Bob Dylan and The Danger of Complacency
In my younger years, I considered myself quite the historian of rock music, and I’ve always been a fan, not just of Martin Scorsese, but of the way that he so unerringly picks just the right song for the right scene in all of his movies, so it should come as no surprise that I have spent the last couple of hours watching Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home on PBS.
Part One was tonight, and it followed the young Bob Zimmerman through his days as a wee lad up until the days when he reached the peak of the ‘folk music’ summit at Newport in 1963. I don’t have to wait until Part Two to know what happens next; Bob goes electric, is booed off the stage and heckled worldwide, and goes through an immensely frustrating tour or two.
Why? Because he left his boundaries, and wandered off the reservation. The folkies tried to ‘own’ Dylan; he was one of the them, the star that shown the brightest, and as long as he stayed in his place, all was right in the world. Dylan, of course, was far too talented to be contained in one genre of music, and after he became the premier folk artist of all time at the ripe old age of 22, it was time to move on and conquer rock and roll.
In the process of earning all those boos, Dylan was getting into the heads of the Beatles, who would soon put out Rubber Soul and Revolver, and the Stones, who would be mining their own eclectic roots on Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed. In other words, he was quite literally changing the face of popular music in totally unanticipated ways: after Dylan went electric, rock became literate, and it was no longer worthy of an automatic smirk to claim artistry for its best performers.
Now, one hesitates to stray too far with metaphors, particularly with such an enigmatic persona as Dylan, but one can’t help but be reminded, if one is politically inclined, of the current state of the political activists, on the right, yes, but primarily on the left. If a Democratic senator should go ‘electric’ and vote for a judge on his merits, or if a Christopher Hitchens has his Newport moment on an awful day in September, the howls are loud and instantaneous. And I feel the same way about Republicans who demand a candidate embrace their pet issue or risk the taunt of RINO.
But there the metaphor breaks, for we aren’t, most of us, authors with the erudition of a Christopher Hitchens, or musicians with the broad sweep of a Bob Dylan. When the Dylans and the Hitchens of the political arena come around, though, will we be smart enough to spot ‘em? More importantly, will our minds be open to a new message? Quite often, orthodoxy is the enemy of progress – if our principles are solid, we have nothing to fear from ideas…but potentially, a world to gain.
I think the ability to follow your muse and go where it leads is one of the key elements of artistic genius. Miles Davis and Clint Eastwood are two others who come to mind: they ignored critics and public opinion to create the art they wanted to make. However, I’m not sure how applicable this is to politics. A statesman is someone who has certain bedrock principles, but who is willing to reexamine them in the light of new events. I am trying to think of politicians who had mid-career epiphanies which made them stronger. (Bobby Kennedy and Ramsey Clark are the only two who come to mind – although in Clark’s case, his change was from normal to off-the-wall weird). Unlike artists, politicians have to live by a more brutal standard: the first one now will later be last.