On Bob Dylan
Part 2 – The Song
All Along the Watchtower – Bob Dylan
In the early to mid sixties there was, centred around the young, hip, influential community of New York’s Greenwich Village, a revival of interest in American traditional music. Of the many wide-eyed, denim-trousered proponents of this scene, the youngest, hippest, and ultimately most influential - the one with the widest eyes and the most ragged denim trousers - was unquestionably the great Bob Dylan. Viewed as a whole body of work, his albums, moving quickly from purism, folk whimsy, weird humour, to harsh social protest, drug-fuelled surrealist poetry, to amphetamine burn out, drop out nightmares, symbolise, whether intentionally or not, the progression of a generation. Or rather, that part of a generation which always considers itself to be the outsiders, the vanguards, the bringers of truth, love and the new dawn, and which, in Dylan’s decade, happened to be vocal, vociferous and violent enough to consider itself representative of the rest of its country.
Perhaps this is the greatest of Dylan’s considerable achievements; that his songs are powerful enough to transcend the heavy connotations of the time he lived in, to escape the chains of being a part of the “sixties”. All art, and music especially, is inevitably a product of the context in which it was produced, but perhaps great art is defined by being able to stand alone outside of that context, implicit within it truths, concepts, feelings, melodies which are in some way universal. I feel that Dylan sits, firmly, in this category.
To be continued...
All Along the Watchtower – Bob Dylan
In the early to mid sixties there was, centred around the young, hip, influential community of New York’s Greenwich Village, a revival of interest in American traditional music. Of the many wide-eyed, denim-trousered proponents of this scene, the youngest, hippest, and ultimately most influential - the one with the widest eyes and the most ragged denim trousers - was unquestionably the great Bob Dylan. Viewed as a whole body of work, his albums, moving quickly from purism, folk whimsy, weird humour, to harsh social protest, drug-fuelled surrealist poetry, to amphetamine burn out, drop out nightmares, symbolise, whether intentionally or not, the progression of a generation. Or rather, that part of a generation which always considers itself to be the outsiders, the vanguards, the bringers of truth, love and the new dawn, and which, in Dylan’s decade, happened to be vocal, vociferous and violent enough to consider itself representative of the rest of its country.
Perhaps this is the greatest of Dylan’s considerable achievements; that his songs are powerful enough to transcend the heavy connotations of the time he lived in, to escape the chains of being a part of the “sixties”. All art, and music especially, is inevitably a product of the context in which it was produced, but perhaps great art is defined by being able to stand alone outside of that context, implicit within it truths, concepts, feelings, melodies which are in some way universal. I feel that Dylan sits, firmly, in this category.
To be continued...
posted by My Back Pages at 2:14 pm
