A masterful musical leader: The singer Bob Dylan said he could never be
Bob Dylan never claimed to speak for anyone but himself whenever he sang his songs. He liked the idea of having people identify with him whenever he sang some of his best stuff, but there were bound to be certain songs that were too close to the chest for him to find anyone out there who lived every minute that he did. By that point, he needed to go against the grain, but that also meant turning his back on the kind of people who were in his corner since the very beginning.
Because listening to Dylan’s music, the movement which he was brought up in didn’t always lend itself to introspective songs. Woody Guthrie definitely was a musical hero in many respects, but where most people were listening to him sing songs like ‘This Land Is Your Land’, the real weight and power behind his music was how cutthroat he could be when it came to talking about the real issues of the world. ‘THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS’ wasn’t on his guitar by accident, and Dylan also took that confrontational attitude with him.
Let’s just take a look at ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ for example. The whole point behind Dylan’s music up until that point was to serve as an intellectual alternative to all of the mindless rock and roll tunes most people heard on the radio, so when he started making his own ditties with electric instruments, it wasn’t for the sake of being a contrarian. He wanted to challenge people’s ideas of what a musician of his calibre could be.
And when looking at some of his heroes, that meant going against what they had to say. Sure, some of the greatest poets of his generation liked to challenge the status quo now and again, but when listening to someone like Pete Seeger, Dylan knew that he would have to leave a lot of that creative spirit behind whenever he sang his tunes.
Despite being years away from his rock and roll phase, Dylan claimed that he still couldn’t manage to pull off what Seeger could do in a live setting, saying, “I’m not a Pete Seeger. I’ve actually done that every once in a while, where I have led two thousand, three thousand people through songs, but I haven’t done it like Pete Seeger. He’s a master at that, leading a mass of people in four-part harmony to a song not even in their language.”
Even in the graphic depiction of Dylan in A Complete Unknown, Edward Norton’s brilliant portrayal of Seeger is everything that the folkie was supposed to be. He may have been especially timid and reserved in some spots, but he knew that he was put on this Earth to lead people, and while it didn’t always suit Dylan’s music, it was far more rewarding for him to have crowds sing along to ‘We Shall Overcome’.
That’s not to say that Dylan was any less of a songwriter in everyone’s eyes. He simply had a different way of working than everyone else did, and when he decided to make something new that no one else had heard of, his strength came from unyielding bravery than anything else. He knew nothing could save him from the crowd clapping back at him, but he would rather go down swinging with what he believed than worrying about whether everyone was having a good time.
Still, there’s a lot to respect about how Seeger carried himself that any artist can relate to. There are two camps that most songwriters fall under when they start writing tunes, and while Dylan was looking to wake people up and see the real facts of life, Seeger always felt there was nothing real in playing songs that made audiences’ hearts flutter when they heard them.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.