"Famous Long Ago": Bob Dylan Revisited
2007; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 59; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/aq.2007.0030
ISSN1080-6490
Autores Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
Resumo"Famous Long Ago":Bob Dylan Revisited Louis P. Masur (bio) Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews. Edited by Jonathan Cott. New York: Wenner Books, 2006. 445 pages. $23.95 (cloth). The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. By Michael Gray. New York: Continuum, 2006. 736 pages. $40.00 (cloth). Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads. By Greil Marcus. New York: Public Affairs, 2005. 304 pages. $14.00 (paper). Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan and the 1960s. By Mike Marqusee. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005. 365 pages. $16.95 (paper). Highway 61 Revisited. By Mark Polizzotti. New York: Continuum, 2006. 161 pages. $9.95 (paper). Dylan's Vision of Sin. By Christopher Ricks. New York: Harper Collins, 2004. 517 pages. $26.95 (cloth). Writing Dylan: The Songs of a Lonesome Traveler. By Larry David Smith. Westport: Praeger, 2005. 512 pages. $49.95 (cloth). On May 24, 2006, Bob Dylan turned 65. A month later he appeared in Ireland as part of his Never-Ending tour (Dylan has been performing continuously since 1988). He opened the set with "Maggie's Farm," which more than forty years earlier triggered convulsions at the Newport Folk Festival. He also performed "Highway 61 Revisited," "Ballad of a Thin Man," "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," and "Absolutely Sweet Marie." His first encore was "Like a Rolling Stone," the song considered by many, including the magazine that shares its name, to be the greatest rock song of all time. Despite his set list, Dylan has worked hard not to be a sixties nostalgia act. He recorded songs and albums in the seventies and eighties (Blood on the Tracks and Oh Mercy, for example) that stand among his finest work. His albums Time Out of Mind (1997) and Love and Theft (2001) won Grammy [End Page 165] awards. At the Kennedy Center, where in 1997 he received the highest award the nation bestows its creative artists, President Clinton remarked that "Bob Dylan has kept moving forward, musically and spiritually, challenging all of us to move forward with him." And yet, for all the appreciation of a lifetime of work, it was what Dylan sang, said, did, and represented for a few years in the 1960s that continues to draw the public's attention and ignite the imagination of new generations of listeners. In recent years, with the publication of Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One (2004), the screening of Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home (2005), and the release of Dylan's concerts at Philharmonic Hall in 1964 and Manchester in 1966, this interest has reached a fever pitch. The Experience Music project created a traveling exhibition titled "Bob Dylan's American Journey, 1956–1966" that was featured at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in summer 2006. A Broadway show, The Times They Are A-Changin', choreographed by Twyla Tharp, opened on Broadway. And in March 2007, a Bob Dylan symposium, "'Highway 61 Revisited': Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World," will be held at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. It is not surprising that at the same time that public interest in Dylan has soared, critical interest has also reached new peaks. Over the past few years, major interpretive works evaluating Dylan's entire corpus have appeared, as have studies that focus on the 1960s in general, and the annus mirabilis of 1965 in particular. There is also a Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, edited by Michael Gray, one of the leading students of Dylan's career. This work is no dry-as-dust compendium. Gray serves up opinions, judgments, and interpretations alongside facts and information. He even includes entries on himself as well as other Dylan interpreters. Typical of Gray's profiles is his consideration of the film No Direction Home. Gray derides Scorsese's "part-time . . . input to the film," finds "scandalous" the "lack of attention paid to the impact of the blues on Dylan's formative years," and concludes that the film is "Dylan for beginners." At the same time, Gray understands that No Direction Home takes a significant leap in legitimizing Dylan as a major American cultural figure: "until now, his mysterious greatness has always been in the side tents...
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