Dylan at 60--Things Have Changed. Right?

For the many who have shambled curiously after him, the fact that Bob Dylan turns 60 today could be as disconcerting as the Vincent Price-like image that peered out from the TV screen during the Academy Awards in March.

Cropped close and shot from oblique angles, Dylan looked less like the luminous ‘60s icon in stovepipe denims and bed-mussed hair and more like the late-night ‘70s horror-movie host. But for anyone paying attention to his life narrative, the moment was, again, compelling. With that eyebrow ever raised, Dylan just set to his work, in his typical, “I’m off to the plant” style, his voice burlap and just about vanished. And as for what might’ve been circling his thoughts as his image beamed out across time zones from Australia, the words he sang provided one possible, plausible commentary:

People are crazy and times are strange

I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range

I used to care, but things have changed

This place ain’t doing me any good

I’m in the wrong town, I should be in

Hollywood. . .

Only a fool in here would think he’s got

anything to prove.

--from “Things Have Changed,” 1999

Dylan has never been “easy,” has never made pretenses about it. His work has always required the listener not be passive. What you need to know about him, about his passions or opinions, often unfurls in the space of a song. And many have used Dylan’s lyrics to fill in the spaces between what they don’t know and what they think they know.

For all of his fame, his perpetual presence in the public eye for 40 years, knowing Dylan, who he is, what he is about, has been nearly impossible. He’s often kept his private life private, mostly in the wings, unheard of for a entertainer of his stature. In many ways, as a public persona, he is a quick, evocative charcoal sketch--recognizable at a glance, but just that, a collection of lines.

What we have been graced with to help flesh out those quick lines are songs, deep, rich songwriting that adds not just color, but contour, shading and perspective. It’s the words that resonate into the far corners of the culture or sink into the everyday routines of life. “I was just listening to MSNBC today, just now, and they were doing a report on the disintegration of the family. [And I thought] ‘The times they are a-changin’.’ He may be 60 years old, but he still chimes in every day in our lives,” says folk singer Carolyn Hester, who met Dylan at one of his early performances at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village. “His contribution is mighty. Possibly times are better now, but I think we have more hope because of the ‘60s and Bob Dylan. And it doesn’t hurt to look back and into his words.”

Fans, including musicians who range from folk to hip-hop stars, have--and continue to.

A rock star who has always been thought of more as a poet and visionary, Dylan created lyrics that acknowledge that life’s offerings don’t come in neat, rhyming couplets. Experience finds itself bathed in dissonance and there are no rules or neat packages. Heroes are flawed, and in their humanness can be heroes.

“He’s made sarcasm an art form,” says Mitch Greenhill, president of Folklore productions. “It’s an odd blend of altruism and narcissism that is brilliant.”

Well, my shoes, they come from

Singapore,

My flashlight’s from Taiwan,

My tablecloth’s from Malaysia,

My belt buckle’s from the Amazon.

You know, this shirt I wear comes

from the Philippines

And the car I drive is a Chevrolet,

It was put together down in

Argentina

By a guy makin’ 30 cents a day.

Well, it’s sundown on the union

And what’s made in the U.S.A.

Sure was a good idea

‘Til greed got in the way.

--from “Union Showdown,” 1983

Dylan has influenced a couple of generations of rockers, punkers and rappers with stylistic twists and turns that have taken him from voice and acoustic instrumentation, to plugged in and ragged, then bent through the prism of God, and more recently, vulnerable and stripped down once again. He has suggested by example the value of looking deep and staying a course--that life offers nothing if not change and disarray. “He was never a great singer, never a great guitar player,” says Roz Larman, who hosts Folkscene, a Web radio show, with her husband, Howard. “He sopped up a lot of different influences and shared them.” Adds Howard Larman, “If you listen to his records in sequence, you can see the path . . . the Jew who became a [Christian] who went back to Judaism.”

That constant seeking, and consequential reinvention, throughout a career that has alternately been full of copious work and pregnant pauses, has allowed for an iconoclastic profile. His impulse was to keep turning ever inward. Looking inside, he saw, could be limitless. Never following trends, nor setting them, for that matter, he has remained true to his impulses--whatever the cost.

Whenever one encountered Dylan, no matter what the stage, it was through the peculiar pitch and unexpected turns of a haunting voice.

In his earlier years, says Howard Larman, “his voice was kind of natural and unaffected.” Raw and untrained, it seemed, Dylan’s voice rang out as pure emotion, unaltered by electronics or instrumentation. He sang of struggle and confounding crossroads. “He gave us the idea that we could go out and do it too.”

Nowadays, says Larman, “when you see him on television, he mumbles. When he was honored by the White House, they ran a scroll under him translating!”

But the message still bleeds through.

“Growing up, I wasn’t a big fan,” says guitarist, singer-songwriter and instructor Fran Banish, who was deeply into the British scene--the Beatles and the like-- until he found their source music and graduated to Chicago blues. A taste for Dylan was something that crept up on him. “But I paid attention to the lyrics. I think it was in the film ‘Don’t Look Back.’ It devastated me. Just how on and open and in tune with whatever musical moment he was. He was on fire musically. And I think we’ve got to give him credit for being a musicologist of sorts--presenting different styles.” Steeped in the music of North America’s struggles, Dylan has explored folk, blues, even gospel.

In the dime stores and bus

stations,

People talk of situations,

Read books, repeat quotations,

Draw conclusions on the wall.

Some speak of the future,

My love she speaks softly,

She knows there’s no success like

failure

And that failure’s no success at all.

--from “Love Minus Zero/No Limit, Bringing It All Back Home,” 1965

Though he was an inheritor of itinerant blues singers and folk musicians, his lyrics were more pointed, says Mary Katherine Aldin, a freelance reissue producer and annotator and host of a folk music show on KPFK-FM (90.7). “He hit you with what he thought. He was not the first ‘protest song’--Guthrie did it . . . but he wrote about social issues. Dylan’s were more hard-hitting. They were flat-out, antiwar, anti-hatred. Like ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ [about the murder of a black Baltimore kitchen maid]. He hit you with what he thought. He was right out in your face: You can agree or not. To me he was strikingly out front . . . ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ was tame compared to others. ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ was disguised. It was poetry. ‘Masters of War’ was a scream.”

Woke up this morning and I

looked at the same old page

Same ol’ rat race

Life in the same ol’ cage.

I don’t want nothing from any-

one, ain’t that much to take

Wouldn’t know the difference

between a real blond and a fake

Feel like a prisoner in a world of

mystery

I wish someone would come and

push back the clock for me.

--from “Highlands,” 1997

Dylan’s force and forthrightness carved their initials on rock/pop music. But sadly, says Dave Van Ronk, singer, guitarist and self-described “old sidekick of the great man,” he seems strangely invisible from this side of the summit, even though he tours endlessly. “I don’t think he’s had that much of a lasting influence. When he was turning pop music upside down, it really seemed like a reasonable wish or hope that at least pop music lyrics would get a little less infantile. Or more poetic. But it hasn’t happened. We’re right back where we were: ‘How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?’ When I go to these shows around the country, I just don’t hear much of Bobby anymore.”

But that may be because Dylan’s inheritors aren’t to be found in folk festivals or at raves, says Emil Wilbekin, editor in chief of Vibe magazine. “The stories Bob Dylan tells are related to black people and black music in this country. Darryl McDaniels, DMC of Run DMC, is a huge Bob Dylan fan and had been trying to sample him on his records. Mos Def and the Roots all did a tribute to Dylan in ‘The Hurricane.’ Hip-hop kids can relate because of the storytelling. It’s funny because you often hear ‘chillin’ like Bob Dylan’. . . . Because Bob Dylan went against the grain and stayed true to what he was about. He spoke out against society. That’s why he is relevant to urban music. If you think of the best rappers of all time, Biggie [Smalls] and Tupac [Shakur], that’s why they were so popular. They tell the tales of the people in a prophetic way and in such a poetic way.”

As much as a seeker, indeed, Dylan has been a seer. Those packed-tight observations, for those who have listened closely, have sunk into the memory’s grooves, and often keep resonating. “He was so prophetic,” says Barbara Morgan, an L.A. playwright, “I don’t know what else he could talk about now. What he talked about 30 years ago has come to pass. When you think about this administration, you hear ‘Idiot Wind’ or ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’--’Something is happening here . . . but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?’ What he wrote about 30 years ago is what we’re living now.”