Songs For Your Day

The merits of Dylan as performer were recently a topic of discussion between a friend and I, with my friend taking the point of view that, currently as a concert performer, Dylan is overrated, under-talented, and egotistical.  His opinion was based somewhat exclusively on his experience running sound at a Dylan concert somewhere in, I believe, Canada.  My friend and Dylan’s soundman traded barbs backstage regarding Dylan’s prominence in the mix, which, as my friend related to me, was so low as to be moot.  This, coupled with a frustrating argument between my friend and Dylan’s tour manager, apropos the appropriate level of eye contact between my friend’s employees and Dylan himself (the level insisted upon by the manager was None), resulted in my buddy’s complete dismissal of Dylan’s latter-day genius, and raised in him serious doubts about Dylan’s whole celebrated history as a musical performer (though Dylan’s songwriting skills were never questioned).

I took counterpoint, naturally, blaming the low mix levels, and Dylan’s allegedly juvenile fingering on his Casio keyboard (his preferred concert instrument these days) to the ravages of older age, namely, in this case, arthritis.  I then related an anecdote from one of the four Dylan concerts I’ve been to since he released “Love and Theft” in 2001.  It was a double-headliner, Dylan sharing the bill with The Dead.  Bob performed admirably (on keyboard), finishing up his long set with a twelve-minute encore of “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35″.  Then The Dead came out, performing equally admirably on their own canon.  About halfway through their set, The Dead welcomed Dylan back onto the stage.  The old troubadour picked up a white Stratocaster and proceeded to play lead as the band ripped through three or four vamped-up Buddy Holly songs.  It was the highlight of the show, and my favorite memory from all of the Dylan concerts I’ve seen.  It was the only time I’ve seen him play guitar; it was good.

Responding to accusations of egotism, though, were difficult.  The best I could come up with was, Well, he is Bob Dylan.  If I were Bob Dylan, and had had fans trailing me through city parks, begging to see my fingertips (one of the more bizarre fan moments shown in the No Direction Home documentary), I probably would want to avoid eye contact with potentially weird worshipers as well.  And as I noodled upon the subject more and more, I came to realize that interactions with Bob Dylan–whether as a concert attendee, or a put-upon soundman backstage–should be approached for precisely what they are: Religious Experiences.

Any good Dylan fan should know that, despite his foray into Born-Again, Jesus-loving Christianity, Dylan is at heart an Old Testament Jew.  In Dylan songs like “Masters of War,” “Gates of Eden,” and even “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” we get narrators who believe very much in punishing the wicked, and very little in forgiveness or redemption; at best, he simply dismisses you completely.  You either toe the line, or you cross over it with your last step before falling into hell.  If you don’t think that Old Testament Jehovah was as ruthless as I claim, just read Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  These are the rule books, the legal books which bring up the heavy rear of the Torah.  They are long, tedious, and OCD-style repetitive; one gets the image of a God constantly washing his hands and flipping light switches.  What struck me most, though, when I read these books, was that, after the endless and mind-numbing rules governing daily life and devotion, God elucidates the punishments awaiting those who disobey these rules.  Among other horrors, God promises to “set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.”  At best, the earth simply opens up and swallows you.  The list of rewards for following the rules is significantly shorter than that of the punishments.

So what does this have to do with Bob Dylan?  In concert he is indifferent to the audience; he plays as well or as poorly as he wishes; he has no concern for how the people who paid money to hear familiar songs will react when he changes keys and chords and tempos and lyrics; he demands obedience from his performers and concert-hall staff; to look upon him is to sin; he ignores the pleas of the weary and devoted as they shout out obscure song titles or declare their love; he is cranky; and he grunts and grumbles, speaking very little, singing painfully, as though his throat were clogged with the dust from some broken covenant.  He does not care.

Sound familiar?  With his power over people, his fickle and temperamental nature,  he is exactly like the Old Testament God, except without the rare and occasional promises of redemption.  Yet it is precisely Redemption which people crave.  They expect from his music catharsis, or insight, or guidance.  They always have.  Dylan, of course, has always denied them, and that is exactly why I believe that his concerts are Religious Experiences.  Most people take that term to describe something which moved them spiritually and emotionally, something which, as an outside source, had significant influence upon them.  If religion were actually like that, I might agree with such a characterization of the term.  But I find that quotidian religious experiences (church, praying, etc.) are exactly the opposite of that.  People undergo spiritual and emotional changes not because something beyond them has moved them, but precisely because people wish to undergo these changes, because they have been told to expect them.  The Bible tells us to ask, and we shall receive, and thanks to time and disappointment we have come to ask almost exclusively for things which we know damn well we can do ourselves, and to then attribute their happening to a Higher Power.  We are like children who, having been refused excursions by our parents, ask ourselves if we can stay inside.

Such with Dylan.  His music is incredible.  His influence on popular American culture is undeniable.  Fans have always expected something from him for this.  They have laid their hopes and dreams of redemption upon the altar of his words; time and again he has given them nothing.  And if they could learn to appreciate that as their moving experience; if they could see from their insignificance in Dylan’s eyes their role in the larger universe; if they could understand that their emotions and spirituality emanate from within them; then they will have gotten what they were looking for.  Then they will have known Bob Dylan as Religious Experience.