Cadillacs and Owls
Seventy one years ago, there was nothing like a Bob Dylan, so he invented one. An American boy with an appetite, no reasons, no explanations, no more involved now than anyone else, struggling to keep the sun over his head, trying to do the job he’d been given to do — which was to sing some songs — to be a poet out of that humble profession, to make that profession submit to the poet in him. He was like Eliot in his bank, Kafka in his Insurance Business, William Faulkner writing the film script of ‘The Big Sleep’ for Howard Hawks out of Chandler, or ‘To Have And Have Not’ out of Hemmingway — and then one day he found electric music for each voice he’d put on up on stage, night after night – Richard Widmark, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Humphry Bogart, Brando, Dean, Monroe, Lucy Ann Polk and the thousand others. His originality is hidden in plain sight.
Richard Marshall reviews Bob Dylan’s Tempest.
He’s not dead yet (but he’s gettin’ there)
It’s no wonder he’s fed up. The man has been mixing up the medicine for a long time now. He refers to his long life in ‘Scarlet Town’, suggesting that not much has changed after generations of alleged social progress: “Uncle Tom is still working for Uncle Bill.” Perhaps he’s exasperated by fame and the muse that endlessly beckons, no matter how many times he’s tried to retire: “You try to get away, they drag you back.” At its deepest Tempest suggests the pain the gods suffered when they took mortal lovers. “You’ve got the same eyes as your mother does” shows that he’s watched generations pass. He’s like Peter Pan realizing the girl he took to be Wendy is Wendy’s daughter.
Sarah Flanagan on Bob Dylan‘s Tempest.