Chronicles: Volume One

“Most of the other performers tried to put themselves across, rather than the song, but I didn’t care about doing that. With me, it was about putting the song across.”

In this passage, Dylan describes how the music was always the most important thing for him. He wanted his audience to hear and appreciate the songs he played and cared little for his persona as a performer. Ironically, of course, this disdain for personal attention created a mystique of its own that powered Dylan’s public persona.

“The madly complicated modern world was something I took little interest in. It had no relevancy, no weight. I wasn’t seduced by it. What was swinging, topical and up to date for me was stuff like the Titanic sinking, the Galveston flood, John Henry driving steel, John Hardy shooting a man on the West Virginia line. All this was current, played out and in the open. This was the news that I considered, followed and kept tabs on.”

Dylan often describes himself as living in a kind of alternate reality, out of touch with the modern world. His life was consumed by folk music, art, literature, and history, making it even more ironic that his songs became rallying cries for the social movements of the day.

“I had no song in my repertoire for commercial radio anyway. Songs about debauched bootleggers, mothers that drowned their own children, Cadillacs that only got five miles to the gallon, floods, union hall fires, darkness and cadavers at the bottom of rivers weren’t for radiophiles. There was nothing easygoing about the folk songs I sang. They weren’t friendly or ripe with mellowness. They didn’t come gently to the weren’t. I guess you could say they weren’t commercial. Not only that, my style was too erratic and hard to pigeonhole for the radio, and songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality, some different republic, some liberated republic.”

In this passage, Dylan explains how he was eager to make a record but wasn’t bothered with having his songs played on the radio. He didn’t fit in there and had no interest in conforming. The music that was played on the radio was light and silly, well-suited for easy entertainment, but Dylan wasn’t interested in that and didn’t care to attract listeners who wouldn’t take his songs seriously.

“I guess it happens to you by degrees. You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs, especially if you’re a singer who has plenty of them and you’re learning more every day.”

Here, Dylan explains that he initially had no intention of becoming a songwriter. He was happy learning and playing other artists’ songs and it didn’t occur to him to write his own. It was only through his continued exposure to music and other art forms that he began to realize he wanted to sing songs that didn’t exist yet.

“There’s a lot of things that I didn’t have, didn’t have too much of a concrete identity either. ‘I’m a rambler—I’m a gambler. I’m a long way from home.’ That pretty much summed it up.”

Much of Chronicles is concerned with the development of Dylan’s artistic identity and the many challenges he faced along the way. When he arrived in New York, he was building an identity largely from scratch, shaping it with all the art, music, and culture that he was surrounded by in Greenwich Village.

“One thing for sure, if I wanted to compose folk songs I would need some kind of new template, some philosophical identity that wouldn’t burn out. It would have to come on its own from the outside. Without knowing it in so many words, it was beginning to happen.”

Dylan felt that his own inherent self and identity weren’t enough to succeed as a songwriter. He had to construct a new background fed by outside influences that he could draw on to create meaningful and relevant songs.

“Bob Dylan looked and sounded better than Bob Allyn. The first time I was asked my name in the Twin Cities, I instinctively and automatically without thinking simply said, ‘Bob Dylan.’”

A key part of constructing Dylan’s new identity was changing his name. He thought a lot about what he would call himself, but upon arriving in New York, he instinctively began going by Bob Dylan, literally and metaphorically shedding his old self and adopting a new, self-constructed identity.

“I don’t know what everybody else was fantasizing about but what I was fantasizing about was a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard.”

By the mid- to late-1960s, Dylan’s music had exploded in popularity. He could no longer appear in public without being accosted, and there were constantly crowds gathered outside his house. Despite having reached a level of success that most artists only dream about, Dylan was eager to leave it all behind for a normal, peaceful life, illustrating how disruptive fame and celebrity can be.

“I was sick of the way my lyrics had been extrapolated, their meanings subverted into polemics and that I had been anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Czar of Dissent, the Duke of Disobedience, Leader of the Freeloaders, Kaiser of Apostasy, Archbishop of Anarchy, the Big Cheese. What the hell are we talking about? Horrible titles any way you want to look at it. All code words for Outlaw.”

As songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, Dylan felt that his music had been taken out of context. The public assumed that these songs were a reflection of Dylan’s personal beliefs and attitude to the current social climate. For Dylan, however, his music was never personal, and he had no interest in being a part of any social movement, let alone a leader.

“The disturbed conscience of Young America! There it was again. I couldn’t believe it! Tricked once more. The speaker could have said many things, he could have emphasized a few things about my music.”

Dylan became frustrated with how his public persona as his generation’s “spokesperson” began to overshadow his music. Here, for example, when Dylan received an honorary doctorate from Princeton University, the speaker made no mention of his music, he only discussed the social and political ramifications of Dylan’s songs.

“My own songs had become strangers to me, I didn’t have the skill to touch their raw nerves, couldn’t penetrate the surfaces. It wasn’t my moment of history anymore. There was a hollow singing in my heart and I couldn’t wait to retire and fold the tent.”

The 1980s saw Dylan in a crisis of artistic identity. He felt disconnected from his music as if he no longer understood it and had no desire to create anything new. He struggled with a sense of irrelevance; if he could no longer relate to his music, then surely his audience couldn’t either.

“As long as I was alive I was going to stay interested in something. If my hand didn’t heal, what was I going to do with the remainder of my days?”

When Dylan injured his hand, he had to contemplate the possibility that he might not be able to play music again. However, the thought didn’t feel like the end of the world to him. He immediately began contemplating what else he could become “interested” in to fill his time, suggesting resilience and an understanding that there is more to life than music.

“As far as being a songwriter went, I couldn’t have had a more casual attitude. I’d written plenty and that was fine. I did whatever it took to get there, had reached my goal and had no more high ambitions for it. Had long ceased running toward it.”

Despite his incredibly prolific career and obvious passion for music, he expresses this “casual attitude” toward it several times in the text. Nevertheless, recovering from his hand injury, Dylan finds himself writing again, suggesting that his artistic identity cannot be suppressed.

“Critics usually didn’t like a song like this coming out of me because it didn’t seem to be autobiographical. Maybe not, but the stuff I write does come from an autobiographical place.”

This passage speaks to the assumption that art must be autobiographical or at least deeply personal in some respect. Dylan, however, never felt that his music reflected him as a person, nor did he want it to.

“Here’s the thing—I wasn’t looking to express myself in any kind of new way. All my ways were intact and had been for years. There wasn’t much chance in changing now. I didn’t need to climb the next mountain. If anything, what I wanted to do was to secure the place where I was at.”

While recording Oh Mercy, Dylan and his producer, Daniel Lanois, were constantly butting heads as Lanois pushed Dylan to take his music in new directions. Their relationship was one example of how Dylan was constantly fighting to maintain control of his artistic identity. He didn’t want to fully reinvent himself; he just wanted to take back control of himself and his art.

“A lot of the songs held up in a grand way and more than a few of them I’ve played plenty of times. I would have liked to been able to give him the kinds of songs that he wanted, like ‘Masters of War,’ ‘Hard Rain,’ ‘Gates of Eden,’ but those kinds of songs were written under different circumstances, and circumstances never repeat themselves. Not exactly. I couldn’t get to those kinds of songs for him or anyone else. To do it, you’ve got to have power and dominion over the spirits. I had done it once, and once was enough.”

In this passage, Dylan describes the finished record, Oh Mercy. Although it might not have been what either Dylan or Lanois set out to make, and it might not have had any of the “historical songs” that Dylan had written in the past, the album was good, and Dylan was happy with it. Oh Mercy represents the nonlinear nature of artistic career and achievement, especially over the course of a decades-long career. Certain creative conditions will never be met again, but that doesn’t mean that an artist cannot keep creating valuable work, even if it is different from what they’ve produced before.

“Folk music was a reality of a more brilliant dimension. It exceeded all human understanding, and if it called out to you, you could disappear and be sucked into it. I felt right at home in this mythical realm made up not with individuals so much as archetypes, vividly drawn archetypes of humanity, metaphysical in shape, each rugged soul filled with natural knowing and inner wisdom.”

Here, Dylan describes his discovery of folk music as a young man. It made him feel as if he were inhabiting an alternate realm, one that he would continue to live in for much of his adult life, giving him his characteristic mystique and aloofness. The archetypal nature of folk music makes it the perfect vessel for communicating universal truths about the human experience, making songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” incredibly topical and relevant even when that wasn’t Dylan’s intention.

“All these songs together, one after another made my head spin. It made me want to gasp. It was like the land parted. I had heard Guthrie before but mainly just a song here and there—mostly things that he sang with other artists. I hadn’t actually heard him, not in this earth shattering kind of way. I couldn’t believe it. Guthrie had such a grip on things. He was so poetic and tough and rhythmic. There was so much intensity, and his voice was like a stiletto. He was like none of the other singers I ever heard, and neither were his songs.”

This passage describes the first time Dylan heard Woody Guthrie’s music. Chronicles is largely a story about how Dylan’s identity and understanding of the world were expanded piece by piece as he experienced different aspects of art and culture. Hearing Guthrie’s music was the first of these experiences, expanding Dylan’s worldview and showing him things he never thought were possible. These encounters began to shift Dylan’s understanding of what was possible for him.

“Later, when I would record my first album, half the cuts on it were renditions of songs that Van Ronk did. It’s not like I planned that, it just happened. Unconsciously I trusted his stuff more than I did mine.”

Early on in his musical journey, Dylan learned by imitation. First, he learned every Woody Guthrie song he could get his hands on, copying them as exactly as he could. Later, Dave Van Ronk became his mentor, and Dylan began to imitate his style and arrangement of traditional songs. This form of learning was a way for Dylan to build his confidence and learn what worked before branching out on his own.

“I could see that the type of songs I was leaning toward singing didn’t exist and I began playing with the form, trying to grasp it—trying to make a song that transcended the information in it, the character and plot.”

At first, Dylan felt that all the great songs had already been written, and he felt no need to try to outdo them. He was content learning and playing existing songs. However, as Dylan began learning more about music and absorbing diverse influences, he began to see that some kinds of songs hadn’t been written yet; there was room for his original work after all.

“He kept pointing out that this song comes from another song and that one song was an exact replica of a different song. He didn’t think Johnson was very original. I knew what he meant, but I thought just the opposite. I thought Johnson was as original as could be, didn’t think him or his songs could be compared to anything.”

When Dylan brought home one of Robert Johnson’s blues albums and played it for Dave Van Ronk, the older man complained that Johnson’s work was “derivative.” While Dylan could see all of the work that Johnson was drawing on and referencing, he found the end result to be exceedingly original. Johnson’s music showed Dylan how imitation and innovation could exist simultaneously.

“In a few years’ time, I’d write and sing songs like ‘It’s Al-right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),’ ‘Mr. Tambourine Man,’ ‘Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,’ ‘Who Killed Davey Moore,’ ‘Only a Pawn in Their Game,’ ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ and some others like that. If I hadn’t gone to the Theatre de Lys and heard the ballad ‘Pirate Jenny,’ it might not have dawned on me to write them, that songs like these could be written.”

In this passage, Dylan draws a direct connection between “Pirate Jenny” and his later work, like “Mr. Tambourine Man.” He insists that he could not have written the songs that he did without songs like “Pirate Jenny” showing him what was possible. Dylan describes his work less as a personal achievement and more as a result of internalizing all the music and art that came before him.

“Native sons—adventurers, prophets, writers and musicians. They were all from the North Country. Each one followed their own vision, didn’t care what the pictures showed. Each one of them would have understood what my inarticulate dreams were about. I felt like I was one of them or all of them put together.”

Here, Dylan describes the kinship he feels toward other great men like Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who were also from Minnesota. The passage again suggests that no one exists in isolation, least of all artists and innovators. No one is creating from nothing, and these other men paved the way for Dylan to succeed.