Don’t Think Twice, He’s All Right

It’s lucky that rock fans aren’t forced to obey a code like the Boy Scouts. For starters, think how tough our heroes make it to stay loyal.

ABC’s miniseries about the Beach Boys last week drove that point home. It reminded me both how much I once loved their music and how difficult it became to stick by them as Brian Wilson got weirder and their music got spottier year after year.

That, followed by news that Bob Dylan will launch a small-venue tour Friday at the 1,200-seat Sun Theatre in Anaheim, got me thinking how often that scenario plays out in popular music: An individual or a group creates something beautiful and/or innovative but can’t continue doing so forever.

Think of the artists who have grown less rewarding over time: Elvis revolutionized rock but became irrelevant when he went Hollywood. He briefly came to his senses and had a musical rebirth in 1968, but that all too rapidly degenerated into the Vegas Elvis caricature he became in the ‘70s.

Chuck Berry was the first poet of rock, but for whatever reasons, he devolved into a parody of himself, giving one rote performance after another and writing little of consequence after his ‘50s blaze of glory.

Stevie Wonder traded the vibrant and trenchant R&B-rock; amalgam he perfected in the ‘70s for lightweight pop of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Paul McCartney’s recent solo output has tended to make his frothy “Silly Love Songs” sound positively cerebral.

The exceptions are far rarer than the rule: Brian Wilson has demonstrated in his latter-years solo albums, most notably in 1998’s “Imagination,” that he has lots of great music left in him.

Neil Young has kept up an astonishingly high batting average--with few forgettable albums along the way--in his three-plus decades with Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse, on his own and as a part-time collaborator with Crosby, Stills & Nash.

And then there’s Dylan.

As one third of rock’s holy trinity--along with Elvis and the Beatles--the Herald from Hibbing proved that the hormone-soaked music of rebellious youth could accommodate a brain as well.

The albums he made between his debut in 1962 and “Blonde on Blonde,” just before the 1966 motorcycle crash that sidelined him for a couple of years, constitute an artistic Mt. Everest that few have come close to equaling.

When the elusive Mr. Tambourine Man recuperated from his near-fatal injuries sufficiently to record again, many Dylanites began to suspect that his art also may have been crippled.

“John Wesley Harding” in 1968 suggested a return to form, but “Nashville Skyline” the next year struck many as an odd sidestep into country-rock that held only flashes of his old lyrical brilliance. And with “Self-Portrait” in 1970, it appeared that his muse had checked out for good.

Since then, he has been given up for dead any number of times.

Yet though I’ve given up expecting anything wonderful from many of the rock titans of yore, I’ve never been willing to write off the Old Bruce Springsteen.

After being counted out by many in the early ‘70s, he bounced back big time in the mid-’70s with a strong troika of albums in “Planet Waves,” “Blood on the Tracks” and “Desire” before losing steam again with “Street Legal.”

Then scads of rock critics and Dylanphiles jumped ship when this Jewish kid born Robert Zimmerman started espousing Christian doctrine in 1979’s “Slow Train Coming,” and kept right on proselytizing on “Saved” and “Shot of Love.” Some songs on those albums might have lacked the songwriting skill that made Dylan Dylan, but I could never understand how anyone could suggest, as was popular then, that the man who had written “Like a Rolling Stone,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” and “My Back Pages” had nothing left to say.

In my book, it was like Shakespeare doing an infomercial: I don’t care what he’s selling, I’m tuning to see how he tries to sell it. With Dylan, to paraphrase the Bard, there are more things in the heaven and earth under that Brillo-pad hairdo, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Some of the Dylan dispossessed returned to the fold in 1984, when he put out “Infidels,” but they jumped ship after “Empire Burlesque,” when he recorded the comparatively uninspired “Knocked Out Loaded” and “Down in the Groove” albums.

When he came out with “Oh Mercy” in 1989, for my money he created an album every bit the equal of his mid-’60s artistic peak, each song an exquisite example of rock songwriting at its best. Yet it didn’t get half the attention his ’75 comeback with “Blood on the Tracks” generated.

In the ‘90s, critics and fans tended to take Dylan for granted--until 1997’s “Time Out of Mind,” another artistic rebound that caused rock writers to fall all over themselves looking for superlatives, some reacting as if it were his first significant work since “Blood on the Tracks.”

I think this love-him-then-leave-him attitude is due to the fact that he’s been an available commodity. If he disappeared for the four to five years that seem to come between his new studio albums nowadays, he could have a comeback tour periodically for which yuppies would pay big bucks and critics would wax eloquent about the wonderful opportunity to revisit his considerable body of work.

As it is, he’s starting a modest tour again, and the $45 ticket price at the Sun seems like a steal in this day of $200 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young shows and $1,000-a-head Eagles New Year’s Eve concerts.

Sure, sometimes Dylan makes you wonder what is going through his mind--like during his ’78 tour when he dressed in black leather pants and vest, and kept saying things like “And here’s another song from ‘Street Legal,’ my latest album for Columbia Records!” like a late-night TV pitchman, or his slick “Who loves ya, baby?” stage demeanor on his 1998 tour with Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell.

But write Dylan off?

The thought may have crossed my mind briefly 30 years or so ago. Ahh, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

BE THERE

Bob Dylan, Sun Theatre, 2200 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim. 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. Friday. Sold out. (714) 712-2700.

Randy Lewis may be reached by e-mail at Randy.Lewis@latimes.com.