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HOME Bob Dylan
There are still those who would deny him any claim.
He can’t sing, they say. At all. He can’t
really play guitar. Or sometimes you get this: Dylan used
to be great, but his voice is shot. more
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Love,
Theft & Evidence Let's say
you woke up on Sept. 11 and saw the World Trade Towers
collapse on television. Later that morning, numbed and
confused, you tried to get back to normal life so you
went out and bought Love and Theft,
the new Bob Dylan album. You didn't feel much like
listening to music, but you put it on anyway. And soon
you were asking yourself:
Did he write these songs this morning?!? How could he get
this album in the stores within moments after these
things happened?
Maybe you picked up the Village Voice, where
Greg Tate was asking, "What did Dylan know, and when
did he know it?"
Man, he knew it before we were born.
"Things are breaking up out there," he sings.
Unbelievable. But you better believe it.
"My Captain, he's decorated. He's well-school, and
he's skilled," he sings. "He's not sentimental.
Doesn't bother him at all, how many of his pals have been
killed."
Incredible. He released an album about what's going on
today, and somehow he did it today.
But you'd have felt the same way, wouldn't you, had he
released it on July 5, or August 9 -- or March 12, 2012.
This record will sound prophetic a hundred years from now.
That's what prophets are all about. It's not that they
predict what will happen tomorrow. Anyone can claim to do
that. It's that they show you what's coming down right
now.
"One day, you'll open up your eyes, and you'll see
where we are," he sings.
You will, too. Might even be today.
And who's that singing "meet me in the moonlight,
alone"? Is it Dylan? Is it some gentleman in a
dustcoat (whose voice is dry and faint as in a dream)? Is
it Death who kindly stops his carriage? Satan your
Adversary? Tiny Tim? Bin Laden? Zorro?
"I know when the time is right to strike," he
sings.
Something's happening here, and you still don't know what
it is.
But you know one thing: Shakespeare is our co-pilot. And
Charley Patton. And Spencer Tracy, too.
"I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down,"
he sings. It's a bad day in Black Rock, and you've stayed
in Mississippi a day too long, and it's your turn to cry
awhile.
It's not that he turns out some new phrases that
instantly enter the language like they owned it. It's
more that he shows you what's been there all the time, if
you could only hear it.
High water everywhere. And poison wine, and sugar-coated
rhyme.
"The game's the same, it's just up on another level,"
he sings. And you know there's no one else on this level,
no one at all. You hear that voice and you know that any
other voice would be utterly humbled by these songs. Who
else is going to sing them? Who else could have built up
all that tension in those guitars and never released it,
never spilled it, never let it dissipate?
And who but Dylan could have released a masterpiece on
September 11, of all days?
"I can see what everybody in the world is up against,"
he sings, but not like a man boasting, no, not at all.
Besides, you have the evidence.
Other columns by David Vest appear on CounterPunch, which
offers comprehensive coverage of 9/11 and its aftermath.
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