Dylan and Tradition

National Review, August 20, 2001 by Martha Bayles

To greybeards nostalgic for their granola days, Bob Dylan's 60th birthday was a poignant reminder of how long in the tooth they're getting. To less nostalgic souls, the sight of another 1960s icon confronting age is a welcome rebuke to the arrogance of youth- especially that cohort of youth. Either way, Dylan is once again being touted as the bellwether of his generation.

Like most of his musical peers, Dylan started out in the folk movement of the early 1960s, which was rooted in the Old Left of the 1930s; he then turned inward to embrace the psychosexual liberationism of the New Left. As the 1960s faded, he embarked on a 30-year quest for meaning that by a circuitous route has led him toward and (some say) away from religion.

These changes have been fodder for countless "Dylanologists" masticating the messages in his often-cryptic lyrics. Was "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" really about radioactive fallout? Who was the clueless Mr. Jones? Was "Like a Rolling Stone" a covert attack on South Vietnam's Madame Nhu? And is the latest lyrical reference to light or angels taken from the Gospels or from the Hebrew Bible?

My concern, however, is not with Dylan's words but with his music. Most culture pundits focus on the words and treat the music as mere accompaniment. But to neglect Dylan's music is to neglect his most enduring influence-not as a radical counterculturalist but as a deep- dyed musical traditionalist. I say this in spite of Dylan's patent limitations as a performer. His rough and approximate vocalism is often compared to that of the blues, but the comparison is ill informed: The great blues singers (the late John Lee Hooker, for example) may sound rough, but their pitch, attack, and timing are always precise. As for Dylan's guitar- and harmonica-playing, suffice it to say he is rarely in demand as a session musician.

Nevertheless, Dylan is a gifted songwriter and bandleader who over time learned to exploit both talents. Songwriting came first, and for diehard fans it is still wonderful to hear the young Dylan's nasal, monotonous voice sing a spare, elegant ballad like "It Ain't Me Babe," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," or "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," accompanied only by strumming guitar and wheezing harmonica. But I daresay Dylan himself grew tired of this limited sound-why else go out and hire a band?

The young Bobby Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota, played rock 'n' roll in high school, and in the 1950s that meant being steeped in such rich vernacular styles as rhythm and blues, gospel, and country. Of course, when Zimmerman discovered folk music and became "Bob Dylan," he submitted to a strict regime, inherited from the Old Left, on the question of which music was "authentic" and which was not. Classified as "inauthentic" were swing, rhythm and blues, country, rock 'n' roll, and the use of electrified instruments-all of which, according to Marxist theory, did not come directly from the people but rather were commodities tainted by the capitalist means of production.

But Dylan chafed at the folk movement's ideological purism, taking essentially the same view as Big Bill Broonzy, the venerable bluesman, who once quipped, "I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing 'em." In 1965 Dylan broke the rules and began performing and recording with electrified bands. His music sounded ten times better, and his career went into orbit.

Supposedly, Dylan's fusion of folk authenticity with blues electricity ignited the explosion known as rock-the blues-based music since transmogrified into hard rock, psychedelic rock, art rock, shock rock, heavy metal, glam metal, thrash metal, speed metal, death metal, punk metal, and other squealing progeny too numerous to list. But Dylan did not sire this line. Indeed, the true measure of Dylan's good musical taste is how quickly and thoroughly he parted company with rock.

Musically speaking, the worst thing about rock is the rhythm. Allan Bloom's memorable line-"rock has the beat of sexual intercourse"- captures the problem: The rock beat is simple, repetitive, pounding. Of course, this is not the last word on rhythm. The best American music has a steady pulse, but in creative tension with other rhythmic patterns; this is the African touch, the toe-tapping magic known as syncopation, swing, funk, groove. Rock lost its groove in the late 1960s, when the lead guitar became a virtuoso instrument, eclipsing the bass and drums. This never happened in Dylan's ensembles.

In 1968 Columbia Records tried an advertising blitz called "revolutionaries of rock," starring none other than Dylan. But Dylan, woodshedding with the Band at his Woodstock retreat, was intent instead on breaking down the barrier between rock and country music. His work on the low-key John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville Skyline (1969), and the recordings later released as The Basement Tapes (1975) led to a new genre called country-rock, which despite its later blandness helped keep popular music connected with its roots during a period of decadence and racial polarization.