Chronicles.

So Bob got a Nobel prize for literature. Good for him. But he seems to be in two minds about it. More than two knowing Bob.

I came close to meeting him in London back in the Sixties but it wasn’t to be. I like his music. On the other hand he’s always come across as a bit devious. Like me. In interviews he seems to be hiding something all the time or wishing he was doing something else. Like he’s too intelligent to waste his time answering stupid questions. I can see how somebody in his position could get like that but all that dodging and weaving must take its toll. I was curious to see what he had to say in his book.

Samantha gave me a copy of  'Chronicles' before I left. So I start reading it on the plane and I can’t put it down. It’s much better than I thought it would be. I was expecting a lot of evasive stuff and double-talk but he plays it fairly straight. It’s bulging with characters, references and images. Thucydides, Milton, Judy Garland, Woody Guthrie, the Civil War, Jesse James, Harry Belafonte, Hank Williams. All Dylan’s influences are here in the book. You can feel the enormous creativity of the bloke in every paragraph.

And it turns out he was very sincere about folk music. He started singing in folk clubs in Minnesota, doesn’t talk about it much but the parts set in New York are great. It seems to be snowing all the time. I get these images of a boy from the Iron Range in his scarf and his fleece-jacket and motorcycle boots zipping between the coffee shops and folk clubs of Greenwich Village. Sleeping on people’s couches, talking about this and that, listening, learning, always with one eye on the ball. He hung out with singers like Mike Seeger, Dave Van Ronk, Ramblin Jack Elliot, John Hurt, The Clancey Brothers, the best, but the thing that set him apart was his own songs he wrote. The strangeness of them and the way they resonate in people’s minds. Written almost by accident he says. He jumps around in time and space in the book. Good for him. And the songs! Blowin' in the Wind, Mr. Tambourine Man, Positively 4th. Street, Love Sick. How did he do it? The book explains some of the process but here’s Dylan talking with Robert Hilburn………

"Oh, I'm not that serious a songwriter," he says, a smile on his lips. "Songs don't just come to me. They'll usually brew for a while, and you'll learn that it's important to keep the pieces until they are completely formed and glued together."

He sometimes writes on a typewriter but usually picks up a pen because he says he can write faster than he can type. "I don't spend a lot of time going over songs," Dylan says. "I'll sometimes make changes, but the early songs, for instance, were mostly all first drafts."

He doesn't insist that his rhymes be perfect. "What I do that a lot of other writers don't do is take a concept and line I really want to get into a song and if I can't figure out for the life of me how to simplify it, I'll just take it all — lock, stock and barrel — and figure out how to sing it so it fits the rhyming scheme. I would prefer to do that rather than bust it down or lose it because I can't rhyme it."

What an amazing thing. To condense a feeling or an event into a poem and set it to music. Blows ones mind it does.


Dylan denies ever being a spokesman for some generation. Load of shite, he says. He hated all the attention and the idiots trying to break into his Woodstock house. He feared for his family. Wanted to shoot the intruders, set fire to them. The only way to be free of them was to change the self they thought they knew. Throw out a lot of red herrings to 'suggest only shadows of my possible self'.

At one point he talks about changing ideologies like guitar strings…and why not? “What’s the difference? As long as my own form of certainty stayed intact, I owed nobody nothing.”

There are lots of insights into touring and recording. He tells what it's like to deal with audiences and other musicians, to sing the same songs night after night.

So has he cleared things up? Is Bob just a simple country boy? I’m not convinced. The motorcycle accident gets one line. Nothing on divorce (unless you count "....someone who is loved can inspire more fear than Machiavelli ever dreamed of.") OK it's personal, none of my business but I could have used a bit more blood on the tracks. Then again perhaps he tried to lay it out and maybe he doesn’t understand it all anymore than I do. The book is like his songs. I’m still confused but that’s OK. People are complicated creatures and it’s a great read anyway.

Dylan had a boat. Got wrecked on a reef off Panama. He mentions it in 'Chronicles'...a 65 footer, must have been a beauty...Jimmy talks about it too...

Jimmy Buffett, rock singer "Boat talk"
"I overheard the talk at the next table. Water Pearl was in the harbor, and everyone was talking about whether or not the owner was on board. She was a beautiful traditional Beguia schooner that had been built on the island and was a home away from home to a Minnesota boy named Zimmerman or to those who don't know, Bob Dylan ... 'The boss' was on board and heard I was in town as well and asked if I wanted to come out and see the boat and have lunch...
"We didn't talk music. We talked boats over lunch ... He gave me a tour of Water Pearl, and I can still smell that unique combination of pitch, canvas, and wood that is the essence of a traditional sailing rig ... I have seen Bob on a number of occasions since then, but that was the last time I saw Water Pearl. She foundered on a reef off Panama a few years later and went down." (Gustavia, St. Barts, 1980s)
(From "A Pirate Looks at Fifty," by Jimmy Buffett)

Robert liked a bit of country pie too....

Joe Eszterhas, screenwriter
"Whiskey, coke and women"
"I'd waited in the living room of a Denver hotel suite at eight one morning for Bob Dylan to emerge from his bedroom. A half-full quart of Jim Bream stood on the living room cocktail table, along with three or four broken lines of coke. A pair of black silver-toed cowboy boots was under the table. One girl came out of Bob's bedroom, then another, then another. They looked tired and sleepy and were scantily and hastily dressed. They said hi in a shy and embarrassed way and then they left. Five minutes later, Bob came out, bare-chested and barefoot, wearing jeans, his hair an airborne jungle, his complexion graveyard gray. He sat down at the cocktail table, took a long slug of Jim Beam, did a line of coke, smiled, and said, 'Howya doin?'" (late 1970s)
(From "American Rhapsody," by Joe Eszterhas)

And then there's James Damiano.