Bob Dylan and Me: Our Back Pages

I saw Bob Dylan in concert again the other night. He’s never been good live. He’s openly uncomfortable. At 85 years of age, he appears more uncomfortable than ever. The photo below reflects what the audience saw. A figure in a hoodie, behind a piano, at the back of a dimly lit stage. Was it even Dylan? Could it have been a hologram?

The photo here doesn’t depict what I saw. He must have moved forward a bit at the end of the concert, after we’d left, like most of the crowd. Dylan doesn’t do encores. He also doesn’t play his most well known songs. He played only two songs that anyone would recognize at this concert. It Ain’t me Babe was an odd choice. Certainly not one of his best, and primarily remembered for the much better version by the Turtles. I didn’t realize he was performing When I Paint my Masterpiece until I recognized the lyrics. People like me recognize pretty much all of Dylan’s lyrics. This was because he changed the melody. This is something he has done for a very long time. So even when he deigns to play something that caters to his audience, he mocks his fans further by making it an entirely different song. He also has long stopped talking to the crowd. No witty banter from him. He just plays songs no one has heard before, with his hooded head down. It did sound like Dylan. But lots of people can impersonate him.

Dylan and I go back a long way. I’d heard of him, of course, but when I was about 17, a few girls I really liked turned me on to Bringing it all Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, and the rest was history. Listening to Dylan made me want to learn to play guitar, and write my own songs. Which I did. I humbly suggest that I could sing a little better than him. His lyrics were something different altogether. This was beyond Cole Porter. Way beyond anything Dylan’s hero Woody Guthrie produced. It was genuine poetry. They say Robert Zimmerman took his stage name from the poet Dylan Thomas, of “After the first death, there is no other” and “Do not go gentle into that good night” fame. Dylan’s lyrical prowess was something pop music had never seen before. There would be other rock poets to follow in his wake; John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, Don McLean, John Prine, Keith Reid (of Procol Harum), Ray Davies, Elvis Costello, among others. But none of them could touch the majesty of his wordplay.

There I was, a very impressionable teenager, already with both feet wading in conspiratorial waters. Scouring Dylan’s lyrics to find references to the JFK assassination, which of course was my primary obsession. Sadly, I never could find any. When Dylan very belatedly addressed the subject, with the 2020 release of his song Murder Most Foul, it was more than anticlimactic. My dear friend John Barbour was incensed at Dylan, basically demanding to know why he hadn’t spoken up earlier, when so many of us were jeopardizing our careers (in Barbour’s case, a very lucrative Hollywood career, in my case any chance at upward corporate mobility), by publicly blasting the government and its controlled media. Still, Dylan triggered my paranoia with lines like And they bring them to the factory, where the heart attack machines are strapped across their shoulders. Incredible pieces like Desolation Row and Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again were filled with this kind of dark imagery.

I didn’t seek Dylan out, and go through his garbage, like the unbalanced but important political researcher A.J. Weberman did. But I began to theorize that Dylan was talking about Them, whoever They are. I discovered that Dylan had been involved in a mysterious motorcycle accident in 1966, only a month after the release of what most think is his greatest album, Blonde on Blonde. I noted that when he reemerged a year later, with John Wesley Harding, his lyrics weren’t the same. The inferences to something sinister and conspiratorial were gone. Even his voice was different. I played around with the idea that They had got to him, and forced him to back off. I included this notion in my novel The Unreals. For all intents and purposes, Dylan’s best work was done by the time he turned 25. In this respect, he mirrored the output of perhaps the greatest poet that ever lived, John Keats, who died at only 25. Sure, Dylan would produce the wonderful Blood on the Tracks later, but that was an outlier.

Dylan’s early career included the best protest songs ever written. I still especially admire his Only a Pawn in Their Game, which was an ode to poor White people. Dylan had the audacity to sing it at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, before a largely Black crowd who would go on to hear King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. When Dylan went electric, and angered all the folkies, that’s when his music became more complex and powerful. The band on his best albums was incomparably spectacular. And they were apparently all non-Irish. Including the former Robert Zimmerman, of course. Guitarist Michael Bloomfield would later be found dead in his car at just 37 years of age, under very suspicious circumstances. Dylan’s most famous song, Like a Rolling Stone, exploded onto radio stations, breaking many Top 40 taboos, including its exceptional length, and the depth of the lyrics. Naturally, Dylan steadfastly refuses to play it live. He refuses to play any of his timeless songs that so many like me adored.

While Dylan shied away from directly addressing the JFK assassination, most of my own fledgling songs revolved around radical political issues. Assassination Day. Praise the Lord and Pass the Plate. The Pews are all Empty. War, Now and Before. Not that many people were hearing them. I was strumming away on my basic chords, falling in love with the G7 chord because Dylan used it so well. He very obviously influenced my writing, and I could find references from his songs in my real life. I knew all too many girls about which I could say, “She just acts like we never have met.” I ran into a situation where “Of the two sisters, I loved the young.” My mom was never mixing up the medicine in the basement, but I was surely thinking about the government, albeit not on the pavement. It was impossible not to feel a tingle in my spine when Dylan sang, “Something is happening here, and you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?” Something is still happening here, and I’m still unclear as to exactly what it is.

Weird Scenes Inside th... David McGowan Best Price: $16.62 Buy New $16.62 (as of 04:20 UTC - Details) Recently, I was watching an interview with Dylan’s son Jakob, who fronts the band the Wallflowers. I really enjoy the Wallflowers’ music. Jakob’s lyrics are not as poetical or politically oriented as his father’s, but he’s pretty damn talented himself. During the interview, Jakob mentioned that he had read Dave McGowan’s book Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon. As most of you know, Dave and I have been compared to each other as writers. I’ve been extremely flattered to hear that, because I really admired his work. So that made me think; if Jakob Dylan read McGowan’s book, which is definitely in the same broad category as mine, could he have read one or more of my books? I think it’s entirely possible. I can dream further and wonder if his father has the same reading taste. What if Jakob read Hidden History or American Memory Hole, and recommended it to his father? What if he got his hands on my novel The Unreals, and saw what I’d written about him? Ah, a boy on the cusp of 70 can dream, can’t he?

I’d seen Bob Dylan in concert two previous times. Once, he was great, with just his guitar, playing old classics like A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall. With their original melody. But just as we were really getting excited, he abruptly stopped. It was even shorter than his unusually brief, standard one hour set. And, naturally, he didn’t come back out for an encore. Lots of bitter and booing fans left in his wake. He obviously didn’t care, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who kept buying and listening to his albums. Then, I saw him at RFK stadium with the Grateful Dead and Tom Petty. All the Deadheads there were a distraction, and I thought it was disrespectful to Dylan for the Dead to be the headliner. We left before they hit the stage. I don’t remember much about what Dylan played, but I don’t recall complaining too much. I complain a lot, as you probably know by now, so sometimes it’s hard to distinguish one disappointing event from another. Regardless, I didn’t see him again for over 40 years.

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