Why Bob Dylan thought songwriters must evolve: “It can drive you crazy”
A Complete Unknown was a good time at the movies, no doubt about that. However, while watching it, I couldn’t help but think there was another film that got the essence of Bob Dylan completely bang on the money over 15 years earlier.
After all, while James Mangold’s biopic tells us that Bob Dylan was an ever-evolving artist who couldn’t be trapped in one place for long, Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There showed us that fact.
The irony is that, on the surface, I’m Not There falls into a trap that A Complete Unknown deftly avoids. Haynes’ picture attempts to tell a version of Dylan’s life story, where Mangold wisely sticks to one memorable part of his life and tells the whole story of it.
However, Haynes turns the whole idea of a “womb-to-tomb” biopic on its head by cutting The Bobfather’s life into six separate short movies, then casting six different actors to play him.
That is how you know someone truly understands the great man. Todd Haynes understood that “Bob Dylan” was an idea. One that fluctuated and evolved with the man born Robert Zimmerman’s artistic and songwriting vision. The version of him that was a freewheelin’ folkie was different to the furrowed-browed protest singer. The monochrome rock ‘n’ roller was different to the Stetson-toting country singer that emerged at the end of the decade.
However, according to Bob himself, this wasn’t something unique to him. In fact, he thought quite the opposite. The very act of being a songwriter meant always moving on to the next source of inspiration. Asking a genuine songwriter to stay in one place was, to him, like arguing with the tides—they physically just couldn’t do it and keep creating good art.
Why did Bob Dylan believe this?
We know this because Dylan said so himself in an interview with People in 1975. At the time, Dylan was in his theatrical era, turning the bizarre, fascinating Rolling Thunder Revue tour into a movie of the same name. By this time, the then-34-year-old Dylan was in a reflective place, looking back on all the eras he’d already been through and why they always seemed to alienate his existing fan base.
When asked about fans who expect him to stay the same, Dylan is typically brusque. He labels them “stupid” at first before talking with a lot more tact about the very nature of songwriting as an art form. “A songwriter tries to grasp a certain moment, write it down, sing it for that moment and then keep that experience within himself, so he can be able to sing the song years later. He’ll change, and he won’t want to do that song. He’ll go on”.
Of his own back catalogue, he says that while he’s moved on from the vast majority of songs he’s written, “there aren’t any in there I can’t identify with on some level.”
He doesn’t view this as a superpower either. In fact, he talks about it like a nuisance later in the interview. He says: “The inspiration doesn’t last. Writing a song, it can drive you crazy. My head is so crammed full of things, I tend to lose a lot of what I think are my best songs, and I don’t carry around a tape recorder.”
At a time when being a musician of any kind seems to also preclude keeping one eye on “your brand” and what’s expected of you as an artist, perhaps our artists of the day could stand to learn a thing or two from Bob Dylan. Follow where your instincts take you, and the ones that get it will get it. Some of your best music will follow as a result!
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