No Direction Home - the Life and Music of Bob Dylan by Robert Shelton

Author:Robert Shelton [Shelton, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Music, Individual Composer & Musician
ISBN: 9780857126160
Google: pjA21i7xCUMC
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Published: 2011-05-30T12:00:00+00:00

stay in line. stay in step, people

are afraid of someone who is not

in step with them. it makes them

look foolish t’ themselves for

being in step. it might even

cross their mind that they themselves

are in the wrong step.…

when asked t’ define yourself exactly,

say you are an exact mathematician.

do not say or do anything that

he who standing in front of you

watching cannot understand, he will

feel you know something he

doesn’t12

Typical of many of his “middle-period” finger-pointing songs, like “Positively Fourth Street,” “Advice for Geraldine,” may have sounded like a paranoid talking blues, but it was an artist’s declaration of independence. Dylan hated authority figures, including arbiters of taste who wrote for Sing Out!, Broadside, Billboard, or the Times. No one was sure just whom he meant, and many were positive that he meant them. Dylan simply did not want to conform. His “truth attacks” were outbursts he rarely examined to weigh the damage he might inflict. He still felt the message serviceable enough to reprint in the Carnegie Hall program book on October 1, 1965, when he appeared with the Hawks (later the Band).

Dylan preferred to battle his critics obliquely. Face to face, he was as polite as possible. Shortly after his weak performance at Forest Hills, I spent an evening with him in the Village. He made no reference to my negative review. Although slightly reserved, he had a bit of information and another bit of free advice. The information, stated in roundabout terms, was that he was about to gross his first million. He was clearly startled, even though he knew that he would be lucky to see twenty percent of the total, after paying his team and taxes. Turning the conversation to me, he asked what I was writing, and I told him about various projects, some for pleasure, some just for bread. Charlie Rothschild had told him that under the pseudonym of Adam Barnes I had written the liner notes on Linda Mason’s mediocre album of Dylan songs. Bitingly, Bob said that if I ever got that hard up for money again I should ask him for some, which I never did. I told him of a book I was writing on country music and some other projects. He suggested I try my best to get beyond the bread-and-butter writing: “Find something that you feel strongly about and just write it,” Dylan told me, as we sat in the Gaslight. I didn’t realize it then, but he was obliquely leading me toward this book. He was strongly reminding me that my protégé no longer needed protection.

The next day he returned to Woodstock, away from professional judges and old Village friends who reminded him of a past he was quickly outgrowing. In the next few months he made new, influential friends, including several young musicians who called themselves the Byrds and the Beatles.

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