Tangled Up in Bob
A tribute. And some temperance.

By Chris McEvoy, NRO managing editor
May 19-20, 2001

ur own William F. Buckley Jr. wasn't exactly taken with Bob Dylan in 1985 when he watched this cornerstone of popular music do his thing for what was then the largest international audience ever assembled for a rock concert.

Dylan's thing was to rasp his lyrics into a microphone to the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar, and that night his audience was the satellite-connected crowd of Live Aid and a home-viewing audience of millions. Dylan, as is sometimes his downfall on stage, was barely audible. And Buckley, an avowed "truth-seeker in the matter of the rock culture," let him have it. In describing the spectacle of Dylan, book-ended by Ron Wood and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, Buckley wrote:

. . .Then intense concentration on Dylan, and neither I nor spouse can pick up a single word he sings, and we frankly doubt that anyone else could. (Why?) The songs were without discernable melody, the voice was whiny, with enough gravel in it to stop Jean-Claude Killy in mid-slope.

Concert reviewers in rock magazines have many times described Dylan in similar terms. Buckley, in fact, was more gracious than the hyperbole-driven rock critic. He continued on to clarify that "there is no doubting the sincerity of the rock-worshippers." It's just that, on that night, Dylan needed to be dismissed as a matter of taste.

As we Buckley-endorsed rock-worshippers know, it's all a matter of taste.

Next week, Bob Dylan turns 60. For 40 of his years he has been one of rocks most acquired tastes, and yet, it can be argued, no pop icon has had more influence on the lyrical side of genre since Dylan. Yes, as Buckley pointed out, the voice was never really there — although a Dylan song sung by Dylan remains bordeaux-rich to many generations. But great words marrying great music were always there. Which brings up another problem in the science of Dylan legacy-building: How great?

The rock critics' hyperbole engulfs Dylan. Foremost, there is the all-time stretch that he is more than a profound lyricist — that he is indeed the poet-lyricist, or even the stand-alone poet. This idea emerged with Dylan in the '60s and it never died, although many of us thought it did.

Poet Diane Wakoski was taken aback last year when her state senator Thaddeus McCotter suggested Bob Seger for the nascent position of poet laureate of Michigan. The rocker's nomination was a deja vu for Wakoski. She recalled how hip intellectuals in the 1960s argued over Dylan-as-poet. Wakoski told a reporter, "Bob Dylan is a great, great, great songwriter, but nobody is calling him a poet anymore."

Sadly, this isn't true. It's virtually impossible to stumble on a fresh Dylan article (there are many during these birthday weeks) that doesn't qualify him as the poet-lyricist, the unofficial poet laureate of the 1960s, or just the poet. At times, the "poet" rocker is treated to the studied introspection of the literary critic. This weekend's fete of Dylan by The New Yorker is titled "The Work of Bob Dylan." Bob Dylan produced "work," other artists just songs.

Perhaps, on the occasion of his 60th, its time to temper the accolades.

For one, no one who ever said Bob Dylan is a poet ever argued it very well. The beat poet Allen Ginsberg went to his grave saying Dylan was a great lyric poet, reminding the world that the word lyric comes from lyre, the stringed instrument of the bards. It seems contrived to have to jump back so far to justify the poethood of Dylan.

Michael McClure, in his book Knockin' on Dylan's Door, had to say in the chapter titled "The Poet's Poet" that Dylan "is a real poet who lives the poems that he sings." This is the plaintive argument without substance, in two parts. Part one argues: "Dylan's no fake, man — he's the real deal." Well, okay, if you say so. Part two says: "It's like, man, the guy lives what he writes." Thankfully, this doesn't elevate one to poetic heights. Motley Crue lived "Girls, Girls, Girls" to the hilt. There's not a poet among them.

Bob Dylan may have never fully believed he was a poet, either, although he has claimed the title often enough. In a 1965 interview, at the height of his creative peak, he said that labeling his music "rock" or "folk rock" — the equivalent of distorting old forms — just doesn't work. "It's all music — nothing more, nothing less," he said. Despite repelling his true musical predecessors, Dylan spoke unerringly: Music should and must be treated as music.

Which brings us back to Wakoski's acuteness: He is a "great, great, great songwriter."

Here's the standard, Dylan's "Blowin in the Wind." It features some of his most memorable lines, many of which were gospel during the war protests of the '60s. But its important to remember that they were recorded in 1962, before the great rages of Vietnam. The words could apply to Russia under Stalin as neatly as Cuba under Castro. Good words, like good music, stand up across the ages:

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

You may notice that it's hard to read these words without hearing the chord strums below. Neither part — word nor music — stands alone, and the result is the product of Bob Dylan. It's nothing more, and certainly nothing less.

As he should, Dylan takes his best works very seriously. He has argued them as art in a way that rock and folk are not usually argued as art. In 1985 he was discussing his "Tangled Up in Blue" with a biographer: The song had evolved from an earlier version on Blood on the Tracks to a point where Dylan said, "now I know it's where it should be." The biographer, interviewing Dylan, says the song, once clear as to the narrator, is now confused in that respect. Dylan's answer seems delighted, as this was his artful aim: "I wanted to defy time, so that the story took place in the present and past at the same time. When you look at a painting, you can see any part of it or see all of it together. I wanted that song to be like a painting."

Again, he argues for the whole as sum of its parts. Music + lyrics = songs.

Dylan does continue to write and tour today (a whopping 100 dates a year), but the Dylan to whom America owes a debt was built in the early to mid '60s (Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, it should be noted, was released in 1967). This is the point at which we can neatly divide popular music into Before Dylan, and After Dylan. With Dylan, folk and rock merged for the first time. Folk had the depth, and rock had the guts. Since the coupling, rock has never been the same.

So how much reverence does Bob Dylan deserve? As much as you can possibly afford a folk-rock performer with meaningful lyrics . . . whose voice just may have been able to stop Jean-Claude Killy in mid-slope. Dylan is artist, minstrel, troubadour. His body of work can in fact be a body of work. But anything more or other — such as eternalizing him with the title of poet — lessens pop music as much as it lessens poetry. Bob Dylan is formidable enough in the category of pop music, and its broad cultural wake. Why place him elsewhere?