Bob Dylan

I have a better title for this book of essays and essaylets: Freewheelin’ Bob. The book is organized into 66 chapters that are named for a recorded song and its singer, an indiosyncratic group crossing many genres and decades. It’s a book with a misleading title; it does not deliver a philosophy of modern song. Rather, it is Dylan’s short musings on each song title or its lyrics or artist or lyricist or some other characteristic, or just some emotion the song elicits in him. Sure, there is some Dylan personal philosophy in the musings. Some essays evoke the early Dylan Beat poet: alliterating; hard-edged; lyrical; like Kerouac, but smarter. There are expansive themes, music and general cultural trivia, wild tangents, mini biographies of singers and songwriters, anecdotes, stories that fill out the stories in the songs – freewheelin’ Bob at his stream-of-consciousness best.

The selected songs and artists are eclectic, spanning nearly eight decades, heavy on Dylan’s own teenage years in the 1950s: Ricky Nelson (who, I learned here was a starting quarterback at my alma mater, Rutgers; go RU!) (“Poor Little Fool”), Elvis Presley (“Money Honey” and “Viva Las Vegas”), Bobby Darrin (“Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea”), Sonny Burgess (“Feel So Good”), Ray Charles (“I Got a Woman”), Little Richard (“Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally”), Johnny Cash (“Don't Take Your Guns to Town” and “Big River”), The Platters (“My Prayer”), Hank Williams (“Your Cheating Heart”, which I remember hearing on Saturday mornings, when my dad played his “honky tonk” records in our tiny apartment). In the chapter on “My Prayer” by The Platters, the melody of which, according to Dylan, is derivative of a traditional European melody, he discusses many other popular songs that have their origins in traditional or classical music. For example, per Dylan, “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again” derives from the 3rd movement of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, op. 27. In some essays he merely paraphrases the lyrics, tongue-in-cheek, particularly in story songs, or invents backstories.

The featured artists and songs are eclectic; there is no common thread running throughout although some songs follow on naturally from the one or ones before at times. And they range temporally from Uncle Dave Mason’s 1924 “blast furnace of a song”, “Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy,” to Warren Zevon’s 2003 “Dirty Life and Times”; genre-wise from country (Marty Robbins’s “El Paso”) to rock and roll (The Who’s “My Generation,” Elvis Costello’s “Pump it Up,” The Clash’s “London Calling,” Eagles’ “Witchy Woman,” Santana’s “Black Magic Woman”), rockabilly to rhythm and blues, blues singers, crooners (Vic Damone, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin [who Dylan described as a “lovable roué, everybody’s beloved uncle, charming and soused . . . and the man both Sinatra and Elvis wanted to be”]. Sprinkled in his discussion of the “featured” song are sometimes namechecks of other artists: the Rolling Stones (but not the Beatles); Eric Clapton (but not Jimi Hendrix); He muses on vice presidents, war, politics, presidents who were musicians, religion, America.

So, instead of a philosophy of modern song, we get a glimpse of Dylan’s musicality, the breadth of his knowledge of music and the contours of how he listens to music, what emotions or musings different songs inspire. I was entertained, informed, provoked, affirmed throughout. I read The Philosophy of Modern Song in print along with the audiobook, the latter of which deserves its own review. Dylan himself read at least a part of each chapter, but the other narrators were an excellent, talented array, bringing the prose to life in wonderful storytelling tradition. I recognized some: John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Rita Moreno, Alfre Woodard, Renée Zellweger, Sissy Spacek, Helen Mirren . . .
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Presumably written as an amusing coda to be included in dutiful PhDs on the late works of Nobel prize winners this is a hollow, irritating and deeply unrewarding book. The prose is execrable, the insights ungiving, the arrogance and cynicism redolent on every page. Many reviewers have turned a blind eye to this and speculated as to light it throws on Dylan's 'body of work': mad pieces of Kremlinology out of which nothing astonishingly can be concluded other than Bob is perhaps even more whimsical in his old age than hitherto. It's all such a waste of time. At least I could listen to 'World Gone Wrong', which may have been the 'answer' to the question some thought this book posed. Playing the songs written about here? An utterly, utterly joyless experience.… (more)