Song and Dance Man
| By Michael Gray; Published by Continuum Few so-called Dylanologists will need any introduction to Michael Gray or this, his definitive work on Bob Dylan. And very few will not want to own this book, a 900 page monster, a mixed-up confusion of Dylan riches. This review is for those who bought Highway 61 Revisited or Blood on the Tracks and still vote them two of the best albums ever written. There is, of course, no need for an in depth academic study of Dylan's language, sources, references, development etc. No need, perhaps, but every desire. To listen to Bob Dylan is to revel in metaphors and similes (like a corkscrew to my heart / ever since we've been apart), to nuzzle up to that unlovely but perfect voice, to smirk at the rhyming of "January" and "Buenos Aires". The tunes are a bonus and not a washing line on which to hang cliches, and that is why a study like Gray's suits Dylan better than it would - say - Paul McCartney. Gray, ex-manager of Gerry Rafferty and biographer of Frank Zappa, was the first to publish a volume of serious, thoughful and learned writing on Dylan. It was this one, in fact, or at least a part of it. Song and Dance Man in its original form appeared in 1972 and shook up the world of rock music criticism as much as Dylan himself shook up the twee folk scene of early 1960's Greenwich Village. As Uncut put it, Gray's book, "invented a new school of rock criticism which made most of the writing that had gone before seem superficial, irrelevant and trivial". All of that original volume and its 1981 update are included here, along with a host of new chapters covering the consistent blues influence on Dylan and analysis of 1980's and '90s work (for instance fifty pages on his recent return to form, Time out of Mind). The book has therefore grown up with its subject and is now 4 times as long as it was originally. In that sense it is too long for most to read in full, not least because its main fault is occasionally to assume the reader's knowledge of Dylan songs you would only own if you had invested in his very worst albums (Infidels for instance). There is more than enough here, though, to satisfy those who most admire Dylan's '70,s classics (Street Legal, and Desire) or who are most interested in the wordplay of his Blonde on Blonde period. Everything is covered in exhaustive detail except, crucially, the biographical side. There are plenty of anaylses of Dylan that are based upon his life, including a number of biographies, but Gray steers consciously very clear of this approach with the exception of a single chapter. In doing so, he saves the reader from wading through the kind of inane nonsense that tries to find a real life "Mr Tambourine Man" or insists upon dwelling upon Dylan's route to being born again before Slow Train Coming. We read about the lyrics and how they work. Thankfully, Gray is generous with his quotations, but it still makes sense to get hold of the Lyrics 1962-85 collection to see the verses pan out in their full glory. What is truly refreshing about Gray, aside from his fine and unpretentious tone even when he is going into detail about poetic techniques or references, is actually that he is not as fawning as some of his fellow contributors to the fine Dylan periodical The Telegraph. He merely sounds fascinated with the work and excited by the prospect of analysing it. His notes written since the first edition are enlightening, too: we hear of the Rolling Stone journalist who was taken in by Dylan's sarcastic responses to her interview questions until Gray pointed them out to her great embarrassment. There is humility in those vital footnotes too: Gray dismisses some of his former apparently foolish assumptions (e.g. that Dylan was targetting a woman with Positively 4th Street). Where the author speaks of Dylan's similarities to Robert Browning or the possible sources for the Highway 61 concept he is neither spurious in his assertions (like Spender was so often in his interesting but flawed book Alias Bob Dylan), nor irrelevant. He is merely detailed. Gray knows that he cannot prove Dylan's poetic genius and enduring relevance so he doesn't try to. Only in his introduction does he put the knife into the Keats is better than Dylan academic crowd. This is wise indeed and seems far less defensive than those who would bar popular writers from posterity. Dylan as a songwriter, a thinker, and a poet/ lyricist has moved extraordinarily fast from hobo blues through folk rock, acid rock, country, and so forth. No such swift and natural progression is expected or likely from poets who deny themselves the luxury of music to go with their verse: as Gray rightly points out, the separation of words from music in performance is a relatively new concept and is certainly not the natural or classical form. Because the music is so important to the effect the words have, it is rarely ignored but instead is integrated into the discussion of particular lines. It does not interfere, and this is an achievement in itself. Certainly, there are those for whom literary analysis and the high-art discussion of lyrics takes away from the magic of the delivery and Dylan's uniquely natural troubadour style in the sixties (reading Subterranean Homesick Blues on the page will never be quite the same or as effective as hearing it). However, Gray provides a brilliant service in pulling together the many strands of Dylan's work and the criticism that has accompanied them to form a cohesive and enlightening |
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