Top 5 Bob Dylan Myths, Explained – laparenthese-gourmande

TULSA — Has Bob Dylan ever set foot in the Bob Dylan Center?

“No, he didn’t. And we don’t expect he ever will,” one staffer responded in a quick, measured manner that implied she’d heard your question thousands of times before.

It’s no surprise that Dylan hasn’t visited his own museum. After all, he didn’t acknowledge winning the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature for several weeks and ruined the annual Nobel ceremony in Sweden.

Since singing the phrase “don’t look back” in 1965, Dylan has mostly refused to examine his sacred place in music and culture.

The singer – who is still touring and recording at age 83 – had virtually no involvement in the Center other than selling his extensive archives to the Tulsa-based George Kaiser Family Foundation, which opened the museum in 30 000 square feet in 2022 next to its headquarters. another project, the Woody Guthrie Center.

But even if the elusive artist isn’t participating in a memory of the past, that’s exactly what millions of fans are doing.

Not just in Tulsa, where a steady stream of visitors pored over hundreds of interactive exhibits about his career on a cold, gray weekday in late November. The main event takes place in cinemas nationwide on Christmas Day with the opening of A complete stranger, the aptly titled biopic starring Timothée Chalamet as young, curly-haired Dylan.

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Edward Norton, left, and Timothée Chalamet in a scene from “A Complete Unknown.”(Macall Polay/AP)

Directed by James Mangold, who also oversaw the Johnny Cash story Follow the lineThe film takes a mostly factual look at Dylan’s rocky rise to fame from 1961 to 1965. But according to reports, the singer asked the filmmakers to include at least one completely fictional scene.

It’s the same with Dylan, who made up stories about being a carnival worker and prostitute before being discovered in the folk clubs of Greenwich Village. He also blurred reality in the 2019 pseudo-documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese.

“This is from Bob. He loves mixing fact and fiction,” said T Bone Burnett, Dylan’s longtime friend. The Dallas Morning News in October.

So who is the real Bob Dylan?

Your guess is as good as anyone’s. To help Dylan newbies solve the riddle, here’s a look at five common myths.

Spokesperson for his generation

After writing topical masterpieces like “The Times They Are A-Changin'” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Dylan was hailed as a spokesperson for the anti-war and civil rights movements and half a dozen other causes.

“And here it is: take it, you know it, it’s yours,” said singer Ronnie Gilbert as he introduced it at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival.

There was only one problem. You cannot be a spokesperson if you refuse to speak.

A few months after being called the new prophet of social progress, Dylan stopped writing political songs, stopped giving interviews and publicly disavowed his role as the “prince of protest”, as he later dubbed it. late with a sneer.

In a Dylan Center exhibition in 1965 – the year he went electric and alienated folk purists – a concert review quoted him telling his fans: “I’m tired of people asking ‘What’ what does that mean? This means Nothing.'” Years later, he said that hearing the word “spokesperson” made him physically ill.

A visitor views archival footage of Bob Dylan at the singer’s museum in Tulsa.(Nan Coulter / Special contributor)

Just a Guthrie clone

Some critics criticized Dylan for imitating Woody Guthrie on his early albums. Yet for all his Guthrie-isms (the voice, the lyrics, the Greek fisherman’s cap), he was far from a Guthrie clone. He was more of an equal opportunity sponge.

He borrowed melodies from countless old country, folk and gospel songs – sometimes credited, sometimes not. Above all, he borrowed a lot from the blues. He filled his 1962 debut album Bob Dylan with a half-dozen blues songs, including “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” by Dallas legend Blind Lemon Jefferson. Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson – who recorded half of all his songs at 508 Park Ave. in Dallas – also had a big influence.

“From the first note, the vibrations from the speaker made my hair stand on end,” Dylan wrote of listening to Johnson’s music in Chronicles: Volume Onehis 2004 impressionist memoir. “The stabs of the guitar could almost break a window. When Johnson started singing, he sounded like a guy who could have come out of Zeus’ head in full armor.

His peers adore him

Most of them do. But love is far from universal.

Judy Collins, who met him in 1959 when he was still Robert Zimmerman, practically tripped over her tongue when describing him as News earlier this year: “He was a magic chisel in the preconceived idea of what this country was. »

It received a mixed review from his girlfriend Joan Baez. She is represented in A complete stranger calling him “kind of an asshole.” However, she was rather radiant when News asked about him in 2019. “I mean, he’s a genius,” Baez said. “He gave us the best songs we ever had.”

And then there’s Joni Mitchell. Although the two were friends in the ’70s, she lashed out at him in 2010. Los Angeles Times interview: “Bob is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception.

Refuse to sell

Everyone knows that Dylan marches to his own rhythm. But what we often forget is that he does not hesitate to make money quickly.

At the Bob Dylan Center, you can buy his Heaven’s Door whiskey, supposedly “co-created” by the singer and named after his 1973 song “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” In 2004, he appeared in a Victoria’s Secret television commercial, brooding and flaunting his twinkling blue eyes like a model. And in 1996, he authorized the use of “The Times They Are A-Changin'” in a Bank of Montreal advertising campaign.

As he put it so well Bring it all home“Money doesn’t talk, it swears.”

You have to see him in concert

Some musicians really need to be seen in the flesh for you to fully appreciate them.

Dylan? Not so much.

In the 13 concerts I saw, he was repeatedly brilliant, unveiling bold new arrangements of old songs and singing with soulful urgency. More often than not, a Dylan show is an exercise in frustration, especially for newcomers.

Performing in April at the Music Hall at Fair Park, he remained hidden in the shadows behind a keyboard, barely acknowledged the audience and ignored all of his best-known songs in favor of tunes from his 2020 album. Rough and rowdy manners.

Some die-hard fans loved the show. But most of the audience just seemed perplexed – and that’s precisely what Dylan wants.