Woody Guthrie

There has to be more to Rock Music than trite Pop anthems about teenage love. There is. It is because Bob Dylan single-handedly propelled Rock towards a mature phase with intellectual integrity.

In the early years of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the fifties we had a visceral rebellion driven by the raucous swaggering performances of such as Little Richard, Bo Diddley, the Elvis of Sun Records and Chuck Berry. It was fast loud and explosive. It was the sound of a new post-war generation who wanted something different to the bland lives of their parents. Those early Rock ‘n’ Rollers belted out their brash new philosophy to blow the cobwebs out of the establishment.

A knife came down and cut off the connection. A whole generation was adrift from its roots with a new home-grown philosophy summed up by the Lee Marvin line in response to the question:
‘What are you rebelling against?’
‘What you got?’
That post-war generation wanted excitement, fun and adventure. The idea of following their parents into the blandness of suburbia with its neatly trimmed lawns and the American Dream was death by boredom. They wanted life in the fast lane with all its sex, fast cars and violence. The risk gave it an alluring edge. The colours were brighter; the feelings stronger and the pace full of adrenaline.

It was a revolution for a new age and though short-lived provided the basis for the Beatles and Stones to carry it forward.

There it would probably have been incorporated into the capitalist ethos of the Music Industry and decayed into Pop trivia if Bob Dylan hadn’t crashed into the scene with the force of an H-Bomb. The debris was flung into the air to be imbued with his poetic imagery, social and political content and a world of possibility. Bob had taken the song structure by the scruff and shaken it to pieces. The two and a half minute Rock song, with it’s theme of love and standard middle eight, was blown to bits. Anything was possible. You could tell stories. It could be twenty minutes long. You could have real meaning, real passion and something beyond mere teenage love and angst. It could deal with real issues.

Bob Dylan revived and transformed the rebellious impetus of the youth rebellion and provided it with substance.

Rock Music gained complexity, scope and social importance. It was no longer confined to teenage angst and sexuality. Bob had married its energy to a cerebral dimension that was allied to social and political sensibilities. Grown-up issues such as Civil Rights and the anti-war movement were central to the themes of Rock Music. The words were now of greater importance and value. There was a poetic eloquence that demanded to be taken seriously.

The awareness and sensibilities of an entire generation were stimulated and that led to the birth of an idealistic counter-culture that was to dominate the latter part of the sixties and give rise to a wealth of liberalising elements in the Women’s Movement, Peace groups, Environmental groups and Civil Rights Movements.

The establishment called him ‘The Voice of a Generation’. It was a label and pressure that Bob despised. He was not the voice of a generation. He was much more than that. He did not mirror the thoughts and ideals of sixties youth so much as awaken them and propagate their growth. He planted the seeds into the grey fertile soil of the cortex and fed them with the nutrients of wisdom so that they exploded to illuminate the skulls of a receptive generation. He gave them all freedom beyond his own dreams.

A million minds were awakened and imbued with the freedom of all possibility.

I wonder where the world would now be without him? Would we have had those years of protest through which so many of our civil liberties and liberalised society were wrested from the establishment’s reactionary grasp? For Bob not only reinvigorated Rock Music and propelled it to new dimensions he also fundamentally changed the society we all live in.

Thanks Bob – you were always so much more than a ‘Song and Dance’ man. You opened my mind and horizons.

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