge of sanity. He told Gilmore, “I couldn’t go back and find Bobby in a million years. . . . He’s gone. . . . At this point in time, I would love to go back and find him, put out my hand. And tell him he’s got a friend. But I can’t. He’s gone. He doesn’t exist.”19 Unlike urban legends and playground superstars, though, we can see and hear Dylan over the course of a long career and know that a man exists there. He is a mystic, wearing multiple masks to confuse the world as it begs for him to bare his soul. Yet, all we know is that Dylan abides.