by Lee Marshall
You can’t interpret a Hank Williams song. He’s done the interpretation and the performance, and that’s it. Now it’s for the listener to decide if it moves him or not. (Edna Gunderson interview, 1997)
That ‘decision’ occurs in the moment of listening. If you are moved by a performance on the NET, you are moved by what you see and hear in front of you. That is why I think discussion of ‘the text’ is a bit of a red herring. Literary scholars are interested in notions of the text, not music fans: for them the issue is not what can be considered definitive but, rather, whether a particular performance moves them.
HIGH AND LOW CULTURAL VALUE
The division between Gray’s fixed, closed notion of a text and the more open-ended conceptions of Scobie and Williams reflects at least in part the wider cultural positions of modernism and postmodernism. Significantly, though, they are also a division between the values of high and popular culture – a related but not identical issue. There is some irony here, because when Gray originally published his analysis of Dylan in 1972, the idea of taking popular culture seriously was itself a fairly radical gesture. The problem of Gray’s approach, and it’s a problem that besets many early attempts to take popular culture seriously, is that it merely accepts the assumptions of traditional high culture over what defines cultural value. Gray seemingly provides a challenge to the mass culture critiques which claim all popular culture to be rubbish, by arguing that, actually, Dylan is very good. However, by using Dylan as the a priori example which disproves the critique (‘if Dylan is good, then the whole critique is wrong’), the effect is to maintain the high/low divide but force Dylan into ‘high culture’ (‘see, he’s really an artist after all!’). It does nothing to address the problems caused by the binary divide in the first place. The analysis of popular culture that has emerged since the 1980s, intrinsically related to the emergence of postmodernism and now coalesced into the discipline of Cultural Studies, has illustrated that popular culture does different things and has different values to traditional culture. It therefore needs its own forms of analysis rather than those borrowed from an alien culture. At the same time, other academic work has been conducted that shows how the idea of ‘culture’ endorsed by writers like F. R. Leavis and Michael Gray is itself tied to a historically specific set of ideas that acts to universalise a particular class ideology and, as such, is thoroughly implicated in the inequalities of the modern world.32
The first way to highlight the differences between the values of high and low culture relates to an idea of autonomy, how they relate to the day-to-day world. Within traditional high culture there is an idea that culture should maintain a distance, a level of autonomy, from everyday life. Since the onset of modern society, culture has been understood as having a special role, pushing forward our consciousness, differentiating us from barbarians, making us more human. It must do so in a social system that gives everything a price, standardises and objectifies human beings. Therefore culture (particularly ‘art’) must maintain a distance from the social world, be functionally useless as a rebellion against a system that demands everything have a use. Popular culture (and more recent developments in high culture too, such as pop art) rejects the false claim of autonomy and instead fully integrates into the rhythms of daily life, including its mundane and commercial aspects. Low culture, in its very nature, is not merely ‘aesthetic’, but social, as the earlier discussion of concert attendance suggests.
This leads to a second point of divergence. In high culture, the value of the work is to be found embodied in the work itself. The work and its meaning exist regardless of other social practices (there are thus repeated examples of artists who were never appreciated in their lifetime but the inherent quality of their work was finally recognised). Great works of art are considered to adhere to some universal standards of greatness – Shakespeare’s works are good whether we recognise it or not. In popular culture, however, the meanings of works are generated by the social practices in which they are used. The value of works is accepted as transitory as social practices and tastes change. The question in popular culture is not ‘is it good?’ but ‘what (or who) is it good for?’. This question of usefulness is anathema to high culture.*
The final point of divergence between high and low culture relates to how we interact with cultural works themselves. In traditional high culture, the key mode of reception is one of appreciation and critical distance. One should engage with a cultural work in quiet contemplation in order to fully draw out the subtle meanings in the work itself. We thus go to special churches to worship the works, silently walking round a gallery or sitting quietly at a classical music recital. In high cultural appreciation, as mentioned earlier, one is expected to be respectful towards the text. Engagement with popular culture, in contrast, is marked by its participatory aspect. We do not treat the text as sacred; we are sometimes inattentive, dropping out to converse and turning our attention back to the TV; we skip tracks that we don’t like on CDs, or make compilation tapes. We don’t have to go to special places or create the right spiritual environment for us to interact with the work; if we go to a pop concert we can stand up and dance, talk to our friends, can take food in, buy drinks from the bar at the back of the auditorium – compare the architecture and conventions of a rock concert and a classical concert to see the difference between the ‘distanced appreciation’ of high culture and the ‘participatory appreciation’ of popular culture.
The split between distanced and participatory appreciation (and the related features just discussed) characterises the different approaches of Gray and Williams and is why Gray sees the NET as a story of artistic decline. Consider, for example, the following criticism:
In the solo acoustic halves of his 1966 concerts, he got polite applause for showering genius around . . . Now, in an unhealthy contrast, he gets whoops and wild applause between each verse.33
Really? At a rock concert? Do you think people dance as well? This quote shows that Gray really doesn’t understand how popular music works, how the bodily reaction and the participatory appreciation are part of the form itself. This is the arena in which Dylan works: he is a rock star, not a poet on a reading tour. It is also the arena in which he chooses to work (unsurprising really, given that music – not poetry – affected him at a young age and has kept him enthralled for sixty years). As early as 1965, Dylan was concerned at the inappropriate level of reverence offered at his shows, stating that ‘it’s hard for me to accept the silent audiences’ (Ray Coleman interview). Gray’s use of the adjective ‘unhealthy’ clearly illustrates the ideological basis of his analysis – the Victorian moralism of Matthew Arnold that sought to civilise the masses and maintain social order. The treatment and purpose of the work is all important for Gray, but the work is some abstract thing that demands our respect. This is despite repeated statements from Dylan that his songs are written for a particular purpose – for him to sing in front of a live audience.
Rather than consider works in splendid isolation, we need to think about the usefulness of songs, to both Dylan and his audience. The song that best illustrates the different approaches is ‘Silvio’. Released on 1988’s Down In The Groove, ‘Silvio’ is an incredibly important song in Dylan’s career. The lyrics were written by The Grateful Dead’s lyricist, Robert Hunter, and shown to Dylan during the career-changing 1987 rehearsals. Dylan evidently saw something in the lyrics that he liked, added music to them and recorded it for his new album. The recorded version doesn’t sound that good: it runs a little too fast and sounds a bit thin and tinny. This provides ample opportunity for Gray to disparage it, describing it as ‘numbingly undistinguished’, a ‘miserable nonentity’.34 So, why is it important? It’s important because it is one of the most played songs on the NET, having been performed 595 times. The question that needs asking is not just ‘is it any good?’ (I have some sympathy with Gray’s portrayal of its recorded version; I entirely disagree with using that as a basis for evaluating it as a live expe
rience) but ‘what good does it do?’ Paul Williams understands this, and provides a convincing answer:
Dylan likes the song. He likes the response it often gets from his live audience (not because they’re familiar with the song, but because the dynamics of the song’s music and Dylan’s enthusiasm for it as a singer and bandleader tend to make it an exciting and satisfying musical experience, even though it’s not one of the Dylan songs the audience members were hoping to hear tonight).
Why does Dylan like it? Again, because it’s fun to perform. And I think he feels liberated by the fact that it’s a Dylan song without baggage; he and the band play it as though it were a big hit or a song that made him famous, and the audience can feel that and respond happily without knowing what the song is . . . which allows the singer to lean into it in a way that’s different from the other Dylan songs and covers he’s playing. ‘Find out something only dead men know!’ This is exactly the sort of lyric Dylan enjoys calling attention to (repeating it or slowing it down, doing tricks with it) during a performance – compare ‘No one sees my face and lives’ from ‘I and I’ or ‘Just like so many times before’ from ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’.35
Williams is correct that it is a song that works for the audience – it is fun, you can see that Dylan finds it fun, and you can dance to it. I’d much rather hear ‘Silvio’ in concert than, say, ‘Queen Jane Approximately’. I wouldn’t want to hear ten ‘Silvios’ in a show, but that’s not the point. We should never ignore the effect that songs like this have on the mood and structure of a concert. It is also a song that provides another rumination on Dylan’s stardom; whether Hunter wrote it as a portrayal of Dylan is irrelevant; that we (and presumably Dylan) can see it that way is what matters. ‘Stake my future on a hell of a past’, the song begins, exclaims ‘Seen better days but who has not’ before concluding ‘Going down to the valley and sing my song / Let the echo decide if I was right or wrong’. Nothing in Dylan’s canon captures the attempt to escape the permanence of the record better than the opening and closing lines. For both performer and audience, ‘Silvio’ provides the rallying call to embark on the NET.
At various times in this book, I have been critical of those who label Dylan a poet. The rationale for my argument should be clear from this explanation of the differences between high and low culture. High and low culture do different things, fulfil different functions. The meaning of works is created in different ways in each sphere; repetition, for example, is more important in low culture than high culture. The institutions of both ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture contain different assumptions and are involved in different social practices; to use one as the basis of judgement for the other is inappropriate and will always fail to do justice to the culture in question. Dylan works in a low cultural medium – ‘I don’t like to think of myself in the highfalutin’ area. I’m in the burlesque area’ (David Gates interview, 1997). That means that in order to properly appreciate his work we need to understand the social contexts in which it exists, how it is used, the expectations, structures, limitations and opportunities of his chosen area. Dylan is a rock star and, no matter how good he may be, he cannot transcend the social structuring of his medium.
Such an approach greatly undermines the authority of high culture (and, indeed, its critics). The modern notion of culture that came to prominence in the nineteenth century reflects an idealised attempt to unite humanity. Culture – particularly its embodiments in ‘the arts’ – is seen as the only place in which the conflicts of the everyday can be transcended, the only place where civilisation and perfection can be found. This is a terrible indictment of modern life, as it implies that civilisation and perfection cannot be found in everyday life, but it also places an intolerable burden on the arts, as the symbolic importance of the artist and the critic far outweigh their actual political effectiveness.36 This burden is relieved by the emergence of postmodern theorising which has pluralised the idea of culture, made us more aware that ‘Culture’ is white, male, European and middle class. The idea of ‘Culture’ was initially cultureless, its constituency assumed to be all of humanity. As soon as its authority is challenged, however, then it becomes impossible to uphold its assumptions. ‘Culture’ becomes just one culture out of many, not the standard to which all cultures must adhere.
On a lesser scale, rock music follows this path too. When rock emerged it too was cultureless, it assumed that its values stood for all young people and that its cultural prejudices reflected a common humanity. It, too, had an intolerable burden, being required to transcend the everyday, engender social change, stop wars. Over time, however, it too became scrutinised (rock is certainly white, middle class and male, even though it may not be European) and, as other mainstream musical genres emerged, it became seen as one possible culture among many. Rock’s ideology mirrors the great aims of the Romantics and the Modernists who wanted to use culture to transform society, but just as the dreams of the modernist avant-gardes were dismissed as just one more grand narrative, so too did rock’s pre-eminent position within popular music decline in the 1980s. Ultimately, what propels Gray’s critique of the NET is a concern about the status and purpose of Culture (and, therefore, rock) in contemporary society. Gray laments the ‘co-option of real music by advertising’,37 Dylan’s ‘decay into celebrity’38 and criticises Dylan for referring to his performances as ‘a show’. Gray retorts:
Dylan seemed comfortable with the idea that what he did in live performance was a ‘show’. . . . It could be that for those who grew up in the Reagan-Thatcher years, it is all showbiz, just as, for instance, being a student is routinely just a career move now. But it wasn’t always so, and there was a very long period in which a Dylan live performance might have been an event, might even have been a concert but was never merely a ‘show’.39
He’s right, of course; there was a time when Dylan shows meant more than they do today. But to believe, thirty years later, that they should be more than a show would almost be quite sweet were it not for the fact such naive idealism is used as the basis of a withering critique of Dylan’s later work.
Whether we like it or not, we have to see the emergence of the NET in the context of the death of rock’s metanarrative. Dylan’s association with the earnest ideals of rock rather than its more pleasurable excesses made his position in the eighties tenuous. The NET began as a conscious attempt by Dylan to reposition his music, to get people to see it not as an attempt to change the world but merely as an attempt to move an audience (something he’s actually been arguing since the sixties). To understand that songs are songs, and that they can’t change the world even if we once thought they could. Those concerned with authenticity and artistic development should be relieved that Dylan found a rewarding way to achieve these more modest ambitions without, as did so many other performers, substituting spectacle for engagement.
THE NET AND DYLAN’S STAR-IMAGE
Gray is not alone in equating the declining significance of rock’s ideals with personal failure: Mike Marqusee, for example, equates the lessening of Dylan’s ties with sixties radicalism as an ‘artistic decline’.40 These kinds of criticism illustrate that Dylan has not been able to cast off all aspects of his old star-image and his associations with sixties idealism. Over time, however, I think that the NET has been relatively successful in redefining Dylan’s star-image. In particular, the NET has repositioned Dylan as a performer rather than a songwriter, characterising him as a modern-day troubadour. Driven both by Dylan’s distinctive aims and wider demographic trends, a new audience has developed for his shows. I would argue that the critical and commercial success he has achieved since 1997 would not have been possible without this realignment.
This repositioning was a slow process, however. Early reviews were critical of Dylan playing ‘obscure’ songs and of his playing familiar songs in an unfamiliar manner. Generally, however, the strength of the performances began to be noticed and the shows of the early NET gained good reviews. These stro
ng reviews were facilitated in 1989 by the release of Oh Mercy, an album hailed as a return to form. Whatever Dylan himself may feel about being a performer, much of rock stardom is directed by the release of albums. These provide the measuring points for a career, the points to which the narrative of biography and performances are tied. Oh Mercy painted a favourable impression with critics and this is reflected in an acceptance of Dylan’s new performing style.
