Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan!
The legendary folk singer is 83 today.
“I really was never any more than what I was — a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze.”
~ Bob Dylan
When I think of Bob Dylan, I’ll always think of a little scruffy 19-year-old vagabond who washed up on the folk scene in Greenwich Village in 1961 and, in no time, became an unlikely legend, a voice of a generation, an “unwashed phenomenon.”
Greenwich Village was the epicenter of the American folk revival, a neighborhood teeming with coffeehouses, clubs, and an eclectic mix of musicians, poets, and artists. Dylan was virtually unknown when he first arrived, but his talent, charisma, and distinctive voice quickly set him apart.
In the lyrical words of Joan Baez:
Well, you burst on the scene Already a legend The unwashed phenomenon The original vagabond You strayed into my arms And there you stayed Temporarily lost at sea The Madonna was yours for free Yes, the girl on the half-shell Could keep you unharmed
Right now, I’m reading Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina, by David Hajdu.
It’s a fascinating book that illuminates the personal and professional relationships of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña at the beginning of the folk revival in the early 1960s.
Joan Baez, a folk music icon, and Bob Dylan had a complex romantic and artistic relationship that significantly impacted their careers and the folk music movement. The book also covers the lesser-known but equally fascinating story of Mimi Baez Fariña, Joan's younger sister, and her husband, Richard Fariña, a talented writer and musician.
Richard Fariña's tragic death in a motorcycle accident at the age of 29 adds a poignant layer to the narrative. He was killed two days after his first novel was published, which so happened to be the 21st birthday of his wife, Mimi. Hajdu gives us a detailed and profound look into the cultural and social dynamics of the 1960s, highlighting the contributions and struggles of these artists as they navigated fame, personal relationships, and the turbulent political landscape of the time.
In honor of Dylan’s birthday, I’d like to share a few of my favorite quotes and lyrics from the great troubadour. I hope you enjoy them.
"There are those who worship loneliness, I'm not one of them In this age of fiberglass I'm searching for a gem The crystal ball up on the wall hasn't shown me nothing yet I've paid the price of solitude, but at last I'm out of debt." --Bob Dylan, Dirge
“DESTINY is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you're about WILL COME TRUE. It's a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it's a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It's best to keep that all inside.”
― Bob Dylan, The Bob Dylan Scrapbook: 1956-1966
“We live in a political world Where love don't have any place We're living in times where men commit crimes And crime don't have a face… We live in a political world Turning and a-thrashing about As soon as you're awake, you're trained to take What looks like the easy way out.” — Bob Dylan, Political World
“I didn’t really have any ambition at all. I was born very far from where I’m supposed to be, and so, I’m on my way home, you know?”
"Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid." ~ Bob Dylan
‘Twas in another lifetime one of toil and blood When blackness was a virtue, the road was full of mud I came in from the wilderness a creature void of form “Come in,” she said “I’ll give you shelter from the storm” — Bob Dylan
“My love she speaks like silence, Without ideals or violence, She doesn't have to say she's faithful, Yet she's true, like ice, like fire. People carry roses, Make promises by the hours, My love she laughs like the flowers, Valentines can't buy her.” — Bob Dylan
“Creativity is a funny thing. When we’re inventing something, we’re more vulnerable than we’ll ever be. Eating and sleeping mean nothing. We’re in ‘Splendid Isolation,’ like in the Warren Zevon song; the world of self, Georgia O’Keeffe alone in the desert. To be creative you’ve got to be unsociable and tight-assed. Not necessarily violent and ugly, just unfriendly and distracted. You’re self-sufficient and you stay focused.”
— Bob Dylan
"I've never been able to understand the seriousness of it all, the seriousness of pride. People talk, act, live as if they're never going to die. And what do they leave behind? Nothing. Nothing but a mask."
~Bob Dylan
And if there is eternity I'd love you there again. — Bob Dylan
"You're going to die. You're going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we're just going to be gone. The world's going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself."
~ Bob Dylan
My name is Martin Mc Carthy, and I am so thrilled that Poetic Outlaws have put together this amazing tribute to the great Bob Dylan, on his 83rd birthday. I'm a poet and a contributing editor to the American poetry website, the HyperTexts , and last year I wrote and published my own epic tribute to him, titled The Perfect Voice (32 pages) - a copy of which is now on permanent display in the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK. I am such a fan of Bob Dylan that I wish to add to your tribute by posting an extract from my poem here for all to read, if that's okay? And I really hope it is because it's meant in the spirit of celebrating a true genius while he's still with us.
The Perfect Voice
for Bob Dylan
I
What can I say about Bob Dylan?
That some strange, authentic light
passed into him from blind bluesmen
on corners, singing their stories
of trains and chains and hope;
blind bluesmen, miles from any college
or guitar academy, with the wind
at their backs, or their backs
against some wall in East Texas,
playing sublime bottleneck guitar
with the necks of broken bottles.
That he was light-hearted and free
and only twenty,
when he first took to the road,
with ten dollars, a harmonica,
and his guitar;
that he saw Woody Guthrie
signposting the way to go …
and went, with little inclination
to look back on old Duluth,
dying in the moonlight.
That he enrolled early in that authentic,
beaming and screaming college
of real life, and never left it,
because all he needed – all the diverse,
sounds and colours of that authenticity –
met him there and filled his spirit;
that his America was always a place
in which unwanted migrants moved
across railway tracks and truck yards,
seeking somewhere to remain.
That he was young when he left home –
young and ready to change the world forever,
if only he could elude
the Rising Sun’s beckoning sirens;
that he could look north to where the wind
was blasting against the borderline,
yet pluck from his heart
the gentlest of chords …
or walk, arm in arm, with his girl
down the boulevard of broken dreams.
(from The Perfect Voice by Martin Mc Carthy)
Bob Dylan inspires me more than any artist, in any medium. Had I begun listening to his songs in high school, I have no doubt the course of my own creative work and my life would have deepened, broadened, and elevated considerably at that impressionable age. After decades of imbibing his music as if tethered to an IV, I can step away for months, or what sometimes feels like a year without listening only to return and be nourished anew.
For me, the multi-hued complexity of his writing edges out other cherished musicians such as Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, and Joni Mitchell. What mostly sets him apart is his singing. Not his disrespectfully maligned voice (the grain of which I adore) but his beguiling delivery. Listen carefully to which syllable he emphasizes or extends, how rarely he breaks a line in the same place--where he breathes. He swings like a jazz singer and there's no better example of this than his song, 'My Own Version of You' from the album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. I cherish his Christian period more than any other from his oeuvre because his new found passion is profoundly embodied in the vocals, as if the words are less carriers of meaning and more vehicles for spirit. The proof is in the grooves. Check out 'I Believe in You' and 'When He Returns' from his album, Slow Train Coming. And the opening song from his Hard to Handle tour video on You Tube, 'In The Garden', performed with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
I once dreamt that Bob was standing in a telephone booth in his bare feet and all his toenails were painted different colors. I was in my 20s and can see that image just as vividly today at sixty-two. That's how deeply he's embedded in my being.
Here are my most essential Dylan recordings, listed in no particular order, where the performance is as compelling as the words:
- Every Grain of Sand (from Shot of Love)
- My Own Version of You (from Rough and Rowdy Ways)
- It's Not Dark Yet (from Time Out of Mind)
- Mr. Tambourine Man (from Bringing It All Back Home)
- When He Returns (from Slow Train Coming)
- I Believe In You (from Slow Train Coming)
- Visions of Johanna (from Blonde on Blonde, favorite version on Live 1966 The Royal Albert Hall Concert, The Bootleg Series Vol. 4)
- It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (from Bringing It All Back Home, favorite version on Live 1966 The Royal Albert Hall Concert, The Bootleg Series Vol. 4)
- It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding (from Bringing It All Back Home, favorite version on Hard to Handle tour video on You Tube)
- Blind Willie McTell (no album release, favorite version on The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3)
- Tangled Up in Blue (from Blood on the Tracks)
- Simple Twist of Fate (from Blood on the Tracks)
- Shelter from the Storm (from Blood on the Tracks)
- Man in the Long Dark Coat (from Oh Mercy)
- Jokerman (from Infidels)
- License to Kill (from Infidels)
- Dignity (from Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume 3, favorite version on the live album, Bob Dylan MTV Unplugged)
- Sugar Baby (from Love and Theft)
- Ain't Talkin' (from Modern Times)
- One More Cup of Coffee (from Desire)
Happy Be-day, Bob Darlin'.