‘Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard’: Wilco’s song about “emulating your heroes” a bit too much
In 2013, Bob Dylan set out on the very stupidly named but highly anticipated Americanarama tour, in which he’d be joined by two of the 21st century bands who’d best carried on the spirit of his late 1960s and early ’70s work: Wilco and My Morning Jacket. The concept, as even the members of those two bands understood it, was that they’d each play their own sets, but then also join forces at each tour stop for some spontaneous jam sessions.
“We were expecting to be sitting around the campfire with Dylan at 02:00,” My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James later told Rolling Stone, “Saying, ‘Let’s cover all of Desire tomorrow!’ We had all these pipe dreams… Bob really wasn’t around. We never talked to him once. He does not hang, which is fine and understandable…or it’s kind of understandable. I don’t know.”
For Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy – another lifelong Dylan devotee – it was a slightly better experience, maybe because he seemed more prepared for what he was getting himself into.
“First or second show of the tour, I was standing out in the middle of the dressing-room area—you know, a bunch of trailers in a U-shape,” Tweedy told Esquire. “The show was about to start for Dylan, and he came through with his dressed-to-the-nines gang. He saw me, and I figured I was just supposed to avert my eyes, because I didn’t think I was supposed to be where I was, standing in the way.”
What Tweedy got instead was a warm greeting from his hero: “Hey, Jeff, how’s it going, man?” The conversation went no further, but it sufficed nonetheless. “It was the biggest thrill of my life,” Tweedy gushed, “I was like, I hope people saw that—that it was real.”
By this point, Tweedy was hardly a youthful fanboy just trying to make a name for himself. He was a 45-year-old man with one of the most respected back catalogues in the expanded indie rock/alt-country/folk-rock pantheon, including eight studio albums with Wilco and another four before that with the hugely influential Uncle Tupelo. Part of the reason his songwriting has resonated with fans for so long was the earnestness and Midwestern down-to-earth quality of both his lyrics and vocal delivery. There was a charm and humour not unlike Dylan, but a lot more self-awareness, as perhaps best evidenced in a song Tweedy wrote about his own occasionally misguided fandom for the man himself.
‘Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard’—recorded during the sessions for Wilco’s 2001 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot but released later only as a bonus track—is a comedic song in some ways, starting with the title’s humorous play on ‘Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream’ and the reference to his well documented facial hair adventures. It’s also a simple acoustic break-up song written from the perspective of a younger and still insecure singer. “As I turn to go / Please don’t wave goodbye” is the Dylanesque lyrical set-up, but Tweedy ultimately closes the song by putting the blame on himself, and taking the piss: “It’s then I’ll think of you / And I’ll wonder if you knew / When I got blue / And things got weird / And I started growing / Bob Dylan’s beard.”
Tweedy, who regularly played ‘Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard’ during Wilco shows in the 2000s, explained the song a bit more directly to Uncut in 2013, after being asked which specific Dylan beard he’d had in mind.
“It’s figurative!” said Tweedy, who, it should be noted, has been known to grow his own variety of patchy beards at all lengths. “For one, it’s not a specific beard I’m referring to, it’s the idea of emulating your heroes and only being able to communicate your own emotions through the idea of someone else’s persona. But, since you mention it, I kinda like the beard he’s rocking on the cover of Infidels.”
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