From the Complete Rolling Stone Interview: Following Up On Dylan & God (etc)

The Cinch Review

Bob Dylan Rolling Stone Interview God

The new issue of Rolling Stone containing the full interview with Bob Dylan by Mikal Gilmore has now hit the streets. It is a riot: a wildly entertaining romp, in my opinion, and well worth handing over a few of Caesar’s coins to the newsagent in order to read in full. To what extent it is more than merely entertaining is going to be a matter of debate. Dylan is capable of giving very thoughtful and sober interviews; you can dig out the books and read them. This one, by and large, didn’t turn out that way, I think, although it has a few moments, especially the interlude regarding the U.S. Civil War.

If you’ve read the whole interview, you’ll know that Dylan goes off on a big tangent about a notion of “transfiguration”: his own, somehow connected with the death of another, different Bobby Zimmerman in a motorcycle accident in the early 1960s (mentioned very briefly in Chronicles, page 79). Rolling Stone unabashedly makes this the centerpiece of the article, highlighting it in the intro as a story “much more transformational than he has fully revealed before,” etcetera, etcetera. Well, you be the judge. Personally I’ve never seen anything that is more clearly a riff, a lark, and big fat red herring. I mean, I have no doubt Bob was struck when he first read about that other Bobby Zimmerman who also liked motorcycles, but as to the rest of the meaning of it … let’s just say that if I’d been eating anything when I read it I would have joined young Bobby Zimmerman in the afterlife by now.

In any case, I started something with a previous post on Bob’s seemingly easy and offhand expression of faith in an early excerpt of the interview, and it behooves me to follow up on that subject. Specifically, that was when he was complaining about being called “Judas” for playing an electric guitar, and he remarked: “As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified.” Continue reading “From the Complete Rolling Stone Interview: Following Up On Dylan & God (etc)”

Bob Dylan: “I still believe in Jesus, mofos!”

Bob Dylan Jesus Mofos

Bob Dylan Jesus Mofos

Well, how could I be expected to resist a title like that?

When I first read the excerpt of Bob Dylan’s interview in Rolling Stone yesterday, I didn’t much remark on the line where he complains about being called “Judas” for playing an electric guitar, and then says: “As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified.” But naturally you don’t refer to Jesus as “our Lord” and speak in that way about him unless you believe in Jesus as “your” Lord. Hearing him speak in the language of a believer was, however, unsurprising to me: an awareness of God is throughout his songs, after all, and I’ve never been of the crew who insist he “rejected” his more particular belief in Christ; quite the contrary, in fact. Bob Dylan is a Jew, and he’s clearly very serious about his Jewishness, but he also clearly enough sees no conflict with that and his belief in Jesus. He’s not alone in this, but due to our various baggage and traditions, many of us can’t get our heads around that. Especially, people in the rock press have never been able to get their heads around the whole “religion thing,” and have concocted theory after theory to make themselves feel more comfortable. Dylan for his part has never given the impression he much gives a damn what anyone thinks; he has just plowed his course, a course that has included Jewish observances in the company of the Chabad Lubavitch folk, and recording a Christmas album that includes hymns of faith, sung with as much angelic devotion as his crusty vocal cords could muster. And there have been other indications, literally too numerous to mention, of a man serious about faith in the God of the Bible, both the Hebrew and the New Testament.

In the end, it’s his business. Some people pick up on it and some don’t. Yet, people continue to be curious. Many people go to Google and type in “Is Bob Dylan still a Christian?” and similar queries. I know because some of them happen to end up in my website statistics after doing so, because they hit upon something I wrote on the subject in the past. (Others have written plenty too.)

The curious thing about this Rolling Stone interview excerpt is that Dylan is talking about the “plagiarism” subject, and then seemingly out of the blue recalls being called “Judas” in the 1960s, and then just slips in what amounts to a profession of faith. Again:

These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified.

It’s sorta hilarious and somewhat typical that he does it in this indirect way. But nonetheless he is stating his faith in Jesus as “our Lord” and therefore “his” Lord—and also, by the way, his belief in the historicity of the gospels. (This is not unusual: it’s a belief common to most ordinary Americans, after all. What’s unusual is the endless analysis given to it in his case, because he is who he is.) Continue reading “Bob Dylan: “I still believe in Jesus, mofos!””

Bob Dylan on the Cost of Slavery to America

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There are more attention-getting quotes from the Rolling Stone interview with Bob Dylan (on newsstands on Friday). These are highlighted by the Associated Press. They say that Dylan describes America as shamed because it was “founded on the backs of slaves.” Further from the AP:

“people (are) at each other’s throats just because they are of a different color,” adding that “it will hold any nation back.” He also says blacks know that some whites “didn’t want to give up slavery.”

The 71-year-old Dylan said, “If slavery had been given up in a more peaceful way, America would be far ahead today.”

And asked if President Barack Obama was “helping to shift a change,” Dylan is quoted as saying: “I don’t have any opinion on that. You have to change your heart if you want to change.”

Although these quotes about slavery might set people off in various ways, I don’t see how you argue with Bob on it. He’s taking a long view, as he is wont to do. There’s a difference between America how we’d like to see it, and how it should be, versus how it is in practice. There are ingrained problems and fissures in American society that are easily traceable back to slavery and its consequences. Where you identify the problems might depend on who you are. Continue reading “Bob Dylan on the Cost of Slavery to America”

“Wussies and pussies”: Dylan goes off in Rolling Stone interview

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The forthcoming issue of Rolling Stone will have an interview with Bob Dylan, from which we already have seen excerpts, and there’s a new excerpt published today, where Dylan is asked what he thinks of critics who allege that he doesn’t cite his sources properly when he makes use of words from the works of others. Read it all (although be warned that it contains a rare bad word from Bob’s mouth—beyond the one related to cats—sometimes abbreviated as “mofos”).

But the gist of his response is this:

And as far as Henry Timrod [civil war-era poet —Ed] is concerned, have you even heard of him? Who’s been reading him lately? And who’s pushed him to the forefront? Who’s been making you read him? And ask his descendants what they think of the hoopla. And if you think it’s so easy to quote him and it can help your work, do it yourself and see how far you can get. Wussies and pussies complain about that stuff.

And he goes on:

These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified.

Well, it’s good that Mikal Gilmore asked Bob Dylan plainly about this, and got a plain answer. Anyone who thought Dylan wasn’t paying attention or wasn’t bugged by the criticism he’s received from various quarters on this subject now knows different. Continue reading ““Wussies and pussies”: Dylan goes off in Rolling Stone interview”

Tempest by Bob Dylan: Is it an unreviewable album?

Review of Tempest by Bob Dylan
I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan’s new album, Tempest (the iTunes version until my LPs arrive) over the past week and I’ve also been looking at some of the reviews. My impression at the moment is of a vast gulf between what the album contains versus what even the best reviewers have been able to say about it. I don’t think this is because the reviewers are stupid but rather that there really is so much going on in the songs on this album that a review of standard length and breadth is bound to come up short; this is true I think even more than to the usual degree. I mean, it’s always essentially impossible to write adequately about music, when only listening to it will communicate its nature, but Tempest is a special case, even when compared to many other Bob Dylan albums. I think we’re used to a Bob Dylan album having one or two or even three of the kinds of songs that blow one’s mind and take over one’s imagination. But Tempest, with ten songs, has I think at least eight that reach that level (though I’m not even going to say which two don’t).

On one level perhaps it’s just a question of fecundity. The album is highly populated with long songs, and even the songs that aren’t dramatically long contain lots and lots of words. Dylan’s never been one to record many instrumentals, but I think it’s been a long time since the lyrics have spilled out of him with this kind of volume and force. And not chaotically either: the lyrics are intricate and filled with terrific rhymes, and burst forth in his torn-up voice yet highly nuanced singing with confidence and purpose.

Now, I fully understand why all the people invited to those “listening sessions” earlier in the year were so wowed. An appreciative listener arrives at the end of this album somewhat breathless and slack-jawed in amazement (and not just on the first spin either).

Of-course, all of the above makes me sound like someone who worships everything Dylan does completely uncritically, but I’m long past apologizing for my affection and regard for Bob Dylan’s body of work. Check back in three hundred years and we’ll find out whether those who thought Dylan was very special have been vindicated or whether those who thought he was merely another purveyor of late-20th-century-type rock/pop songs were proven right.

It’s true that not everyone has been bowled over by Tempest. That’s fair enough—no one’s obliged to like it at all—but merely as a student of human nature I’m curious as to why some people who like what we can loosely call “this kind of music” and who attest to loving much of what Bob Dylan has done before would not be nearly as wildly-enamored of this album as others.

The review in the LA Times was not technically a bad review (3 stars), but included substantial caveats. Perhaps reflecting on some of the reservations can be illustrative of where the differences in perception lie.

The reviewer appears to be least-impressed by the title track, which is a fourteen-minute song based around the sinking of the Titanic.

[Bob Dylan] is officially an antique, a relic and the last of his kind in a world that has little time or patience to focus on a 14-minute song about the sinking of the Titanic when everybody already knows how it ends. This is the big, grand miscue on the record. In an Irish-tinged tune that repeats virtually the same 16-bar melody throughout its quarter-hour, Dylan in poetic verse recounts the sinking and the fate of its passengers with a singsong phrasing that grows tiresome.

Well, if “everybody already knows how it ends,” what is the point, indeed?

It’s not beyond the capacity of Bob Dylan to write and record a dull or monotonous track, but I admit it does beggar my own empathetic capacity to understand how someone who generally enjoys Dylan’s music could find this to be such a track. It requires some kind of imperviousness. The folky melody is certainly repetitive, but if you want symphonies, you’re in the wrong place, my friend. For me, the counterpoint of the lilting waltz with the subject matter of the song amounts to something very affecting. And Bob’s singing throughout is so filled with variations in tone and character that monotony is for me very far from the situation. Dylan is really proving on this album how someone with a voice that is so shot can nonetheless be a a singer of great expression and subtlety (at least in the studio).

Ah, but we know how the story ends! Well, to think that this song is intended to inform us of how the story of the Titanic ends strikes me as maybe a slight failure of imagination, or attentiveness, or both. The title of the song, “Tempest,” is the initial tip-off that we are not in literal-ville. The historical Titanic was not sunk in a storm, after all, but by an iceberg (of which there is not a single mention in the forty-five[?] verses). So one might begin to suspect there could be something metaphorical going on. How about the story of the Titanic as a metaphor for life and death—for all of our lives and deaths? In any case, for this longstanding fan of Dylan’s work, it is pretty darned difficult not to be galvanized by the driving parade of verses, some of which include:

The passageway was narrow
There was blackness in the air
He saw every kind of sorrow
Heard voices everywhere

The veil was torn asunder
Between the hours of twelve and one
No change no sudden wonder
Could undo what had been done

The ship was going under
The universe had opened wide
The roll was called up yonder
The angels turned aside

They battened down the hatches
But the hatches wouldn’t hold
They drowned upon the staircase
Of brass and polished gold

The watchman he lay dreaming
The damage had been done
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking
And he tried to tell someone

Ah, shucks, if only we didn’t know how it all ends! Oddly enough, despite knowing it all, I find myself coming to the end of this song only wide-eyed and dazed.

Literal-ville doesn’t seem to me like it would be the most interesting place to live, especially if all you’ve got to listen to are Bob Dylan songs. The same LA Times reviewer says he likes the song “Long and Wasted Years,” but sums it up blandly as “a bitter song about a dead marriage.” Oh! I hadn’t realized that’s all it was. Foolishly, I’d felt all kinds of deep vibrations and resonances in this song. But somehow, there must be a way to bang all those verses into shape as just another bitter song about a dead marriage.

My enemy crashed into the dust
Stopped dead in his tracks and he lost his lust
He was run down hard and he broke apart
He died in shame, he had an iron heart

We cried on a cold and frosty morn
We cried because our souls were torn
So much for tears
So much for these long and wasted years

Hmm. If I didn’t know it was only a bitter song about a dead marriage, I’d say the track fairly explodes with emotional echoes and reflections on things like love, loyalty, memory, forgiveness, and regret. In addition, in terms of the sound and vocal performance, it evokes Dylan’s great song from 1986, “Brownsville Girl,” suggesting however vaguely some kind of picking-up of that story many years later. I admit that the track downright makes my eyes well up from the very first verse onwards. Maybe I’ll be able to correct that by keeping in mind the words “bitter” and “dead” from now on (but I wouldn’t count on it).

The same reviewer helpfully points out that the song “Early Roman Kings” is “a blues that directs its wrath at the selfish rich in the same way that ‘Masters of War’ indicted the military-industrial complex in 1963.” Alright. Without reopening stale discussions of “Masters of War,” is slamming the selfish rich—like some “Occupy Wall Street” slogan—really what “Early Roman Kings” is all about?

I can dress up your wounds
With a blood-clotted rag
I ain’t afraid to make love
To a bitch or a hag

If you see me comin’
And you’re standing there
Wave your handkerchief
In the air

I ain’t dead yet
My bell still rings
I keep my fingers crossed
Like them early Roman kings

The LA Times reviewer appears to be way more savvy than yours truly, when it comes to hammering the latest Bob Dylan songs into some pre-ordained mold of meaning. For me, up until this point, I was just digging the attitude on this track. I hadn’t picked up on any political or social manifesto. I’ll keep trying, though. Continue readingTempest by Bob Dylan: Is it an unreviewable album?”

Tempest approaching for Bob Dylan fans, and a still-curious world

The Cinch Review


Tempest by Bob Dylan

With the official release of Tempest by Bob Dylan coming in seven days, the full-length reviews are beginning to appear in the press. People appear to like it a lot. I can’t be sure, but I’m beginning to suspect that this might be the break-out album for Bob Dylan—the one that makes him a household name.

On the other hand, maybe not. If it flops, I guess he’ll have to just go back to writing songs for Adele and Tom Jones.

Joking aside, just as with the “preview” reviews, one can very quickly read too much of the “real” reviews, and so I’ve really only been glancing. Like most mortals, I’m looking forward to hearing the record(s) completely myself, and I suppose I’ll get round to writing something about it here afterwards.

The promotion for it has been quite something. From the “listening locations” where even now one can hear tracks streamed to one’s “device,” to the “pop-up stores” where one will be able to go on the evening before the release to buy it early … and all of this began with those “listening sessions” for select members of the intelligentsia, who were all blown away. In total it amounts to a perfect storm. Put another way, an ideal tempest.

It’s amazing to contemplate. If you’d told someone back in 1970 that forty-two years hence the release of a new Bob Dylan album would be such a huge occasion, they’d have thought you were smoking something rare and potent indeed. After Self Portrait? How much could the guy possibly have left in him? Even New Morning seemed no more than a half-way return-to-form to most people. No one could have conceived that in the year 2012 Bob Dylan would actually be one of the the surest bets in the world of popular music. Because as strange as it sounds, that’s what he is today. But the thing to celebrate is that he’s done it on his own terms. He’s being who he is. People just happen to like it. Continue readingTempest approaching for Bob Dylan fans, and a still-curious world”

Blowin’ in the Wind

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I don’t think these YouTube clips of Bob Dylan playing live last very long before they get taken down these days, but the one below not only gives a little flavor of Bob on piano during his current tour but also seems to offer evidence that he is cultivating a goatee. An alteration in facial hair is always very significant in the Bob Dylan universe, and so I highlight this in the interest of both art and science.

From Big Flats, NY, September 1st.

The (snuff) video for “Duquesne Whistle” by Bob Dylan

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The video for Bob Dylan’s new song “Duquesne Whistle” has been released today and is embedded below. A little commentary is below that.


The video was directed by Nash Edgerton, and as you can see features a guy trying to woo a girl, having some misadventures and ending up beaten to a pulp. Dylan himself is in it but separate from the main action.

The video doesn’t appear to have been inspired by the song at all (although it’s never impossible for people to come up with massive interpretations). The thinking behind a video like this must be that the song and record stand up by themselves, so why not just create something completely independent? Then you splice them together and maybe you’ll have an interesting interplay. You can see Dylan being into this approach; he loves taking advantage of the accidental. However, I have to say I just don’t dig the fruits of it in this case. The song and the video seem to be fighting one another, and so the combined result is (for me) laborious to watch. I guess I’m old fashioned. I figure if you want to promote a record with a video then the video ought to complement the song rather than essentially relegate it to background music. But to each his own. Continue reading “The (snuff) video for “Duquesne Whistle” by Bob Dylan”

Bob Dylan and the McCrary Sisters

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The other night (8/26) in Cincinnati, Bob Dylan was joined for his encore by the McCrary Sisters—Regina, Ann, Deborah and Alfreda—who supplied backing vocals for “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Regina McCrary has a long history with Dylan, as a backing singer in his shows and on his records during the 1979 to 1981 period.

She is also featured on the 2003 CD and DVD called Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs Bob Dylan, where a variety of gospel performers do cover versions of Bob Dylan’s songs. On the album she is the lead vocalist with the Chicago Mass Choir.

On the website dedicated to that project, Regina is quoted thusly:

When I got with Bob Dylan, I began to study his music before, to see who this man was. And I came to a realization that this man has been feeding people wisdom and words of encouragement.

And God has been using his hand and his heart and his mind to write music, to write lyrics, to keep people encouraged and keep them uplifted and keep them in the fight and keep them like soldiers, you know. Don’t sit down, don’t lay down. You gotta stand up, you gotta fight, you gotta believe!

And, since I’m not on Facebook, thanks to a friend for forwarding the text of Regina McCrary’s enthusiastic post there after going on stage with her sisters and Dylan the other night. It includes this:

I TRULY THANK GOD,FOR HIS FAVOR AND TRUST IN ME… AND BOB, I THANK YOU FOR HAVING THE KIND OF HEART TO KNOW HOW TO VALUE TRUE FRIENDSHIP… OVER 30YRS., OF FRIENDSHIP…TRUE LOVE FRIENDSHIP WEATHERS ALL KINDS OF STORMS… WE LOVE, FUSS, LAUGH, CRY, PRAY, FORGIVE, AND ASK TO BE FORGIVEN… BUT WE NEVER COUNT EACH OTHER OUT…I THANK GOD FOR LOVE AND FRIENDSHIPS IN MY LIFE LIKE THIS…

Now if that doesn’t warm your heart you’d better take a trip to the cardiologist.

Below via YouTube are the McCrary Sisters (Regina third from the left) doing their own version of “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Continue reading “Bob Dylan and the McCrary Sisters”

“Duquesne Whistle” – official first single from Tempest by Bob Dylan

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It’s Bob Dylan’s newest hit record, and you can listen to the whole thing via this post at NPR. I advise you to do so if you need some cheering up. It certainly gave me a lift this morning.

By the way, I think the NPR writer, Ann Powers, is on the mark hearing Louis Armstrong. And not only in Dylan’s voice, but also in the ebullience and joy of this record.


Narrow Way (and The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn)


One of the songs on Bob Dylan’s upcoming album, Tempest, is called “Narrow Way.” I haven’t heard it yet, so I don’t now where Dylan takes it—quite possibly somewhere unexpected.

Yet the phrase is one of those immediately familiar ones that a different wordsmith came up with a little less than 2000 years ago. From Matthew 7:13-14 (ESV):

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

Or, via the King James translation:

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

It’s one of the tougher statements of Jesus with regard to salvation, in that he seems to be saying quite bluntly that few will will be saved. It ain’t for me to argue with the Man, but there is a duality that believers wrestle with in Scripture, as in Mark 10:25-27:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.”

And from John 11:

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

Merely believing doesn’t seem a terribly high threshold, does it? Maybe especially in this world where we clothe ourselves in beliefs so offhandedly. But the theology will not be settled here.

“Narrow is the way.” It’s no doubt that phrasing in the King James version which was in Ralph Stanley’s head when he wrote “The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn,” many decades ago, with its chorus: Continue reading “Narrow Way (and The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn)”

The buzz goes on for Bob Dylan’s Tempest

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Tempest by Bob Dylan on vinyl LP

Update 9/10/2012: My own review of Tempest is here.

More music journalists are coming out of the closet with their reactions after having had a “listening session” with Bob Dylan’s forthcoming album, Tempest. Michael Simmons in Mojo says bluntly that the album is “astonishing.” Anne Margaret Daniel in Ireland’s Hot Press uses words like “breathtaking, mythmaking, heartbreaking” and even “perfect.” It seems they like it. Neil McCormick in The Telegraph has similarly waxed rhapsodic.

Though I read McCormick’s piece in full, I have to admit I’m merely skimming these newer ones, which look quite detailed on a track by track basis. How much can you read about an album you haven’t yourself heard before you become hopelessly bogged down with expectations? Not being one of the anointed to hear the album in advance of its release, I’m looking forward instead to my own private listening session on the day of release (September 11th in the U.S.), as are so many others. I think it would be true to say that the expectations for this album could hardly get any higher now, which is not always a good thing; however, in Dylan’s case, he’s made quite a few great, great albums that fundamentally exceed any expectation that anyone could have had. Therefore, it’s not so unrealistic to have great expectations. It’s probably more the preconceptions that you can accumulate from these reviews which might risk weighing you down when you actually hear the thing yourself.


“Early Roman Kings” fiasco!

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Alright: “fiasco” is way too strong a word to use for the current situation surrounding “Early Roman Kings,” the first song we have heard from Bob Dylan’s forthcoming album Tempest, but I came up with this title for the post and was so charmed by it that I just had to use it.

As part of the marketing for the new Bob Dylan record, two of the songs are being debuted on a Cinemax TV show called “Strike Back,” which apparently concerns the adventures of an exciting counter-terrorism unit. I don’t have Cinemax, so I don’t know this show from “Mister Ed,” but three cheers for counter-terrorists.

So our first listen to part of a song from the new album comes in a two minute trailer for the new series of “Strike Back.” (A second song, “Scarlet Town,” will debut in an August 17th episode of the same show.) The trailer clip is embedded below. Continue reading ““Early Roman Kings” fiasco!”

Bob Dylan in Rolling Stone on Tempest

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Mikal Gilmore talked to Bob Dylan for Rolling Stone about his forthcoming album, Tempest.

I assume that what has been published is an excerpt of a longer interview that will be published later, but I don’t know that for a fact.

Dylan describes his own record as one where “anything goes and you just gotta believe it will make sense.” He also says:

I wanted to make something more religious. I just didn’t have enough [religious songs]. Intentionally, specifically religious songs is what I wanted to do. That takes a lot more concentration to pull that off 10 times with the same thread – than it does with a record like I ended up with.

That’s interesting, and also interesting is how he distinguishes “intentionally, specifically religious” songs from others that are presumably not so intentional and specific but still religious. I think we understand what he means.

The article includes some characterizations of certain songs offered by Mikal Gilmore, and some talk about the title track, which is the one long-rumored about the Titanic. Amusingly, Dylan finds a place within the fourteen-minute epic to mention Leonardo DiCaprio. He’s quoted: “Yeah, Leo. I don’t think the song would be the same without him. Or the movie.” Continue reading “Bob Dylan in Rolling Stone on Tempest

Writer made up Bob Dylan quotes; resigns from New Yorker

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Why make up quotes from Bob Dylan? There are few figures in popular culture of the past 50 years who have given as many lengthy and fascinating and amusing interviews as Dylan has. I guess the obvious answer is that you make them up if you want to have Dylan expressing a thought he never actually expressed. When Dylan is quoted as saying something, it somehow matters to people (even people who aren’t fans), much more so than something said by your common-or-garden celebrity.

Michael Moynihan of The Tablet read Jonah Lehrer’s book Imagine: How Creativity Works, and, being a big Dylan fan himself, he found some of the quotes attributed to Dylan didn’t ring true or familiar. He followed up with Lehrer and was lied to and then eventually the house of cards came tumbling down, as Moynihan describes in his article here.

I didn’t read Lehrer’s book; it wasn’t on my radar. But I know very well how a false Dylan quote can stand out and trouble a dedicated fan.

I don’t mind saying that one of my high points as RWB was when I got the Christian Science Monitor to issue a correction for quoting Dylan as calling himself an atheist.

(You’re welcome, Bob. I guess Michael Moynihan is owed a thank-you note too.)

Addendum: For some, of-course, making up or distorting a few quotes is not ambitious enough at all. We can’t forget that the high minded journalists at India’s The Hindu apparently concocted an entire interview.

World anticipates a Tempest (and also a new Bob Dylan album)

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It’s a kind of marketing with which we’re becoming familiar from the Bob Dylan “camp”: rumors of a new album being recorded, followed weeks or months later by an official announcement, and then the granting of a “listening session” to certain select music journalists, with the proviso, mind you, that no notes be taken.

It’s been a highly effective way of creating a buzz (and Dylan has had two albums which entered various charts around the world at number one in the past decade). However, lest we dismiss it too cynically as a hyping mechanism, we should at least bear in mind that were one of these people at a listening session to come away saying how incredibly dull the record was (“I almost fell asleep! I just wanted to escape!”) then that would not do much for the sales prospects. You can avoid that to some degree by picking people whom you expect will enjoy the music, but there’s no guarantees.

As far as I know, only one writer who’s heard the forthcoming album has said anything about it to date, and that’s Allan Jones of the UK’s Uncut magazine. He did not fall asleep, it seems. After four or five tracks, he says, he was only thinking “how much better is this thing going to get?” Now that’s the kind of buzz you really like to have.

In terms of concrete characterizations, Jones really only says that the album has less of the “roadhouse blues” or “jazzy riverboat shuffles” that has populated the last three Dylan albums, but he alludes instead to songs like “Red River Shore” or “’Cross the Green Mountain” in terms of what the new record feels like. Those are great songs; in fact they are unforgettable classics of Dylan’s latter-day career. Again, high marks for buzz, although I do presume that Allan Jones is merely giving his honest impression rather than trying to hype anything.
Continue reading “World anticipates a Tempest (and also a new Bob Dylan album)”

Tempest by Bob Dylan on vinyl

The Cinch Review


Tempest by Bob Dylan on vinyl LP

As expounded upon before, I’m not an advocate of vinyl purely for its tactile pleasures (although I love holding a real record as much as the next guy), but for quite a few years now there’s been a trend whereby new music released on vinyl has received a kinder and more faithful mastering than that which is released on CD (or mp3), where the abuse of the process of dynamic range compression has resulted in blaring and ultimately-wearying recordings being foisted upon a largely unsuspecting public. (Also known as the Loudness War[s].) The Dylan CD releases of the past several years seem to have progressively improved in that respect. Together Through Life on CD didn’t sound quite as bad as Modern Times had, and Christmas in the Heart seemed (to me at least) better still. (By the way, with the mercury frequently hitting triple digits in many parts this summer, I am glad to suggest that putting on Christmas in the Heart makes for some pretty effective aural air-conditioning. There’s nothing like listening to Bob Dylan sing “Winter Wonderland” when it’s 104 degrees in July. Just try not to get so enchanted that you light up some logs in the fireplace.)

I don’t know how the mastering will go on the forthcoming release, but Sony/Columbia is continuing the recent pattern of offering a vinyl package that also includes the album on CD. This is a smart way of selling it, I guess, albeit that one might wish for a lower price-tag.

Amazon.com is offering Tempest for pre-order as two vinyl LPs with one CDfor (at the time of writing) $25.99. Through the BobDylan.com site, on the other hand, you can pre-order the same thing for four dollars more.

That deliciously brings to mind Bob’s couplet from his song “Po’ Boy”:

I say, “How much you want for that?” I go into the store
The man says, “Three dollars.” “All right,” I say, “Will you take four?”


Of-course, may the Good Lord hasten the way when all honest consumers will be able to obtain the recording as it was meant to be heard regardless of the medium in which they purchase it. Does that seem so much to ask?

Tempest: New Bob Dylan album due on September 11th, 2012

The Cinch Review

Tempest: new album by Bob DylanThe official word on the forthcoming Bob Dylan album, titled Tempest, has come via a press release at BobDylan.com.

There’s not a lot of info there, other than the release date, the cover image, and the fact that it will contain ten songs. Long-time Dylan-related publication ISIS has the names of the songs:

1. Duquesne Whistle
2. Soon After Midnight
3. Narrow Way
4. Long and Wasted Years
5. Pay In Blood
6. Scarlet Town
7. Early Roman Kings
8. Tin Angel
9. Tempest
10. Roll On John

It is rumored that one song deals with the Titanic, and another invokes John Lennon (no prize for guessing which one the latter may be). ISIS also reports that those who’ve heard the album rate it very highly indeed. Continue readingTempest: New Bob Dylan album due on September 11th, 2012″

Bob Dylan makes like Liberace on new tour

The Cinch Review

The big news from the first few dates of Bob Dylan’s current concert tour in Europe is that his main instrument of choice is now a grand piano. No candelabra like the great Liberace, but he is keeping the Oscar he won for “Things Have Changed”—or a facsimile—perched atop, draped with beads of some kind. (There are currently a variety of fan video clips on YouTube, like the one embedded at right with a great version of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” from his show in Bonn, Germany). Continue reading “Bob Dylan makes like Liberace on new tour”

Shlomi Shaban: Mama, You Been on My Mind

The Cinch Review

This is something a little different. A pianist and singer named Shlomi Shaban sings Bob Dylan’s “Mama, You Been on My Mind;” but in Hebrew, and accompanied by the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra. Below via YouTube:

The rendition does lift up just how beautiful a melody it is. Not bad at all, for the 23-year-old folk singer who wrote it back in 1964 (and who didn’t even release it until 1991!).

When you wake up in the mornin’, baby, look inside your mirror
You know I won’t be next to you, you know I won’t be near
I’d just be curious to know if you can see yourself as clear
As someone who has had you on his mind

From The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased, 1961-1991


Sure was glad to get out of there alive: Bob Dylan receives Medal of Freedom at White House [video added]

The Cinch Review

There was more than a little bit of “Day of the Locusts” about the Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House this afternoon, which I watched via C-Span. Bob Dylan was the last to be introduced, and also the last to receive the medal, which is odd, since otherwise they seemed to be following alphabetical order. Hmmm. Zimmerman? Or were they trying to create some drama regarding Bob? (Why would they do that?) He was the only recipient wearing shades, which he kept on throughout. He stayed pretty low-key, not even applauding other recipients as far as I could see. When standing beside President Obama and hearing the citation read out, he shifted restlessly from side to side. Quick handshake with the President afterwards but no real words exchanged, in contrast to how it went down with several other recipients. I did not observe Dylan smiling even once.

I somehow don’t think he was planning to hang around for dinner. Nevertheless, congratulations to Bob. His country has now honored him about as highly as it can, and that’s always better than a kick in the pants, regardless of how one might feel about the occupant of the Oval Office at the given time.

In about thirty days he kicks off a new tour in England. I suspect he’ll be considerably more comfortable on that stage, as always.

UPDATE: Video clip below.

The wearing of the sunglasses throughout an indoor ceremony seemed like a serious statement of aloofness, as was the absence of a simple smile (contrasted dramatically, I might add, with President Obama’s grinning). I guess I’d see it as Bob trying to keep himself from appearing overly friendly to the political aromas floating around. Others will make of it what they will.