Dylan’s Message Spans Generations

Last December I had a revealing conversation about Bob Dylan with our daughter Winnie, visiting from college. I had made a point of taping Dylan’s appearance on “MTV Unplugged” to share with her over the holidays.

Like many of her generation who’ve dabbled in the classics, she’s a big Dylan fan.

Some years ago she may’ve lost herself a spot in a local pageant for naming Bob Dylan as her favorite artist. Still getting us in trouble, that Bob.

My son, who’s midway through high school, will admit to liking Dylan, too, though he usually adds, “It’s just too bad he sings through his nose.” He teases me for liking Dylan so much.

Forgive me, Son. It’s hard to describe just what those songs mean to my generation.

Dylan inspired us to rethink everything. Promethean spirit, he held his candle into the sun and grabbed fire for us. Tight with the muses, armed with an alchemic way with words, he opened the abyss.

In terror and wonder, we looked in like the three kings from “John Wesley Harding” who wanted to go in not too far, just enough to say they’d been there.

But there was no going back. It was time to burn some bridges and claim a different future. Suddenly you just knew. In those exalted moments of the highest art, everything happens in a blaze of light. I don’t know if I could have navigated the ‘60s without that light.

Watching the “Unplugged” performance, I was struck with how young his audience looked.

“There! See, Winnie! … a girl with your same hair and earrings,” I pointed. Not old hipsters here, but kids. Not surprising. His music is timeless. It has a way of meeting you wherever you are.

And what a performance! One critic said Dylan tossed off his tunes as though amazed his audience cared to hear them. Huh? I thought. He sounded strong to me, voice in trim, lots of the old magic and power. Good arrangements.

He looked good, too. I laughed at his vintage black and white polka-dot shirt. No doubt just what he was wearing at the ‘65 Newport Folk Festival when he caused such an uproar for plugging in. Master of irony, that Dylan.

His five-place band - second guitar, string bass, dobro, organ and drums - was inspired, too. To Dylan’s arrangements, they could thump and cook, or add the lightest filigree.

The high point came in Dylan’s soulful rendering of “The Times They Are a’Changin”’ - not the rousing call to arms of old, but slower, wiser, a gospel of stately cadence. A hymn. It slays me every time I hear it now. Every time, I feel the old hope and betrayal. Every time, I die a little with those who did not navigate the ‘60s.

When the show was over and Winnie discovered I’d also invested in a copy of “Don’t Look Back” - the cinema verite classic that takes us through England with Dylan in 1965 - she wanted to view that, too. This time I was struck with how young he looked, how accessible he still was, how accommodating, and how amused by it all he seemed, barely able to suppress a smile.

Afterward, Winnie said, “It just makes me feel sorry for him, all those people on him, hounding him, wanting a piece of him. Whew!”

“At the time,” I told her, “one critic said the movie was like watching the neighborhood brat blow his nose for 90 minutes.”

“Ugh, critics!” she said, “You know? Some people, when they see greatness in others, it … like, makes them so uncomfortable they feel a need to put it down. Greatness threatens them; it shakes up their little lives. The put-down is like whistling in the dark.”

That opened a whole cupboard of college insight. We talked late into the night about everything under the sun. In the end we came back to Dylan.

“He really is an immortal, isn’t he,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“He doesn’t write songs, he writes epics. He’s like Beethoven or Shakespeare or somebody, or both in one.”

“Or Zeus and Apollo?”

“You know what I mean. As long as people listen to music, they’ll be listening to Dylan.”

Amen to that. And I for one feel a bit vindicated. The times are forever changing and forever the same, and the pen is still mightier than the sword. The Bob McNamaras will come and go, raising periodic havoc with their little wars, while the Bob Dylans remain forever young. As McNamara tours this summer wearing a hair shirt and confessing his sins, Dylan is out there in his polka-dots, bringing us the word anew, singing about dignity, searching for the one just man, becoming the one just man.

So welcome to Spokane, honored old troubadour. See you in Riverfront Park. The people are gathered ‘round.

xxxx