Bob Dylan walks around London . . . . . 

Bob and Debbie Gold

I subscribe to a group of friends on Facebook who have a little club of Theme Time Radio Hour in a Bobby appreciation and I spotted today Meg Hansen had posted a little Debbie Gold story. I love these stories about Dylan being found in odd places and popping up at bus stops and on Beatles tours in Liverpool, or Dave Stewart's house waiting for "Dave" who turned out to be some builder or some such, Bob looking at some random house for sale in the rain . . . . . but I digress, seems Debbie Gold had a whole treasure trove of these and Megan shared this one :

"In memory of my amazing friend, Debbie Gold, and her big heart and great laugh and all of her fun stories, here is an endearing one about Bob Dylan. She adored him and she produced Dylan’s Good As I Been To You.

Debbie had stories about, well, everyone… from going trick-or-treating with Slash and hearing, “check out that costume – that guy is dressed up as Slash!” to the effing Cranberries, to knowing all the secrets of all the music execs! Unfortunately, she only wrote down a few of them.

About 15 years ago, I think it was right around when Debbie was first diagnosed with the cancer, we spent some time in Malibu at my apartment getting a few of her stories on paper. She told me she wanted to someday write a book, but she said, if she doesn’t write the book, she wanted me to hold onto the stories for her and not tell anyone that I had them; and then, after she passes away someday, she wanted me to “publish them” and “share them with her friends.” 

Ironically, a couple of days after Debbie passed away, I saw Bob at a restaurant in Malibu and it reminded me of Debbie’s stories. I had to dig them out of storage and I need to re-type them, so probably one a week for the next few weeks, but here we go. Also, since I live in Malibu and I don’t wish to upset the good-looking guy around the corner who happens to have two empty horse stalls in his backyard, if Bob requests that I delete this, I will need to do so (to cover my tail, I left him the stories at his house in advance). More to follow. 

xoxo meg

In Debbie’s own words…

At the Zoo
By Debbie Gold

I’ve often been asked such captivating questions as, “Hey, uh, what’s the difference between being on the road with Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan?” There is certainly more than one answer to that question, but the first thing that comes to mind is, when traveling around the world with Bruce, when I introduce him to any fan and/or industry person, the response is usually about the same. They almost always being jumping up and down, madly shaking his hand and exclaiming things like, “Wow, man, this is like unbelievable, Bruce Springsteen!! This is one of the most amazing moments of my life! I can’t believe it! Bruce, you’re my hero! Oh this is so cool…”

When introducing a fan to Dylan, the response is a little different. Inevitably, the one I introduce to Bob begins standing there, almost at a loss for words, eyes open real wide, and a look comes over their face  that just about says, “I’m standing face to face with God.” I’ve often wished I could carry a video camera when traveling the world with Dylan and place it just over his left shoulder, so that I could capture all of the moments like that (complete with people spilling things and tripping over their shoelaces, etc.). 

Can you imagine what it’s like to be looked at that way all the time? Also, Bob has a very distinctive look whereas once in a while, Bruce can blend into a crowd.  Of course, as soon as someone notices it’s Bruce, I’ve seen that same crowd turn into a scene from “The Pied Piper.” Anyway, a reasonable amount of security is required for both of them when they go on the road, which brings us my next story. 

On Dylan’s European tour in 1981, which I was lucky enough to be a part of, a handful of ‘handlers’ were put together for his protection. Though professional, and devoted to their jobs, once in a while I noticed there could be a bit of confusion as far as who was supposed to be doing what. On such rare occasions, I could picture them bumping heads, in a ‘Three Stooges’ kind of way, to make sure Bob was protected (it’s hard to believe, but Dylan’s always been more famous in Europe, making security even more significant). London, where this story takes place, was certainly no exception. Dylan was scheduled to play 5 nights at Earl’s Court, London’s 20,000 seat hall, beginning in a few days. It would be an understatement to say that the city was aware of Dylan’s presence. 

The whole tour arrived in town a few days early, giving us a chance to get a head start working on what would surely be a busy week, and the musicians the opportunity to enjoy a few days off. The first afternoon, the phone in my hotel room suddenly started ringing with frantic phone calls from various Dylan staffers, beginning with one of his bodyguards, “Have you seen Bob?” he asked, hopefully. 

“No, I haven’t,” I answered, “Has he missed an appointment? Is he supposed to be somewhere?” 

“No, uh, that’s O.K., thanks,” he said hurriedly, before hanging up. 

Next, his road manager called, asking nervously, “You haven’t seen Bob this afternoon, have you?” 

“No,” I replied, hardly getting the word out before he thanked me and hung up. I remember shortly after a few more calls, walking out in to the hallway, near Bob’s room, and noticing at least a few of them pacing around, nervously. 

A couple of hours later, back in my room, the phone rang once again, only this time it was Bob’s voice I heard on the other end of the line, casually asking me if I wasn’t busy, would I mind coming down to his room for a bit. I asked, “Bob, do you know that everyone’s in a panic looking all over for you? Do they know you’re back?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied, totally uninterested, “Are you coming over?” 

“Sure,” I said, “I’ll be right there.”

Bob looked relaxed and really happy as he greeted me at the door. “I had the best afternoon!” he almost burst, exuberantly. 
“You did?” I asked, curiously, “What happened?” 

“Well, I was feeling a little cooped up in this hotel room,” he began. “It looked like such a nice afternoon so I decided to take a walk. I put my sweatshirt on with the hood up,” (it was mid-July in London, but this was Bob’s best attempt at disguising himself) “and I went out and just started walking.” 

“By yourself?” I asked, amazed. 

“Yeah,” he began, enthusiastically, “and I first ended up walking all through Piccadilly Circus, where, of course, there were thousands of other people, and nobody said a word to me! It was so great so I just kept going. Then, I walked up and down King’s road and through Trafalgar Square, and still, I never said a word to anyone, and nobody spoke to me.”

“Wow, Bob, that’s unbelievable! That must have felt great.”
“It did, and so I kept going. It was such a beautiful day, too, so I went through Hyde Park, and was walking around for hours – it was so peaceful. I saw so many people and nobody ever said a word to me. Finally, I was making my way back to Regents Park (where our hotel was located), and I ended up in the Regents Park Zoo, just sitting quietly on a hill. It was so great, I could hardly believe it, and I didn’t want the day to end. Finally, I noticed it must have been 5pm, because the zoo was getting ready to close, and the zookeeper was politely getting everyone to leave. Eventually, the whole place was empty, except for me, and I didn’t notice, as I was busy pondering what a peaceful day it had been, when the zookeeper came over to me and said, ‘It’s closing time. I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave, Mr. Dylan!”

Meg Hansen

N.B. if Meg wishes me to remove this please get in touch but it is so brilliant I just had to share it here in memory of Debbie Gold 

and of course as synchronicity would have it Big O have posted a nice bootleg this morning of the Osaka gig around the time of the legendary Budokan concert in Japan

Bob Dylan - Osaka 1978

It has had quite a bit of work done to tidy up but is highly listenable

HOWL

Cadets read “Howl”, February 19, 1991, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia. 

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz” - Allen Ginsberg, Howl

I have a soft cover first edition of Ginsberg's 'Howl' and as a poem it meant and means a  great deal to me. It grabbed me as a youngster and I may have been a teenager when I first read it [1970?]. What I don't understand is quite what these recruits were doing being made to read it in class. Anyone?

I may have said in the previous issues of 'Ways of Seeing' that I wander around the t'internet picking up pictures as I go and apart for the info mentioned I have no idea what is going on here or whose photograph it is. If it is yours and wish a credit just let me know and if you want it taking down please ask me . . . . . 

Wilful Missing - Unsinkable Sailor album clip

Unsinkable Sailor, our new album, is out on 22 April. Preorder it now.
  unsinkable-sailor



BIRD WATCHING UPDATE - now lots of you [who ARE you talking to?! ED] know I am a birder , not I repeat NOT a TWITCHER! A birder, that is someone who really enjoys birds amongst the wildlife flora and fauna of our fair land. I am especially fond of the little creatures in my tiny and I MEAN tiny back garden. With a little help from the hard work of my wife who has constructed wild areas of logs and twigs and regularly hanging feeders of fat and seeds we have had am extraordinary range of birdlife visit.

Here are two notebook updates largely about Spring and the resurgence of wildlife and mating behaviours . . . . . . . . you have been warned it's steamy stuff!

Sat 26th March

Again the dunnocks on the back lawn mating at exactly the same time of day as last time I caught them, er I mean chanced across them! Exactly the same place! I wish I could film it or photograph but it is so delicate and they are so quick. So funny and delightful!

The female emerged from the little ground cover bush (do they live it in?) and then after a few minutes she was joined by the male (me having thought well it won't happen again - not for a third time!) and then I thought she is about to make her dance and hey presto the male appears and goes through his little routine too. This time they were facing North and I could see more detail n the female which I will spare a description here, remarkably graphic in some ways and he took about 5 minutes maybe slightly less and I thought she was going to give up but then resumed her fervour and up he stepped and a split second and he's done. She flies off to a branch and he disappeared momentarily back into the bush she looking somewhat disheartened (I know I shouldn't anthropomorphise but it is irresistible!) and stayed on her branch for a while and he has resurfaced and is hopping around the plants pots . . . . .amazing, same time same place, will retry to set camera ready next time

Sunday 20th and gain on the 19th March

I noticed this one 11.00am

"Had a pair of Dunnocks mating in the back garden just now, earlier  . . .the MOST beautiful thing, ornate extraordinary behaviour, she, shaking her tail feathers, head dipping down and hopping into different positions like three points of the compass and he hopping to follow her 'dance' in sequence, a wonderful and timeless dance and then up he hopped onto her, “treading" doesn't cover it, the blink of an eye and the job was done . . .! . . . Hilariously quick ('twas always thus . . .chaps please note ha ha ha!) literally the blink of an eye and he was gone. . Hopped off! . . .Split second . . . . She stood and as if in shock for a little second, SO funny and they then spent the rest of the afternoon as dusk is falling just hopping around our flower pots . . . . Truly a wonderment and thing of astonishing beauty,  a sheer delight . . . . . . .

PLAYING FOR CHANGE 

I don't post these often enough but here are Roberto Luti and Nico Bereciartua live in Patagonia, Argentina. PFC Says "This performance was filmed under a tree with an audience of birds and a few lucky people. Now we share it with all of you. Two soul brothers connected through music and a love for the blues. Turn it up and share it with everyone you can." So I did!


Enjoy!

AW heck! I better post this too! I love Keb Mo and here he is with his son on drums . . .(how did that happen!?) and Mermans Mosengo on vocals as well  it is naughtiest, loosest version of 'Honky Tonk Women' you have EVER heard! Fonk it!

BOOK REVIEW From Big O (where else!?)

STRAY CAT BLUES

The ’60s resonate so far into the present that it says so much about that uninhibited time when sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll truly mattered. We will always be looking back. Nevermind Bob Dylan. By Ron Jacobs.

There’s a scene near the beginning of the 1970 Donald Cammell film Performance starring Mick Jagger and James Fox where a chauffeur is tied up, his boss’s car mutilated with acid, and his head shaven. The recently released biography of David Litvinoff begins with a very similar scene. There is a reason for that. Not only was Litvinoff intimately involved in the making of the film, it is his life that the James Fox character is partially modeled after. Other gangsters in the film are modeled after people Litvinoff knew and worked with.

Litvinoff was one of those characters in bohemian circles who never quite make their own art. Instead, these characters inspire the work of the bohemians they hang out with, procure illegal drugs for, and otherwise provide elements of danger and excitement most artists would not otherwise encounter.

In the US counterculture, the Beat inspiration and Merry Prankster bus driver Neal Cassady is probably the best known such individual. Litvinoff, who like Casady, could talk a mile a minute, also knew how to tell a good story. In addition, he had serious connections in the London criminal underworld as well as in the art scene. He often made it his business to introduce members of each scene to the other.

Litvinoff was also a gay man at a time when homosexuality was still illegal. However, according to his biographer Keiron Pim in the recently released (in the United Kingdom) Jumpin’ Jack Flash: David Litvinoff And The Rock N’ Roll Underworld, Litvinoff never really tried to hide his sexuality.

Naturally, this made the men in the overly macho world of gangsters nervous, especially among the individuals who were uncertain of their own sexuality. Like any good rock and roll biography, there is an undercurrent of sexuality throughout Pim’s text. To his credit, Pim does not make it the central element to Litvinoff’s story, leaving the reader to deduce that Litvinoff was much more than a person defined by his sexual desires.

This is a fascinating look at what I would consider a life well-lived. A man who never had much of a bank account (and never seemed to really need that type of security), Litvinoff came from the Jewish working class district of London. His parents were refugees from the Tsarist pogroms in Russia.

After his real father died, his mother remarried and had five more children. Two of his half-brothers were known among the mainstream intellectual culture in Britain; one as a writer and the other as a historian. Both had minimal interaction with David once he left home, although Kim writes that his brother Emmanuel (the writer) would occasionally give his half-brother a place to sleep and some money.

Like so much of the period we call the ’60s, Litvinoff’s biography proves that who you were and how you presented yourself mattered more than how much money you made or where you came from. 

Besides meeting and hanging out with the Rolling Stones, Litvinoff also knew the artists Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. He met both men through his underworld connections - specifically through his dealings with the Kray brothers, two of London’s best-known gangsters during Litvinoff’s adult life.

In essence, Litvinoff would serve as a bill collector for businessmen the Kray’s were “protecting.” He also played this role once after the Rolling Stones were arrested at Keith Richards’ Redlands mansion. The raid occurred because of a policeman intent on busting pop stars.

Litvinoff and some others in the circle were convinced there was an informer in the Stones scene and, when they found the man they believed to be the snitch, beat him around a bit. The Stones were somewhat appalled and distanced themselves a bit from Litvinoff and his criminal associates.

In part because of his then illegal sexuality, Litvinoff was introduced to many men in varied levels of London society who were also gay. His silence about their sexuality meant he was occasionally able to use his knowledge for his own gain.

However, Pim seems to think this was not a standard mode of operation for Litvinoff. Indeed, it is the author’s belief that his protagonist was a man who lived for the joy of life. He had his dark side, as evidenced by his violence in the service of the Krays, but, as he moved away from that life, he was able to enjoy music, hashish, art and writing.

The final years of his life were spent in the service of the muse, working with artists, musicians, and other performers as inspiration and in-house critic. It was also when he worked with filmmakers Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg and actors James Fox, Anita Pallenberg and Mick Jagger on the British classic film, Performance.

The film, originally panned and harshly criticized by critics, especially in the United States, is now recognized as one of the best British films of the 20th century. It is a film that is much greater than the actual images on the screen. In a manner similar to the Dennis Hopper creation in Blue Velvet, Performance leaves the viewer with a feeling of transformation not easily put into words. Its power is in the uneasiness it creates.

There’s a brief scene in the film where the James Fox character, a gangster on the run named Chas Devlin (and the Litvinoff-based character), is asked by retired rock star Turner, the character played by Mick Jagger, what he does. Chas answers that he “performs.”

Indeed, this is what Litvinoff also did. Like his cousin in spirit, Neal Cassady, Litvinoff lived a life that was performance, both conscious and otherwise. Also like Neal Cassady, it is that life that made David Litvinoff bigger than life.

Like so much of the period we call the ’60s, Litvinoff’s biography proves that who you were and how you presented yourself mattered more than how much money you made or where you came from. Kieron Pim’s Jumpin’ Jack Flash is both the equivalent of a topnotch pirate tale and unique look at the history of the 1960s British counterculture.

Note: Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. He lives in Vermont. You can email him here. The above article was posted at CounterPunch.

+ + + + +

Jumping Jack Flash by Keiron Pim - BUY THE BOOK HERE

WAYS OF SEEING II

Ways of Seeing by John Berger taught me to question more what it is that we see . . . . . 

What does this picture below tell us?

What is happening here?

Does it change with knowledge?

Could it perhaps be a daughter and father affectionately kissing on the steps of some communal building perhaps? 

Would that make it adorable? Amusing perhaps? Are they perhaps reunited after some drama or period of separation? 

All these thoughts hurtled through my mind before I considered what my eyes were actually telling me . . .   . . . .

Well would what we feel change if we learned this was a picture taken at the marriage of these two?

Where could this be so? 

How old is the young woman?

Is she a midget? Hah! Could that be true? Or Is she a child? 

Would that change our perception of what is shown?

Does a cultural influence affect what we see?

 The actual caption reads thus:

"Homer Peel kisses his 12-year-old bride Geneva on the courthouse steps. Madinsonville, Tennessee, USA - June 25 1937."

Now how do you feel about this picture?

Horrified? Disgusted, or appalled? Does it make you feel sick? It did me! 

For a moment I thought the world had gone mad, stark staring crazy. From a country where Jerry Lee Lewis married his under age (13!) first cousin once removed (she was Jerry's third wife and may bigamously married Jerry as he hadn't yet divorced his second wife. He was 21. He married his first wife when he was 14) and Elvis Presley first got together with the girl who he would marry when she was only 14.  He was not her first. 

What is portrayed here was legal (presumably) in Tennessee and it was entirely culturally acceptable for this married couple to do this in one of the most advanced sophisticated and highly developed countries in the world which through power has sought to establish itself as the political and moral arbiter for the planet setting the standards for everyone else.

Fascinating huh? 

WAYS OF SEEING (REVISITED)

Photographer Jimmy Sime

The five boys who came to illustrate the class divide of pre-war Britain, 1937

“Toffs and Toughs” is a 1937 photograph of five boys: two dressed in the Harrow School uniform including waistcoat, top hat, boutonnière, and cane; and three nearby wearing the plain clothes of pre-war working class youths. The picture was taken by Jimmy Sime on 9 July 1937 outside the Grace Gates at Lord’s Cricket Ground during the Eton v Harrow cricket match. It has been reproduced frequently as an illustration of the British class system.

The Harrovians were Peter Wagner and Thomas “Tim” Dyson, who had arranged to be at Grace Gates at 2 pm, where Wagner’s father would pick them up and drive them to Russ Hill, the Wagners’ country home in Surrey, for the weekend. The other three boys were George Salmon, Jack Catlin, and George Young, 13-year-old pupils at the local Church of England primary school. All three had been to the dentist that morning and then decided to skip school and hang around instead outside Lord’s, where the Eton-Harrow match offered money-making opportunities to any boy willing to open taxi doors and carry bags, or to return seat cushions to their hirers and claim the threepenny deposit.

The News Chronicle published the picture the next day on the front page, under the headline “Every picture tells a story”. A one-line caption identified only the event and location. According to Peter Wagner’s sister, when the Wagner family first saw it, “we probably laughed because they [the boys] both looked so fed up”. But in the years that followed, her amusement faded. Later she declared that the picture was known “for all the wrong reasons”.

What happened to the boys later in life?

Tim Dyson (the rich boy staring toward the camera) has the saddest story. A year after Sime took his picture, his parents arranged for their son to join them for his summer holidays at their army quarters in Trimulgherry, India. Dyson began to feel very ill while traveling and was diagnose with diphtheria. Tim died in Trimulgherry on 26 August 1938, aged 16. His father was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore and died in a Korean prison camp on 22 November 1942, four years after he buried his only child.

Peter Wagner entered the family stockbroking firm, married, and had three daughters; he became mentally unstable in the 1970s and died in Hellingly Hospital in 1984, aged 60.

George Young and George Salmon were each married when interviewed for the Daily Mail in 1998. Young started a window-cleaning business and set up his four sons in the same trade. Salmon, who still lived in Marylebone, died in 2000. Jack Catlin’s family moved to Rickmansworth soon after 1937; he was widowed, remarried and living in Weymouth in 2010.

In striking contrast to Wagner and Dyson, all three men had reached old age and a plateau of contentment. But Catlin hadn’t maintained contact with Salmon and Young. His wife said that when a newspaper (perhapsthe Daily Mail) had asked the three men to get together to reconstruct the picture at Lord’s, or at least their part in it, Jack had refused. Probably to be stereotyped as a poor London boy – a tough even – may have irritated a man who had made good and probably felt no nostalgia for the pre-war streets of his childhood.

WILFUL MISSING - NEW ALBUM FINISHED 

UNSINKABLE SAILOR 

due out next month

They say . . . . . . . 

Four long years have passed since Molehills out of Mountains, but our new album Unsinkable Sailor is finally here. The album will be released on 22 April on CD and as a download. You can pre-order it now and get an instant download of the opening song, Hunger.

Unsinkable Sailor encompasses songs which are brand new, as old as the hills, and everything in between. Inspired in no small part by amazing women and the endurance of hope against all odds, we proudly (but with a generous splash of trepidation) present this new album to you.

Regular visitors (who are THEY then? ED.) will know I am a big fan of Wilful Missing and have collected pretty much all the music but they have been working on a new album which is announced as being out on 22 April after tantalisingly being referred as being out before Christmas and there being gigs to support it, they have finally released it out into the wild. (!)

Big Spike Jonze fan . . . . . . . . so I found this . . . . . it's Saturday and seemed to fit my mood . . . . . .and it's got animals in it!@?! ?$@!? !

JOHN PRINE

(with Iris DEMENT)

Found this a wandering around t'internet over at fellow blogger  Voodoo Wagon. . . . . now I adore the work of John Prine and he is up there with my all time favourite singer songwriters and this is a whole concert over at West 54th Street . . . (wherever the heck that is . . . . .)

It features the voice and talents of Miss Iris Dement and I confess I struggled with that high n lonesome sounding voice. It is an accent not always easy on the ears of us Brits but I have come to think she's great and John Prine featured her heavily on his album 'In Spite of Ourselves' and I grew accepting of her vocal tones. She is also a songwriter I find mesmerising and she has written one of the all time great songs about religiosity in 'Let That Mystery Be' which I love  . . . . . whilst I consider myself an atheist this has an agnosticism I find delightful. One is so used to a kind of Chirstian attitude in much Americana that this comes as a breath of fresh mountain air . . . . . 

You can find a nice whole concert to download here 

Iris Dement - Austin Texas 1994

over at the wonderful blog  Voodoo Wagon who has notes that are helpful if you don't know Iris
One of the most celebrated country-folk performers of her day, singer/songwriter Iris DeMent was born on January 5, 1961, in rural Paragould, AR, the youngest of 14 children. At the age of three, her devoutly religious family moved to California, where she grew up singing gospel music; during her teenaged years, however, she was first exposed to country, folk, and R&B, drawing influence from Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell. Upon graduating high school, she relocated to Kansas City to attend college.

After a series of jobs waitressing and typing, DeMent first began composing songs at the age of 25. Honing her skills at open-mic nights, in 1988 she moved to Nashville, where she contacted producer Jim Rooney, who helped her land a record contract. Dement did not make her recording debut until 1992, when her independent label offering, Infamous Angel, won almost universal acclaim thanks to her pure, evocative vocal style and spare, heartfelt songcraft. Despite a complete lack of support from country radio, the record's word-of-mouth praise earned her a deal with Warner Bros., which reissued Infamous Angel in 1993 as well as its follow-up, 1994's stunning My Life. Her third LP, 1996's eclectic The Way I Should, marked a dramatic change not only in its more rock-influenced sound but also in its subject matter; where DeMent's prior work was introspective and deeply personal, The Way I Should was fiercely political, tackling topics like sexual abuse, religion, government policy, and Vietnam. In 1999, she collaborated with country man John Prine on his album, In Spite of Ourselves. DeMent recorded four duets with Prine that earned her a Grammy nod the following year. Her own recording career was on hiatus for the late '90s and early 2000s, but she returned in 2005 with Lifeline. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi (AMG)

Interesting article about the MusicCares Dylan Speech here worth sharing from Mikal Gilmore

In April 2015, I wrote a piece about Bob Dylan’s famous (and notorious) speech at MusiCares. By the time the press date came around, though, we agreed the article would no longer be timely for a print edition. I looked at this yesterday for something else I’ve been working on and thought that though it’s long past the event, it might be suitable nonetheless for this page that Elaine has set up:
Minutes after Bob Dylan delivered a speech in early February, accepting a person of the year honor from MusiCares (a Grammys-related musicians’ charity), his words were already historic. That’s because Dylan has been famously reticent when it comes to talking about the sources or motivations of his work. “I did that accidentally,” he told me in 1986, discussing his early years of songwriting. “That was all accidental…. You’re doing something, you don’t know what it is, you’re just doing it. And later on you’ll look at it and …” His words trailed off, then he began again. “To me, I don’t have a ’career.’ A career is something you can look back on, and I’m not ready to look back

At MusiCares, Dylan showed up ready to look back. Following a night of tribute performances by other artists—including Beck, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young—and an introduction by former President Jimmy Carter, Dylan held forth for over thirty minutes before an audience of 3000, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The soliloquy was part autobiography, part revelation, as well as comic monologue and, at moments, scathing, but every turn offered some bold epiphany or another. “I'm glad for my songs to be honored like this,” Dylan began. “But you know, they didn't get here by themselves. It's been a long road and it's taken a lot of doing. These songs of mine, they're like mystery stories, the kind that Shakespeare saw when he was growing up. I think you could trace what I do back that far. They were on the fringes then, and I think they're on the fringes now. And they sound like they've been on the hard ground.”
Dylan staked claims that evening: to an ethereal but hardscrabble lineage, something passed along through ages and minds and voices—a heritage he expanded and transfigured. He owed to some helping hands along the way, he admitted: Columbia Records producer and talent scout John Hammond (“He signed me to that label when I was nobody. It took a lot of faith....); folk singer Joan Baez (“She'd tell everybody in no uncertain terms, ‘Now you better be quiet and listen to the songs’"); Peter, Paul and Mary (“They took [‘Blowin’ in the Wind’] and turned it into a hit song…they straightened it out”); and the Byrds, the Turtles and Sonny & Cher (“Their versions of [my] songs were like commercials, but I didn't really mind”). However, when it came to talking about country singer Johnny Cash, who recorded some Dylan songs in 1963, Dylan turned a corner and revealed a deeper kind of debt: “Johnny Cash was a giant of a man…. I heard many of his songs growing up. I knew them better than I knew my own. ‘Big River,’ ‘I Walk the Line.’ ‘How high's the water, Mama?’ I wrote ‘It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)’ with that song reverberating inside my head. I still ask, ‘How high is the water, mama?’

That form of influence—absorbing earlier words and voices, the history they carried, the promises they implied—was crucial to Dylan’s work and its effects. Over the years we’ve often thought—understandably—of his songs as a rupture, without real precedent in popular music. But with his late-1960s albums, John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait, Dylan made plain that he had never intended to renounce all that had preceded him. He was, if anything, a legatee or alchemist rather than an insurgent, and he possessed an ineradicable love for his inheritance. “These songs,” he said at MusiCares, talking about the music that made his name, “didn't come out of thin air. I didn't just make them up out of whole cloth….there was a precedent. It all came out of traditional music: traditional folk music, traditional rock 'n' roll and traditional big-band swing orchestra music. I learned lyrics and how to write them from listening to folk songs…, and they gave me the code for everything that's fair game, that everything belongs to everyone.…. If you sang ‘John Henry’ as many times as me—‘John Henry said a man ain't nothin' but a man/Before I let that steam drill drive me down/I'll die with that hammer in my hand.’ If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you'd have written ‘How many roads must a man walk down?’ too.”
Dylan hit his stride in these minutes. Speaking in a cadence that resembled the inflection of his singing, he ran through instances of folk songs and blues lyrics and artists, illustrating how the language and reveries in these timeworn antecedents sometimes rubbed off on his own poetry. Big Bill Broonzy’s “Key to the Highway,” he said, planted seeds for “Highway 61.” He also cited lines from traditional songs—ballads, blues, spirituals, work songs—that worked as precursors to “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “Maggie’s Farm,” and he noted the cumulative effect of singing what he called “come all of you” songs that guided him to write some early lines that changed the world: “Come gather 'round people/Wherever you roam/Admit that the waters around you have grown.” These examples added up to a litany: a grateful tracing of the subterranean creative process that took root and helped Dylan find his own songs. “You'd have written them too,” he said. “There's nothing secret about it. You just do it subliminally and unconsciously, because that's all enough, and that's all I sang. That was all that was dear to me. They were the only kinds of songs that made sense.”
But his own work didn’t always sit right with others. “Right from the start, my songs were divisive for some reason…,” Dylan said. “Last thing I thought of was who cared about what song I was writing…. I didn't think I was doing anything different. I thought I was just extending the line. Maybe a little bit unruly…, but so what?” The “so what,” though, was a feint. Dylan had in fact taken stock of several slights over the years from songwriters, producers and singers—affronts hardly anybody else knew about—and he unloaded a few that night. “I didn't really care what Lieber and Stoller thought of my songs,” he said, referring to Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, the team that wrote “Hound Dog” for Elvis Presley as well as several hits for the Drifters and the Coasters. “They didn't like 'em…. That was all right that they didn't like 'em, because I never liked their songs either. ‘Yakety yak, don't talk back.’ ‘Charlie Brown is a clown…’ Novelty songs. They weren't saying anything serious.” Dylan also rebuked others. “Merle Haggard didn't even think much of my songs…. He didn't say that to me, but I know. Buck Owens did, and he recorded some of my early songs…. If you have to have somebody's blessing—you figure it out.” Dylan was in effect measuring the worth—or lack—of others by their estimation of his own work.

He saved his most out-of-the-blue—and hilarious—scorn for country music artist Tom T. Hall. (Hall, now 78, composed 1968’s “Harper Valley PTA” for Jeannie C. Riley.) “Tom and a few other writers,” said Dylan, “had the whole Nashville scene sewed up in a box”—until Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down”: a number one country hit for Johnny Cash in 1970, about a stoned and lonely man. “That one song ruined Tom T. Hall's poker parties,” Dylan said. “It might have sent him to the crazy house. God forbid he ever heard any of my songs”—then Dylan quoted the well-known lines from “Ballad of a Thin Man”: “You know something is happening here/But you don’t know what it is/Do you, Mister Jones?” Dylan went on: “If ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’ rattled Tom's cage, sent him into the looney bin, my song surely would have made him blow his brains out, right there in the minivan. Hopefully he didn't hear it.” Dylan’s invective about Haggard and Hall left some puzzled. Hall in fact has great for Kristofferson; Haggard, who once planned a tribute album to Dylan, and recently recorded a duet of “Don’t Think Twice” with Willie Nelson, responded on Twitter: “Bob Dylan I've admired your songs since 1964.” Dylan later clarified his remarks on Haggard: “I wasn’t dissing Merle, not the Merle I know. What I was talking about happened a long time ago, maybe in the late sixties. Merle had that song out called ‘Fighting Side of Me’ and I’d seen an interview with him where he was going on about hippies and Dylan and the counterculture, and it kind of stuck in my mind and hurt, lumping me in with everything he didn't like. But of course times have changed and he’s changed too. If hippies were around today, he’d be on their side and he himself is part of the counterculture…. I wasn’t dissing Merle at all, we were different people back then. Those were difficult times. It was more intense back then and things hit harder and hurt more.”
Hurt—that makes sense. We sometimes lash back at people and memories that hurt us. It’s hardly out of character for Dylan. It was his unsparing tongue, after all, that helped secure his reputation. One of his first popular singles, “Positively 4th Street,” was a spiteful putdown of former colleagues from the Greenwich Village music scene (“You know as well as me/You’d rather see me paralyzed/Why don’t you just come out once/And scream it?”). Later, in Blood on the Tracks and Time Out of Mind, Dylan tore through lovers and landscapes in the same sneering breath. That angry world-weariness was no doubt something else Dylan grasped from folk and blues sensibilities, but his resentments also served larger purposes. In songs like “With God on Our Side,” “When the Ship Comes In,” “Like a Rolling Stone” or “Early Roman Kings” from 2013’s Tempest, Dylan aimed his derision at mortal folly, at the problem of what it means to seek meaning in morally centerless times. You look at that specter long enough and you might write songs about it too.

The greater puzzle is that, after all these years, Bob Dylan still feels he’s the subject of some sort of critical misjudgment. It was refreshing when he tore into those who have attacked his vocals—“Critics say I can't carry a tune and I talk my way through a song”—because in truth Dylan’s singing is nonpareil, like Billie Holiday’s or Frank Sinatra’s. Nevertheless, Dylan three times in the speech used a phrase perhaps borrowed from Kris Kristofferson: “Why me, Lord?” He was milking the line for comic timing—hearing the speech has a different impact than reading it—but he wasn’t insincere. “Critics have made a career out of accusing me of having a career of confounding expectations,” he said. “Really? Because that's all I do…. Confounding expectations. What does that mean? Why me, Lord?”

The answer to that question is also the answer to why Dylan received the honor that night: because of his work, because of what he’s done, because of his mysteries, his revelations, his restless pilgrimage—because of the new territories and possibilities he opened up in twentieth-century music, that still resound in the twenty-first. It’s good, of course, that he’s never relied on our praise, and that he doesn’t abide by our occasional snide carping. Still, Bob Dylan received the MusiCares distinction—and other accolades in recent years— because in the life he’s lived, and in the times he’s lived it, he has stayed constant to the calling that he both inherited and chose, the vocation that he honored in his unrivaled speech: namely, uncovering truths from the past—desolate, fearless, sublime—then deepening and extending them until they reveal startling new divulgences that we never heard before.

Mikal Gilmore