MAGAZINE REVIEWS

Dealing with Dylan

by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., May 15, 1999) -- "How Dylan Changed Pop Music," trumpets the cover line of one magazine. "Decades of Dylanology have missed the point - the music is the message," proclaims the tag line in another. Something is happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

The New Yorker
The Atlantic Monthly

Ordinarily this column steers clear of music-related topics, as the columnist has plenty of opportunity to vent on that subject in other forums in the Eagle and elsewhere. But when in the course of one month two of the leading, national, general-interest magazines feature serious, extended essays on the meaning of Bob Dylan and his music, attention must be paid, and who better to pay it than a confirmed Dylanaholic?

In the May Atlantic, esteemed jazz critic and author Francis Davis uses the release of "Live 1966," a 33-year-old concert recording that finally surfaced officially last fall, to survey Dylan's career and impact. In spite of - or because of -- the manner in which Davis's article is hyped on the cover and his penchant for grandiose statements of Dylan's importance ("Dylan altered the course of popular music more fundamentally than even Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, or the Beatles"), Davis's piece is a schizophrenic hatchet job, and reveals his almost total lack of understanding of Dylan's career and music.

For example, Davis contends that Dylan's "only noticeable debt to black music is a harmonica style derived from Sonny Terry." Coming from a man who has written at least one great book on the blues, this is astonishing. Can Davis be so utterly ignorant of Dylan's love of and musical foundation in the blues, to say nothing of the many blues songs he has written, including "Tombstone Blues," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and "Dirt Road Blues"? Along the way, Dylan has experimented with other forms of black music such as Southern gospel music and paid tribute in song ("Blind Willie McTell") or otherwise to black American music and musicians. One could even make the argument that from Dylan's very first album to his most recent album of new songs, "Time Out of Mind," Dylan's work can be seen as a continuous attempt to come to terms with black musical tradition.

The real howler, however, is Davis's claim that "Dylan no longer means to people what he once did….partly because not even his most loyal fans have much invested in him anymore." Apparently Davis doesn't know any real Dylan fans, for as anyone who does know any of Dylan's "most loyal fans" can tell you, Dylan means as much or more to them today as ever. It's almost implicit in the definition of a "most loyal fan." And Dylan's work is so deep and rich that, just as with the work of any great artist, the more time passes, the more his work gains in resonance and perspective.

Davis isn't all wrong. He says about Dylan, correctly, that "rock-and-roll would not be the same had he not transformed it into a vehicle for creative writing." He also astutely points out that Dylan's influence extends to such seemingly unrelated genres as glam-rock, grunge and rap. And he genuinely seems to appreciate the electric excitement of "Live 1966," an album not even one-year-old that has already inspired one full-length book and countless articles.

Alex Ross's article in the May 10 New Yorker is the antidote to Davis's in several ways. For one thing, Ross seemingly has no axe to grind. He admits that he is a latecomer to Dylan, having only started paying close attention to him a few years ago when stuck at a friend's apartment abroad where "Highway 61 Revisited" was one of the only records available.

But Ross, who normally writes about contemporary classical music for the New York Times, has clearly done his homework, reading the biographies and "accumulated files of Dylanology" and listening through Dylan's 40-plus albums. He also went on the road recently, and discovered what many of Dylan's "loyal fans" know to be true - that Dylan is a performer of staggering complexity and musicality. "He is musically in control," writes Ross. "There is never a wrong chord."

Where Ross really shines, however, is in his close analysis of Dylan's work as a songwriter, especially in how his lyrics work together with his music to create effects greater than the sum of their parts. "Often, Dylan's strongest verbal images occur toward the beginning of a song, and it falls to his musical sense to make something of the rest," he writes. He demonstrates how particular chord changes work to undermine or emphasize particular meanings. The song "Idiot Wind," he writes, "channels its universal rage…into a single harmonic convulsion: each verse of the G-major song begins with grinding C minor, which is like a slap to the ear." Not only is Ross right on the mark - we need more of this sort of intelligent analysis of popular music. At the very least, we need Ross to write a book on Dylan.

U.S. News and World Report

Popular music has been the topic of much hand-wringing lately, as it is everyone's favorite whipping-boy whenever some psychotic teen-ager takes a gun into a schoolyard and blasts his way into the headlines. Perhaps more attention should be paid, however, to another form of popular entertainment which by its very nature is rooted in and encourages violence.

The cover story of the May 17 issue of U.S. News and World Report takes a close look at what it calls "pro wrestling." Don't real wrestlers object to being lumped in with those idiotic clowns? The article claims that each week, 35 million people - including more than one million who are 11-years-old or younger -- tune their TVs to one of the ridiculously violent exhibitions of sadism, racism and misogyny that pass for "sport."

According to the article, these shows typically include mock crucifixions, scenes out of the S&M manual, wrestlers dropping their pants and mooning the audience, and, in one particular episode, a woman "sucking suggestively on an Italian sausage." (How did they know the meat's nationality?)

The article claims that at least one of the Littleton, Colo., killers was a fan of these wrestling shows. Ironically, so was one of the victims - such a huge fan, apparently, that his family asked for and received a special tribute to the victims which was broadcast on one of the most popular - and violent - of the wrestling programs.

What is the saying about what happens to he who lives by the sword?

The Washington Monthly

"More Learning, Less Bureaucracy," is the theme of a series of articles in the May issue of the Washington Monthly focusing on education reform. In one, "Easy Pickings," reporter James Heaney takes a close look at the salaries and working conditions of school administrators in his hometown, Buffalo, and finds that they are on the gravy train. As one expert is quoted, "Our school systems are fundamentally set up as employment agencies rather than educational institutions."

Another piece, "Method Madness," asks why public school teachers are so poorly trained. The answer is very simple, according to education reporter Carol Innerst, and worth quoting at length: "Educators have complained for decades about the failure of teacher ed programs to offer teachers any substantial training in subject matter….little has changed in the way most teacher training institutions go about their business. Most still attract students of average or below average intellectual ability. Most still make it easy for students to get into teacher education programs, often after they have failed coursework in another discipline. And most still view their role…as change agents whose mission is to work toward social justice and equity in the classroom rather than academic achievement."

As a result, writes Innerst, "too often, the basics of teaching kids to read, write, and compute lose out to educational fads that focus on building self-esteem and discouraging competition."

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on May 15, 1999. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1999. All rights reserved.]