#36 THE NOBLE LAUREATE

Nobel Literature Prize laureate, Bob Dylan, wrote this as a selfie send-up in 'I shall be free.No.10) on one of his early albums. In an interview he later said he knew he was a poet from the time he wrote "jeez, I can't find my knees", after a hallucinogenic experience.  Considerable foresight, then, and the habit of modestly denying that he deserved major honours - but still accepting them as he did with the Congressional Medal of Honour from Obama.

Whatever the public may think of this Nobel Prize, fellow poets and lyricists have known for 50 years that he deserves this. An exaggeration? As Max Bygraves used to say, "I wanna tell you a stor-ee".  In 1966 I had a girlfriend with a flat just off the King's Road, Chelsea (see FESS, The girl in the car park). One time I visited her she beckoned me quickly into the kitchen, to explain to me that the bedroom was occupied by a couple who were 'having an affair'. I got the picture and passed the time hymning the praises of Dylan's new album "Blonde on Blonde" which I had just bought. I said that if it didn't have electric music behind it, it would be considered poetry, and very good poetry in some songs. I also had to move around the living room, raising my voice so she could hear, and avoid the fluffy grey kitten whose fur made me sneeze, coincidentally named 'Dylan'.

Much later she told me that one member of the couple was a very famous British poet, who wouldn't want to be named even now, and he had told her not only that he heard my thesis and agreed with it totally, but that many of his friends and colleagues in the poetry world "would give their right arms to have Dylan's supply of imagery - something that can't be taught or learned".  I've pasted in a sample: it's a narrative, a cry of anger, of passion, of aggression and contrition, and of love and hate. Above all it contains some powerfully graphic images and symbols which compare with any in the English Literature I have read.  As my Jewish grandmother would have said, "By poets he's a poet". My case rests.


"Idiot Wind"

Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they'd cut it out quick, when they will I can only guess
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me
I can't help it if I'm lucky.

People see me all the time and they just can't remember how to act
Their minds are filled with big ideas, images and distorted facts
Even you, yesterday, you had to ask me where it was at
I couldn't believe after all these years, you didn't know me better than that
Sweet lady.

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth
Blowing down the backroads heading south
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe

I ran into the fortune-teller who said beware of lightning that might strike
I haven't known peace and quiet, for so long I can't remember what it's like
There's a lone soldier on the cross, smoke pouring out of a boxcar door
You didn't know it, you didn't think it could be done, in the final end he won the war
After losing every battle.

I woke up on the roadside daydreaming about the way things sometimes are
Visions of your chestnut mare shoot through my head and are making me see stars
You hurt the ones that you love best and cover up the truth with lies
One day you'll be in the ditch, flies buzzing around your eyes
Blood on your saddle.

Idiot wind, blowing through the flowers on your tomb
Blowing through the curtains in your room
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apart
You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn't enough to change my heart
Now everything's a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What's good is bad what's bad is good, you'll find out when you reach the top
You're on the bottom.I noticed at the ceremony, your corrupt ways had finally made you blind
I can't remember your face anymore, your mouth has changed your eyes don't look
into mine
The priest wore black on the seventh day and sat stone faced while the
building burned
I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees while the
springtime turned
Slowly into autumn.

Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull
From the Grand Coulee Dam to Capitol
Idiot wind. blowing every time you move you teeth
You're an idiot babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

I can't feel you anymore, I can't even touch the books you've read
Every time I crawl past your door, I been wishing I was somebody else instead
Down the highway, down the tracks down the road to ecstasy
I followed you beneath the stars hounded by your memory
And all your raging glory.

I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I'm finally free
I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me
You'll never know the hurt I suffered, nor the pain I rise above
And I'll never know the same about you your holiness or your kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry.

Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We're idiots babe
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves.

It's good; good that he's got the recognition, good that a few million more young people will be curious enough to listen to his words, and good that a generation who grew up with him and made him, were moved and stirred and even politicised by him - that they can share in his satisfaction and somehow stop from feeling they have to apologise for listening to this music from another age. He is unique and I cannot think of a single other writer/performer who has got even to close to his power and influence. Arise, Sir Bob.

Yet he remains (as Churchill said of Russia) 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. His obsessive privacy, partly born of the early Dylanologists' excavations of his rubbish bins to provide clues to his life, has been maintained throughout his career. His ability to 'repel boarders', whether fans or paps is legendary: when a fan found himself in a lift with his idol, he ventured to say "Well, you don't know me, but I know you..." Dylan cut him short: "Yeah, let's keep it that way". The curt, acid or playful replies to interviewers are well-known: he can appear arrogant, rude or cruel, and this can seem a contradiction in someone who so determinedly sought fame in the first place. But it is also contradictory to his softer, self-effacing side: Dave Stewart tells the story of how Dylan came to visit him in his house/studio in Crouch End, but got the address wrong. Dylan wound up spending 4 hours with a little old lady in another house altogether, feeding him endless tea and biscuits, who hadn't a clue who he was. But he didn't want to tell her that he hadn't come to see her, she had been so pleased with the company.

He also has a talent for self-mockery, recognising that his harsh, nasal voice, though appreciated by his fans, probably stood in the way of a much wider popularity.

In the end Dylan has been recognised for his lyricism, and he did, almost single-handedly, rescue the popular music lyric from its preoccupation with teenage romance. But it is the whole musical package which has sold over 100 million of his albums, with The Band and The Byrds inspired by him to create folk-rock and influence countless subsequent 'mainstream' bands from Crosby, Still, Nash and Young, to the Eagles. Not bad for a little Jewish folkie fella from Hibbing, Minnesota.

It was inevitable that Dylan left folk-music or at least took it in new directions, before becoming a kind of rock star. Folk music is by its very nature conservative, retrospective and traditional. Dylan was an innovator and of course a poet; and while his protest songs were entirely sincere and massively influential, the poetry could not be bounded solely by political issues: Picasso did not just paint Guernica. And yet, even in the protest period, the poetry was there, in the service of the issue. This is The 'Lonesome Ballad of Hattie Carroll' a song he wrote about the killing of a Southern black hotel worker, by a contemptuous white gentleman with a blow from his cane:

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gathering
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears

William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling
In a matter of minutes, on bail was out walking
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears

Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn't even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air and came down through the room
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger
And you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears

In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel

To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level

And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded

And that even the nobles get properly handled

Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em

And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom

Stared at the person who killed for no reason

Who just happened to be feelin' that way without warnin'

And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished

And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance

William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence

Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears

Bury the rag deep in your face

For now's the time for your tears

In fact the poetry I think is enhanced by the music and the rasp of his voice.

At the end of his acoustic/folk period came a song which flourished in both acoustic and electric modes, and was perhaps the first Dylan song to be appreciated by a mass audience, as poetry. This is an electric version that he played at the Concert for Bangla Desh in 1971 at Madison Square Garden, organised by George Harrison.

“I think women rule the world and that no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn't allowed him to do or encouraged him to do.”

“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” 

"You can be in my dream if I can be in yours"    (Talking World War III Blues, 1962, about dreaming of surviving a  nuclear war))

True Confessions time: I was a devoted Dylan fan from 1962 - 82ish, happily following him through his changes through folk/protest/folk rock/rock. But in the early 80s he started to lose his way and sought guidance from Judaism and Christianity, which alienated me, despite my having a foot in both camps. It seemed like a betrayal of so much that he had stood for, and it 'tainted' his lyrics which had formerly owed nothing to organised religion. I felt disloyal but I knew this was not a direction I could follow. It also affected his music which to me became tired and somewhat formulaic. The person who I had managed to see live 4 times in 1978 was no longer the same person. This why it feels slightly strange for him to receive the reward now rather than 30 years ago before - and he admitted this himself in a recent interview - the quality declined and his heart was not in it to the same extent.
But I am extremely happy that the work has now been recognised for what it is - and for what so many people recognised it as. I doubt very much that the later work has contributed to the rationale for this award, so for me at least, it goes into Room 101. So I'm a Dylan fogey- who knew?

(already chosen for my humanist funeral playlist, even though that's at least 20 years off).


Dylan at his best, a poem for my generation, so much more resonant than Wordsworth:

'I wandered lonely as a cloud Like a Rolling Stone'