Dylan's Back Pages

My guard stood hard when abstract thoughts too noble to neglect

Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect.

Good and bad--I defined these terms quite clear, no doubt, somehow.

Ah, but I was so much older then--I'm younger than that now. --Bob Dylan   "My Back Pages"

The jacket to Craig McGregor's book places this anthology of reviews, interviews, and commentary on Bob Dylan under "Music," "Biography," and "Social History." Given the historically uncritical nature of most of the pieces included, the last claim seems pretentious--if one takes the work as most basically a book about Dylan. McGregor's underlying concern is not the songwriter, but his audience. This compilation of "nearly all the major and minor writings concerning Bob Dylan" reveals (perhaps unintentionally) more about the blindness of the performer's public than it does about Dylan himself.

This is not to say that everything here is completely unenlightening on the retrospective's subject. Two critical articles on John Wesley Harding and a final essay written especially for the anthology by Wilfrid Mellers shed some light on Dylan's musical roots, the religiosity of his music, and his development as a writer.

Of course, the most revealing source of material on Dylan remains his songs. The puzzlement over his evolution from "Blowin' in the Wind" to "Lay Lady Lay" can be alleviated through an openminded listening to the music. The early songs, no matter how inspirational to the liberal conscience, represent a fairly immature psychological stage. Dylan willingly casts himself in the role of preacher or moralizing adult, a man with the answers who wished them to be heeded. He was able to do this extraordinarily well because his protests were articulate, often beautiful, and in tune with what many Americans liked to tell themselves they believed.

However, as Dylan continued to write, his work increasingly displayed his recognition that he is not above the human race, but party to its common passions. Understanding the deeper currents of feeling within himself seemed a better way to reach people than telling them what to do. From this vantage point, Dylan took on a child-like role, exploring himself and his surroundings with something of a wide-eyed humility. The results are songs more human, if less humanitarian per se.

The irony in this development is that Dylan has not removed himself from "social consciousness," whatever that is supposed to mean, at all. He never claimed to be spokesman for a movement. "I Pity the Poor Immigrant" from John Wesley Harding is, for example, as moving a protest as "The Times They Are A-Changin'," besides being a much more spiritual work, touching--not preaching at--the listener. Dylan's switch from omniscient father to exploring child explains his words: "I was so much older then--I'm younger than that now," in an album he recorded a full eight years ago.

The various published interviews with Bob Dylan are the most exciting parts of the anthology. His esoteric clowning occasionally seems clumsily arrogant, though the stupidity of some questions makes his reactions understandable. One can infer from a later interview in Rolling Stone that Dylan's attitude has become more cooperative even if his explanations are still characteristically elliptical. Inferring the development of an individual's personality from interviews like these is dangerous, however, especially since Dylan takes himself less seriously than did his interviewers.

The question to be asked is why Dylan was once followed with such dire interest. Why did his only mildly unconventional dress and hairstyle seem such a threat to some and such an inspiration to many? How could Irwin Silber of Sing Out! write a self-righteous and uncomprehending "Open Letter to Bob Dylan" in 1964 under the guise of friendship and concern? Why was Dylan's experiment in folk-rock viewed as unspeakably treasonous? (A comparison between the lovely acoustic version of "Sounds of Silence" on Simon and Garfunkel's first album with the far more intensely haunting folk-rock version on their second, recorded after Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," is one small measure of the importance of Dylan's liberating innovation.)

The answer, which is really not as underhanded as it may sound, is the painless means Dylan afforded for individuals to introject a sense of personal conscience into public arenas. To prove one's longing for equality and justice one needed only to sing along. Dylan became the voice of a generation among those who as individuals wished their individual voices were Dylan's. When Dylan began singing different lines, many feared their voice was gone. After all, if one can't sing along, one may have to act--an intimidating proposition--or at least recognize to what degree Dylan's voice was never the voice of the public at all.

It is customary to explain Dylan's success as a matter of his own eloquence and poetic sensibilities which would, in fact, account for most of his influence among other writers and performers. But his hold over the public cannot be explained so simply. His early songs filled a great spiritual need in America, a need manifested clearly in the historical coincidence of the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam protests. This is the need to believe "we shall overcome"--easily, dramatically, totally, and soon. Dylan's later music is far more challenging, more realistic (though not at all compromised), digging up the substrata of human pain, anger, and despair. The irony is that if we could respond to these songs as energetically, we would probably be far closer than ever to exorcising evil in a human world.

Bob Dylan: A Retrospective claims to explore Bob Dylan, the "composer and musician." It is far more valuable as a record of how America almost stifled one of its finest creative talents in a frantic effort to create a god. Perhaps someday, the public will understand this about Dylan and see his growth as a hope and as an opening. Until then, it is instructive to consider these essays, and reflect on how a folk-rock concert at Newport ended what millions of Americans will look back on as their spiritual and political virginity.