Bob Dylan is misunderstood and will continue to be misunderstood, since he is so clever and evasive.
No Direction Home, the two-part documentary shown on BBC2, was 50 times more interesting than any football match I’ve seen lately.
The film was directed by Martin Scorsese at the instigation of Dylan’s manager Jeff Rosen, who shot a current interview with his star and, apparently, gave the footage to Scorsese to edit as he saw fit.
No Direction Home, like the autobiography – Chronicles One – is product which (1) makes money and (2) adds to his legend. Clearly, Dylan and his manager want to sell CDs and DVDs and add to his legend. But they have to work within his legend.
They cannot contradict his legend. I have doubts about how hip Scorsese is, but he has access to hip people and I’m gonna give him credit for something quite subtle. The clips he used, and the quotes from Sixties musicians and musicbiz people, suggest that Scorsese realises that Dylan is a myth-maker and always has been.
Bob Dylan has been toying with us since before his first album was made. He has never explained himself and he never will. Bob doesn’t do candid. He just gives us glimpses, to keep us interested. He is not the first performer to create a fictional persona, but he is the first performer to create Bob Dylan.When Robert Zimmerman changed his name he changed the rules about who he was and who he could be and what he could say.
HAVING SAID ALL THAT, Highway SixtyBob Revisited is fantastic. It’s lovely to see the outtakes and the backstage stuff, even in a film that’s commissioned by his manager and which is therefore uncritical.Look at the contrast between how he was at press conferences and how he was when meeting his fans.
With reporters he was a dandy, an artful dodger, sometimes a scorpion who answered a question with a question.
“Do you care about what you sing?” asks a Fleet Street hack.
“You ask me that? You’ve got a lotta nerve to ask me that!” says Bob, surprised and livid.
Near the end of this three and a half hour film we see him coming out of a Glasgow hotel and getting into his limousine.The shots from inside the car, with the half-open window framing the faces of three teenage girls, are pure magic.
Bob is relaxed with three or four fans at his elbow, he’s been there before, many times. They want to be near him, see him, touch him, talk to him. He can see the infatuated flush on their faces, so he jokes gently with them.
“Did you boo me last night?”
“I didn’t boo you.”
“We didn’t boo you, Bob.”
“I want the names of all the people who booed me.”
The car engine starts.
“Come back soon !”
“OK, I’ll be back in a month or two. Cheerio.”
But, a while later, perhaps in another city, he refuses an autograph to a lad reaching into the car with a piece of paper.
“You don’t need my autograph.If you needed my autograph, I’d give it you.”
The lad looks at the camera and says,”What’s the matter with him today?”
Backstage at another gig, Dylan looks burned-out and sick and he says his voice has gone.You can see he needs to lay down his weary head. He says he shouldn’t be singing and reckons we should get a new Bob Dylan.
“Get a new Bob Dylan, see how long he lasts.”