The unwashed phenomenon

There are times when, rather than discovering new and interesting things, is it good to be reminded of important things that you already know.  For me, a recent trip to the movies with my daughter was just such an occasion, as we watched A Complete Unknown, the newly released Bob Dylan biopic directed by James Mangold.  It was good, better than I had expected, and I plan to go again: there was a movie I seen onetime / I think I sat through it twice. 

The film’s title is partly a joke about the very familiarity of its subject, for the story of the nineteen-year old Dylan’s arrival in New York in 1961 and the miraculous series of songs he wrote there in his early twenties is already well known.  Martin Scorsese’s 2005 documentary film No Direction Home covers the same period in Dylan’s life, and both filmmakers borrow their titles from the chorus of his most famous and important song, written at that time: How does it feel / How does it feel / To be on your own / With no direction home / Like a complete unknown / Just like a rolling stone.

One reason I enjoyed the film is that it draws attention to two important ideas in aesthetics, both of which are well-illustrated by Dylan’s life and work.  The first concerns the idea of genre, and the tendency of great works of art to break free from the formal boundaries of the traditions from which they emerge, while the second concerns the idea of artistic authenticity, and the extent to which the personality or character of the artist matters when we consider the quality of their work.  My view is that the greatest artists transform our perception of the fields in which they work, dismantling previously accepted boundaries by inventing new genres, and they often do this by imposing their own distinctive artistic character or persona on the media in which they work.  These creative breakthroughs are frequently accompanied by personal behaviourswhich are only loosely constrained by social norms, since the artist finds it convenient to defend singlemindedness in their private life with the claim that they must be true to themselves and their work. 

Genuis, some say, is necessarily intolerant of fetters.  The best response is to treasure the work but not to excuse the life: we should not treat genius as exemplary. 

Dylan’s first priority when he arrived in New York, was to visit Woodie Guthrie, the legendary folk singer, who was in hospital with Huntingdon’s Disease.  Thereafter he met Pete Seeger, then the doyen of folk music, played regularly in the folk clubs of Greenwich Village, became friendly with Joan Baez (a rising star of the folk scene) and started to perform with her, he recorded an album of folk standards and then another album of his own folk compositions, which was an immediate success.  Within three years he had become the leading singer-songwriter of the day, admired for his lyrics, his performances, his reinvigoration of the folk genre.   Then, abruptly, or so it seemed, he started to write more complex songs, drawing upon a wide range of literary and poetic sources, quite different from the traditional protest songs that he had become associated with.  He put together a band, playing music drawn more from blues than folk, with electric amplification which was turned up loud.  He started to wear more fashionable clothes and kept his sun-glasses on all the time.  Many folk traditionalists went mad with anger, but most of his fans went wild with pleasure.

Dylan left the folk tradition behind, and over the next decades created an vast and original oeuvre in rock music that absorbed additional influences from blues, country music, and gospel.  Every few years, the words, the beat, the clothes, the band, the performances, and the image were changed.  What sort of musician is he?  Impossible to say.   How good a musician is he?  Peerless.  When, in 2016, he was awarded the Nobel Prize, Leonard Cohen observed that it was as if someone had pinned a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain. 

Dylan’s repeated metamorphoses are not unprecedented within the history of the arts.  In the mid-nineteenth century, Richard Wagner abandoned the conventions of Italian opera – from Monteverdi to Guiseppe Verdi – to create a new form, which he called gesamtkunstwerk, meaning “a complete work of art”, in which the music, the lyrics, the staging, and the performance are all integrated into a (lengthy) immersive experience for the audience.  Opera as an artform has not been the same since.  In the decade before Dylan arrived in New York, Miles Davis had begun the transformation of traditional jazz through a series of quartets, ensembles, innovations, and collaborations, which he discarded every few years, irrespective of how successful or popular they proved with audiences.  Knowing what Miles had done last year would not equip anyone to guess what he would do next year.  There are other twentieth century examples that come to mind from other art forms – James Joyce in literature, or Pablo Picasso in painting – where restless innovation is the only constant theme in throughout their careers.  And then, going back two hundred years, there is Goethe, the original genius of the European Enlightenment. 

It is one of the characteristic features of modernity that we expect the life of the artist to be authentic, that is, we expect them to live in conformity with the values of their art.  Dylan came to present himself as the sui generis pioneer, the great uninfluenced influencer of rock music, the man with no ties to the past and no limits upon his future direction.  It was an astute career move, but when that attitude transfers over into one’s personal life, it is likely to prove challenging for family and friends.  

It is no surprise that Goethe, Wagner, Joyce, Picasso, and Davis were all also notoriously difficult characters, leaving trails of wrecked relationships and unhappy collaborators in their wake.  Dylan’s ability to reinvent musical genres by reinventing himself as a performing artist is well captured in Mangold’s film, but so too is the cost paid by others. In one scene, Dylan and Baez sing his song, It ain’t me babe together and it feels prophetic:  I’m not the one you want babe / I will only let you down.   And he did.  And not only her.  A decade later, Joan Baez wrote about him thus: You burst on the scene / Already a legend / The unwashed phenomenon / The original vagabond / You strayed into my arms / And there you stayed / Temporarily lost at sea.  The mix of admiration and annoyance seems very clear.

I have been listening to his music since I was fifteen and have a large collection of his recorded output: 38 studio albums, 8 live albums, and the first 16 volumes of the “bootleg” series.  I play many of them regularly, including songs from all across his 63 year career.  I have been to see him perform several times.  That makes me a fan, but not a fanatic.  For me, what matters is not the life but the lyrics, and in particular the way in which he sings the words he wrote.  I have never heard anyone do it better.

He would like us to know that his achievements have been hard won, that he too has paid a price for his genre-busting genius.  In the mid-1980s, he wrote: Noontime, and I’m still pushing myself along the road, the darkest part / Into the narrow lanes, I can’t stumble or stay put / Someone else is speaking with my mouth, but I’m listening only to my heart / I’ve made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot.  

Sorry about your feet Bob, but I’m happy to enjoy so many beautiful pairs of shoes.