The Real Story of The Complete Unknown – Bob Dylan

Posted on by Opher

Interesting to see that the film The Complete Unknown covers the same ground as my two books on Dylan (except, of course, my books tell the real story).

Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track Extract

   His act involved Chaplin-esque routines, carefully orchestrated ploys, tuning and fiddling with his guitar and harmonica, all with casual glances and asides, designed to draw the audience in. From the very start, it was apparent that Bob, despite his shyness and boyish looks, possessed a great stage presence. Not only that, but he was already beginning to write his own material and what songs they were!

   There were a large number of factors that fed into this burgeoning songwriting. The exposure to a wide range of music – being able to watch, at close hand, experienced musicians applying their stage skills (most of whom recognised his talent and encouraged him), the befriending of Dave Van Ronk, who carried huge clout, and his love affair with Suze Rotolo. This young Dylan was avidly listening to a range of music, reading poetry and literature, ransacking the libraries and record collections of all and sundry.

   Suze was hugely instrumental in the development of his social sensitivities and outlook. She came from a dyed-in-the-wool communist family and already, as a young girl, had been involved in the civil rights movement.

   The early sixties were the time of civil rights, the bomb, the cold war and the beginnings of the war in Vietnam. This was the McCarthy era with its hounding of communists and unAmerican activities. The Beat generation had instigated dissent and now the folk scene, mainly due to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, was the seat of left-wing social change, a movement that was going to blossom and shape the whole sixties underground movement. Suze was steeped in it. Bob absorbed it so that it permeated much of his writing.

   Between 1961 and 1963, prompted by Suze and the folk scene in general, Dylan wrote many of his most famous socially motivated songs, songs that laid the groundwork for the sixties philosophy. His wordmanship was constantly developing and reaching new heights. Unfortunately, it saddled Dylan with being the voice of a generation, an epithet loaded on him by the media that not only irritated him no end but one which heaped tension on his shoulders.

   With his manager – the great behemoth Albert Grossman, a recording contract with Colombia Records, his adoption by Joan Baez and promotion through Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan set off on a meteoric trajectory to become a massive international star and in so doing, boosted folk music and poetic songwriting into another sphere. Inevitably, the result of such fame brought adulation, crowds of screaming fans, hangers-on and a need for safety and security that locked Bob into a bubble, away from his freewheelin’ days around Greenwich Village.

   After the breakdown of his relationship with Suze, maybe in response to being saddled with the limiting description of being a ‘protest’ singer, Bob moved away from writing songs of social import into writing songs of a more introspective nature influenced by the French symbolist poets Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Verlaine. Later, Dylan fell under the spell of the Beat poets, principally Allen Ginsberg, and began writing more complex surreal landscapes.

   The ‘folk period’ had produced a fine debut album followed by three classic acoustic albums. Ironically, even as his fame peaked he was tiring of the limitations of his acoustic songs, feeling staid and dissatisfied. He felt everything was predictable and was on the verge of completely abandoning his career: ‘I guess I was going to quit singing. I was drained. I was playing a lot of songs I did not want to play.’ ‘I was getting very bored with that.’ ‘It’s very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don’t dig you.’

   In 1964, The Beatles broke big in the USA and then the likes of The Byrds and Manfred Mann took rock ‘n’ roll versions of his songs into the charts. The Animals took the traditional ‘House of the Rising Sun’ to number one. It sparked something in Bob and rekindled his love of rock. He, with the help of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and then The Hawks, later to become The Band, turned electric.

Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) : Opher Goodwin: Amazon.co.uk: Books

Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home: Rock Classics: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523140: Books

Extract: Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track

Posted on by Opher

Extract: Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track

   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 and dramatic 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 early 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 important things. Robert Zimmerman was an empty vessel into which he poured the ingredients that created Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) : Opher Goodwin: Amazon.co.uk: Books

Extract from Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track

Posted on by Opher

Extract from Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track

Looking back to the early John Bucklen tapes, recorded in 1958 on a portable reel to reel tape recorder, of a young Robert Zimmerman, seventeen years old, still at school, pounding out his homage to his idol Little Richard, there was no inkling of the folk legend he was shortly to become. He wanted to become a rock star. That teenage Dylan was a rebel, assuming an image based on James Dean and Marlon Brando. He formed a number of loud rock ’n’ roll bands, the Golden Chords and Shadow Blasters being two, in which he pounded the piano oblivious to audience response. In the first of his chameleonic changes he assumed the name and wild persona of Elston Gunnn. Despite his naked enthusiasm the bands didn’t take off, indeed, had nowhere to go, but they did bring him some local notoriety and attract the girls. He was very into girls and rock music was both a magnet and aphrodisiac. A big motivator. This increasing rebelliousness led to fractious relationships with school, the tight-knit Jewish community and his father.

   By the age of eighteen, he’d wrung the little Minnesotan iron ore town of Hibbing dry. He’d learnt the rudiments of guitar and piano, formed a number of bands, and absorbed a huge range of musical styles and traditions from rock ‘n’ roll, r&b to country music and standards – the mainstay of the local radio station, all of which were going to contribute and inform his progressions over the course of the ensuing years. Groundwork was being laid. Bob’s tastes were eclectic – his first musical heroes being Hank Williams and Little Richard.

   Here we have to start to unravel the man from the myth. Robert Zimmerman was already outgrowing the little mining town of Hibbing in Minnesota. As soon as he was able, he looked for a way out of there. A fresh-faced boy, looking younger than his years, not yet needing to shave, set off on the start of his adventure.

Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) : Opher Goodwin: Amazon.co.uk: Books

The Rock Classics series – Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Back Home

Posted on by Opher

The Rock Classics series looks at the most important Rock Music albums in depth.

I was asked to produce a book about an iconic album. I could choose any band, any singer. I chose Bob Dylan. For me Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home was a pivotal album. It altered the whole way Rock Music developed.

This was when Dylan went electric and blew the whole scene into the stratosphere. I couldn’t wait to get stuck in.

One of the most pivotal albums in the evolution of rock music, few other recordings have had more impact than the 1965 Bob Dylan classic, Bringing It All Back Home. In the mid-sixties, rock music was about to explode into psychedelia, prog and jazz fusion. Meanwhile, Bob Dylan had made an enormous impact on songwriting with his first four all-acoustic albums. He had created a different way of writing songs, by embracing themes such as civil rights, anti-war protests and social issues, which lifted the subject matter from teenage love songs to serious poetic works of art, rife with symbolism. But with Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan shot his lyrics through with surreal hard-edged beat poetry while the music contained both acoustic songs and blues-based loud electric rock. It alienated him from many of his peers in the folk community but nonetheless contains classic cuts like ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ ‘Maggie’s Farm’ and ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’. Dylan had opened the door to experimentation. The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, The Doors, Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Cream all listened and responded. In its wake, Songwriting rose to new heights with few boundaries. After Bringing It All Back Home, music was forever changed.