Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) Paperback

Introduction  

I was fortunate to be introduced to Bob Dylan’s music at the young age of thirteen, though I did not fully appreciate that at the time.

    A good friend of mine by the name of Charlie Mutton had purchased Bob’s debut album shortly after it was released and he was smitten. That was peculiar. Up to that time we had been listening to chart material and old rock ‘n’ roll.  Heaven knows where Mutt picked up on Dylan’s first album. I don’t remember it being either popular or available in my neck of the woods. We weren’t big on ‘folk’ music. However, my ears weren’t tuned in to the raw, nasally sound of Bob’s folk-blues and, although I listened all the way through and even appreciated a number of the tracks, I was not greatly impressed. Mutt was more clued up and assured me that Dylan was going to be huge and if he’d only release a single it would be a top ten hit. I remained quietly sceptical.

   Mutt was incredibly prophetic. Subsequent albums and the ‘Times They Are A Changin’’ single did just as he had predicted. Bob Dylan went on to become one of the most important figures in the history of rock music. Not only did he change the face of rock music but he also had a profound effect on the direction of youth culture. Once I’d ‘got it’, and my ears became more accustomed, I too was utterly smitten.

   As with Dylan I was caught up in the zeitgeist of the time. These were the days of great divisions in society, a rising rebellious youth, the threat of instant annihilation from nuclear war, great changes in attitudes. The traumas of the second world war were still fresh but the economy and world were opening up. Change was in the air. Our parents represented something we did not want to be. Bob was riding that wave of change.

   The 1950s Beats may have cracked the façade of the rigid conformity and strict hypocritical morality of the prevailing post-war 1950s culture. Rock ‘n’ roll and r&b may have liberated youth into a temporary hedonistic frenzy, but it was the 1960s generation who blew the whole structure to smithereens. Peculiarly, Robert Zimmerman found himself, sometimes unwillingly, right at the forefront of those shifts in the tectonic plates of society. Who could have predicted that?

   Who could have known that this young middle-class Jewish kid from a decaying nondescript town in the middle of nowhere would create a persona and develop the skills to take the whole world by storm?

   That young Dylan was a chameleon, a sponge, a mirror, a driven force, who was searching for identity, acceptance and fame. He absorbed everything around him with an unquenchable thirst, then reflected it back a hundred times brighter. He took on his surroundings and magnified them.

   For that young Dylan integrity was all that counted. Authenticity and cool were the only things that were important. Robert Zimmerman was an empty vessel into which he poured the ingredients that created Bob Dylan. That early incarnation was a wild vortex of possibility. He created a persona and mythology on which to hang the brilliance of his craft.

   Everything about Bob Dylan was false, a construct, apart from his natural talent. His persona was nothing more than a vehicle to transport him to where he wanted to go.

   Young Bob Dylan was ruthless. He drained everyone around him dry, wringing out their songs, their chords, their tunes, friendships and love. I’m not implying that this was intentional or in any way mean, merely necessary. In order to get to where he needed to be he had to grow, blossom and change. Nothing was more important. Bob was helplessly riding a tsunami that he himself created. At times, for the people involved – Suze Rotolo, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Martin Carthy and Dave Van Ronk, to name a few – it must have felt as if they were being used and abused.

   That young Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman) was on a roller-coaster that kept changing tracks. Seemingly, he had no compunctions about leaving people and whole movements behind. Parents, lovers, friends and fellow musicians bit the dust. He moved on when the need arose, without scruples and ne’er a backward glance. The chameleon had to grow and move. That was his nature, all he knew.

   The biographies are numerous, the details mauled over, magnified, twisted, sensationalised and made to fit the required template. Hard to disentangle reality from myth. There lived a legend largely generated by Bob himself in his quest to create credibility and breakthrough.