Bob Dylan
Page 1
BOB DYLAN
Celebrities series
Series editor: Anthony Elliott
Published:
Dennis Altman: Gore Vidal’s America
Ellis Cashmore: Beckham 2nd edition
Ellis Cashmore: Tyson
Charles Lemert: Muhammad Ali
Chris Rojek: Frank Sinatra
Nick Stevenson: David Bowie
Lee Marshall is a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bristol where he specialises in popular music. His first book, Bootlegging: Romanticism and Copyright in the Music Industry (2005) was awarded the Socio-Legal Studies Association’s Hart Early Career Prize.
BOB DYLAN
THE NEVER ENDING STAR
LEE MARSHALL
polity
Copyright © Lee Marshall 2007
The right of Lee Marshall to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
First published in 2007 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3974-1
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For Catherine, my fairest critic
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
The theoretical bit
Why looking at stardom is important for understanding Dylan. Different approaches to stardom, and the most important bits of the theories. How we hear songs. Whether words or voice are most important. How stardom affects the meaning of songs.
1 Introduction
2 Stardom, Authorship and the Meaning of Songs
Dylan’s sixties stardom
Dylan’s emergence in the folk revival and the contradictions of being a ‘folk star’. His move into rock, political individualism and the tensions between culture and commerce. Dylan’s withdrawal from the scene in the late sixties. His attempts to reclaim his stardom and their effect on the rest of his career.
Snapshot: The man of the people
3 Folk Stardom: Star as Ordinary, Star as Special
Snapshot: The chameleon poet
4 Rock Stardom: Reconciling Culture and Commerce
Snapshot: The retiring father
5 Beyond Stardom: Rock History and Canonisation
Dylan’s later stardom
Changing social values and Dylan’s problems in the 1980s. Dylan’s attempt to reconstruct the relationship with his audience. An overview of the Never Ending Tour and its key features. Debates about Dylan’s later work. Time Out Of Mind and the changes in Dylan’s stardom since 1997.
Snapshot: The rock legend
6 Declining Stardom: Nostalgia and the ‘Death of Rock’
Snapshot: The wandering minstrel
7 Redefining Stardom: The Never Ending Tour
Snapshot: The soul of previous times
8 Never Ending Stardom: Dylan after Time Out Of Mind
Notes
Bibliography
List of Interviews
Copyright Acknowledgements
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I guess that the first mention should go to my dad, as it was through his scratched LPs that I first heard the music that has held me enthralled for so long (even if I was resistant at first). Thanks should also be offered to the other members of my family, who are always wonderfully supportive, and to Catherine, who really does have to put up with far too much and attends more Dylan shows than necessary without complaint. On that subject, thanks to all those I have passed time with at gigs – Mike, Elaine, Pauline, Les, Step and Steve to name just a few. It is a remarkable feeling to arrive at a show alone in the safe knowledge that I’ll soon bump into someone I know. Following Dylan has given me some of my longest-lasting friends, even if (or is it because?) we only see each other a couple of times a year
It was series editor Anthony Elliot who first asked me to write a book on Dylan. It was something I said I would never do, but in the end I’m glad I did, and so I am grateful for his request. Andrea Drugan at Polity has been very helpful and, unusually for a publisher in my experience, has actually shown an interest in the work. Several people have read draft chapters of this book, so my thanks go to: Catherine Dodds, Simon Frith, Dai Griffiths, Dave Hesmondhalgh, Gregor McLennan and Graham Stephenson. All of you offered very useful advice, most of which I was sensible enough to take. A particular mention should go to Keith Negus, who offered me engaged comments on many parts of the book and encouragement to persist with my ideas.
A NOTE ON REFERENCING
‘Song Titles’ are written in quotation marks; Albums in italics. Any substantive footnote is marked with an asterisk and given on the bottom of the page; endnotes, which are numbered,merely provide reference to academic sources.
1
INTRODUCTION
I have experienced many spellbinding moments at Bob Dylan’s concerts, but one stands out: Bournemouth, 1 October 1997. Dylan’s new album, Time Out Of Mind, had been released at the start of the week and many of us congregating on the front few rows were hoping to hear some songs from it. All through the main set, however, there was nothing new and by its end I had resigned myself to the fact that the new songs would have to wait, consoled that it had been a very good show regardless. Then, as he returned for the encores, the opening bars of ‘Love Sick’ creaked through the air, and Dylan stepped up to the mike and began the song. The moment was electric. The reason I remember it so clearly, however, is not just the excitement of hearing a live debut but, rather, a realisation I had during it. Towards the end of the song, Dylan sang:
I’m sick of love, I wish I’d never met you
I’m sick of love, I’m trying to forget you
I felt at that moment that Dylan was singing directly to us, the audience in front of him. That ‘you’ for which he expressed so much contempt was actually us. The love he was so sick of was that given to him by the thousands of fans around the world. There is a sting in this tale, though, for in the song’s final lines, the singer himself capitulates:
Just don’t know what to do
I’d give anything to be with you
Whether or not I’m right in this reading of ‘Love Sick’, it is certainly true that Dylan’s relationship with his audience has always been marked by this kind of ambivalence. Around the same time as the Bournemouth show, he said in an interview that:
A lot of people don’t like the road but it’s as natural to me as breathing. I
do it because I’m driven to do it, and I either hate it or love it. I’m mortified to be on the stage but, then again, it’s the only place where I’m happy. It’s the only place you can be who you want to be. You can’t be who you want to be in daily life. (Jon Pareles interview, 1997)
This ambivalence has been a defining feature of Dylan’s career since he emerged as a star in 1962. Since then he has been involved in what at times seems like a constant battle with fans and media over what he should perform, how he should relate to others, how he should act, and more. Such ambivalence inhabits his songs:
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
(‘Idiot Wind’)
In short, Dylan has been in a battle about what the concept ‘Bob Dylan’ means. This book is about that battle. It is not, however, a biography detailing a poor, misunderstood singer harassed from all sides, constantly misinterpreted by the media. It is instead a sociological account of Dylan’s stardom. Dylan is a singer, a songwriter, a live performer, but, more than anything else, Dylan is a star. His stardom is an essential feature of his existence. It is the lens through which everything in his life is understood, not just his creative achievements but inherently personal things like fatherhood and divorce. Because Dylan is a star, his life has public meaning. This means that what ‘Bob Dylan’ stands for is open to social determination and not under the control of Dylan himself.
This project differs from existing work on Dylan in that it seeks to present a sociological account of his stardom rather than either a biography or a textual analysis of his lyrics (though both of these provide material for a sociological analysis). Conventional biographies take a ‘subjectivist’ approach to their topic, concentrating on the life of the star by looking solely at biographical detail. Such an approach tends to portray the star’s stardom as a series of discrete, visible, relationships (such as that between star and record label). These relationships are used to construct a coherent story of a life that is, to a greater or lesser extent, orchestrated by the star. This is problematic in a number of ways. Most significantly, it places too much power in the hands of the star – the star’s career is seen as the result of decisions and actions taken by the star or her representatives. This is understandable because it tends to be how we view everyday life too – we see ourselves as the ‘author’ of our own lives. However, we are not the authors of our own lives, at least not totally. The chances of obtaining a high level of education, or good health, or a living wage, depend on a variety of factors such as class, race, nationality and gender which are beyond our control. Similarly, even though stars may be extremely powerful agents, what a particular star means or achieves depends on factors outside of their control, and may well happen ‘behind their back’ (including those just mentioned: think of the ten ‘greatest’ rock stars, and count how many of them are black and/or female). To take an obvious example, how a particular star is portrayed and understood depends on a relationship between media and audiences that is completely independent of the star’s control. This is a clearly observable phenomenon, but there are less observable factors too: how does Dylan’s stardom relate to the rise of consumerism, for example? Whatever we may like to think, Dylan is not famous just because of the quality of his work. Wider social factors have enabled his stardom to develop in certain ways and closed off other possibilities. In this way, he is no different from any other star.
This leads me to the second weakness of the subjectivist approach: it presumes that the star’s success is the direct result of skill or charisma. This is not true. Neither of these is a necessary or sufficient condition of stardom. Many untalented people become stars, while many charismatic people do not. It is not inevitable that Dylan would be a success because he was talented; it was not inevitable that he would have such a long career in popular music. Charisma is not a natural trait, it is a social effect. This is not to imply that stars are not viewed as charismatic – some obviously are, and this is important – but a range of social conditions must be in place that enable an individual’s talents and personality to become recognised as skilful and charismatic. Concepts such as ‘revolutionary’, ‘groundbreaking’, ‘skill’ and ‘charisma’ are socially organised, defined and valued differently in different times and places. We need, therefore, to investigate the social circumstances in which Dylan emerged and has continued to exist as a star.
An overall criticism of the biographical approach would be to say that it seeks an explanation for the stardom of an individual solely within the life story of that individual. However, I think it is more effective to follow Pierre Bourdieu’s suggestion: ‘We must . . . ask, not how a writer comes to be what he is . . . but rather how the position or “post” he occupies – that of a writer of a particular type – became constituted.’1 Too often, biographies show an unwillingness to investigate important contextual factors, or to consider the similarities between their particular star and other stars. This conformity is also something that fans rarely consider. A star is assumed to be unique. Yet, actually, the life stories of stars share many things in common. Consider the following:
For the essence of his art has always derived from the tension between his impulse to truth and his instinct to hide.2
This will surely ring true to Dylan fans; it could have been pulled from any Dylan biography. It is, however, from Richard Schickel’s description of Marlon Brando and I could find similar quotes in biographies of Robbie Williams, Kurt Cobain and hundreds of others. Despite the emphasis on uniqueness, stars’ stories are never unique. Complaints about misrepresentation, invasion of privacy, and conflicts with management are features of most stars’ lives. Stardom is something more than just the life stories of a bunch of famous people and this means that we need to consider stardom as a system, one with distinctive characteristics and effects. To do so gives us a much richer understanding of the star in question.
Dylan fans may have noticed that I haven’t talked much about Dylan yet. This is out of necessity, as this chapter outlines the theoretical map for how I’ll discuss Dylan later. At this juncture, it is probably useful to clarify some of the concepts I’m bandying about. You may think it odd to be considering Bob Dylan in a book series called ‘Celebrities’ because you don’t consider Dylan to be a celebrity. In contemporary culture, ‘celebrity’ often refers to people such as reality TV participants, quickly popular and quickly forgotten. Dylan, on the other hand, has had a career of over forty-five years and, you may reasonably think, deserves his success because of the work he has produced. That is why I have concentrated on Dylan’s stardom rather than celebrity. Evans suggests that ‘star’ is often used to describe an individual famous for their achievements in a particular field,3 so we tend to talk of ‘film stars’ and ‘pop stars’ rather than ‘film celebrities’ or ‘pop celebrities’. To this I would add that a star is someone who produces a body of work that has some existence outside of the individual celebrity’s person (unlike, say, a reality TV participant). Dylan is thus a star rather than a celebrity in the conventional sense. His public existence shares things in common with celebrities but there are distinctive elements too, characteristic of a certain type of celebrity – stardom.
Dylan is not just a star, however, but a particular kind of star – a rock star. The first sustained academic work into famous media figures concentrated on film stars. This is mainly the result of film emerging as the first audio-visual mass media with an established ‘star-system’. It is surprising, however, given their significance over the last fifty years, that so little subsequent work has been conducted on popular music stars. Only one or two books have dealt with the specific phenomenon of popular music stardom, so while the literature on stardom is useful for this study, there are particularities of popular music that need to be considered. Popular music stars seem to me to fall somewhere in between film stars and television personalities (such as Mic
hael Parkinson and David Letterman). Unlike film stars, TV personalities are generally assumed to be ‘being themselves’ on screen (Turner suggests that, for this reason, TV personalities are more characteristic of modern celebrity than film stars).4 This is useful for considering rock stars because they too are often assumed to be ‘being themselves’ rather than playing a specific character – this is the subject of the next chapter.
There is one final distinction I would like to make here, between ‘stardom’ and ‘star-image’, as I am using them to mean slightly different things. Star-image is relatively straightforward: it refers to all of the specific things we know or think we know about a particular star. The star-image is the ‘what is’ of a star. This does not necessarily mean the actual ‘this is what really happened’ biography of the star, because it can include inaccuracies, urban legends, malicious lies, images and distorted facts. A star’s star-image refers to everything – true and false – that is publicly known about that specific star. In this way, the star-image is similar to how Stephen Scobie defines Bob Dylan as ‘a text – made up of all the formal biographies, newspaper stories, internet statistics and just plain gossip that has entered into public circulation’.5 The star-image is thus an observable phenomenon which can be uncovered through empirical research (Clinton Heylin’s work, for example, adds to Dylan’s star-image by increasing the amount of biographical information we know).
While ‘star-image’ concerns the empirical, verifiable, onthe-ground elements of a particular star, ‘stardom’ is less easily recognised as it exists mainly at an ideological level.* With its intrinsic relationship to ideas such as individualism, meritocracy, democracy and personality, stardom plays a significant role in reproducing the ideological structures of contemporary society. The fact that ideology is taken for granted, and the fact that it is not immediately visible to us makes it more problematic for studying it in relation to a particular star. Whereas ‘star-image’ is all about the individual star, stardom is (in one sense) not ‘about’ the star at all. It is, however, impossible to fully understand the star without understanding the ideology of stardom. Dylan’s star-image is structured (enabled and constrained) by his stardom, by the ideological elements of stardom more generally. We need an understanding of stardom’s ideology in order to understand how Dylan’s career has turned out as it has.