A Reappraisal

We were never able to see what so many others saw in Bob Dylan and his "art". The man can play the guitar only competently; he can't be said to be able to sing any more than Johnny Cash can be said to be able to sing, perhaps even less; his music can, at times, be catchy, even a bit poignant in a Sixties-quasi-folk sort of way, but never more than that; and his "poetry" (i.e., lyrics) is largely Sixties-sophomoric or arrant beat-poet gibberish with aspirations to profundity. Witnesseth:

In short, we think little of Mr. Dylan and his "art" — until now, that is. Now we love both.

Why?

Because of the following from a piece by The Guardian's Jonathan Jones is why:

[I]f [art] really is reducible to an explicit message, is it actually art at all?

I love the scene in DA Pennebaker's 1967 documentary Don't Look Back, where the young Bob Dylan is interviewed by a journalist who demands to know what his message is. "Walk tall and always carry a light bulb," he replies.

Of course, Dylan didn't have a message — or so he explains in Martin Scorsese's 2005 film No Direction Home — and the reason he changed his music and lyrics so profoundly in the mid-60s, from the agitprop of his early folk songs to the tumbled words of "Desolation Row", was precisely to escape from people who thought they understood him. It was a self-conscious defence of the idea of art.

We get it now, Bobby. Pretty damn smart. Way t'go!