My daughter recently wrote a cd review in
which she described a very nice piece of lyric as having dylanesque qualities. Being her seventh grade English teacher, as
well as a life long Dylan fan, I immediately offered her some unsolicited
advice about not over using that particular way of describing someone's lyrics.
I went on to tell her that it is perfectly okay to describe a nice bit of
writing as being just that, a nice bit of writing without imposing the heavy
burden of the lyric having to meet a nearly impossible standard. I finished by
telling her that the adjective dylanesque
has, in my opinion, been very much abused.
The discussion that ensued has caused me
to do a great deal of thinking about the way that so many people think that any
great word painting set to guitar music is dylanesque.
My first realization was that the impulse to compare another musician's work to
Dylan's is extremely subjective. Just as we all hear, feel, understand and
respond differently to Dylan’s music, our opinion as to
what compares to that music is our own.
Dylan is nothing, if not unique, all of
his own musical influences not withstanding. To classify something as unique
means it stands alone, there is nothing that is the same. People are, however,
prone to make such comparisons because we love to categorize things, and even
more, we love to show everyone else that we "get it". Being able to appreciate true genius and to
recognize it in others, and then to explain why we feel that way, enables us in
a small way to share in that genius.
This is nothing too dangerous or earth
shattering, most of us are guilty of it, but this impulse causes a lot of
people to express some very bad opinions. The most egregious, in my eyes, was
the rush of so many music critics to label Bruce Springsteen as the new Dylan
when Springsteen first started to garner attention outside of New Jersey. He
plays a guitar; he paints pictures with words. The similarities begin and end
there. Comparing the young Springsteen to Dylan is like comparing the early
Lennon-McCartney work to Sgt. Pepper's.
This is not knocking Springsteen or even
aspiring young artists. Springsteen has written great music, and he never asked
for the comparison. There's a good
chance he threw up a little in his own mouth when he read those first reviews,
recognizing the intellectual laziness they represented, and the unfair burden
of expectations that those critics placed upon him at the early stages of his
career. To his credit, he has proven himself worthy on his own merits.
This has led me to the conclusion that the
adjective is completely misused when applied to the idea of an artist being the
“next Dylan”. This description of an
artist or song is best when applied to the end results of a career and not the
embryonic stages. I would argue that
Springsteen’s career is more comparable to
Dylan’s at this stage of his career
rather than at the beginning.
Another thing that adds to the problem is
that success breeds imitation. Many of the current folk musicians not only try
to copy Dylan’s brilliant word play, they
also often feel the need affect the tremulous, nasal quality of his voice and
his unique phrasing. Dylan’s much maligned vocal
abilities are an important part of his music. The shaky urgency of his singing
is like a plea. It often enables the simple majesty of his words to penetrate
to the core of the listeners. However, the efforts of some lesser artists who
attempt to emulate this type of wavering, gravelly vocal is about as appealing
as an amputation on a Civil War battlefield.
Even worse, is that a some of these aspiring
singer/songwriters feel that they, by the nature of the job, have been charged
to save the world. Dylan arrived at a particular moment in time that amplified
the importance of his lyrics. It is well known that later he rejected the role
of the Pied Piper as being too restrictive and with some consideration to the
idea that he wasn’t up to the job.
Many of these newcomers missed that part of
the story. It is obvious that they relish the idea of being the spokesman of
the age despite their lack of any real insight or knowledge of history. Too often nowadays, donning a pair of scruffy
jeans and picking up a guitar is felt to imbue the singer/writer with the all
the worldly wisdom and political economic savvy as Jesus, Mother Teresa and
Henry Kissinger put together.
I don’t say this to disparage the
young, nor am I saying that a new “voice of a generation” will never emerge from the ranks of these modern
troubadours. You can be sure it won’t be the voice of someone
consciously trying to fill those shoes or someone who is “trying” to be like Dylan. That role
will devolve on a person who seeking to express their own voice, and that voice
happens to be in tune with the times.
I eventually arrived at the conclusion
that to be truly dylanesque can only
mean that an artist inhabits an area on the same mountain peak and at least
breathes that some of the same type of rarified air as Dylan . This is, like I
said, a very subjective opinion, but it is also a very serviceable definition
and does manage to limit the use of the word in way that it would be unlikely
to be used to describe the overwrought musings of every scruffy folksinger who
manages to catch the public’s eye.
With this in mind, I’ll attempt to put down a few cases where the adjective
might be used correctly.
The Beatle’s A Day on the Life is probably as close as a song comes to being
dylanesque. Often deemed to be one of the most influential rock songs of all
time, it also undisputedly possesses the strong lyrical content that Dylan’s greatest work embodies.
Ironically, it was Dylan, supposedly, who first turned the Beatles on to
smoking marijuana, and it was, by their own admission, marijuana that fueled
their creative juices when making Sgt
Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The only problem with this comparison is
that the Beatles occupy their own mountain peak in the Olympian pantheon of
rock music. Is it right to compare one type of genius to another? The Beatles
were obviously inspired by Dylan’s music when they created Sgt. Peppers. The result was arguably
the most influential album in the history of rock music.
As far as individual artists go, I would
offer up Al Stewart, the Scottish singer/songwriter best known as the creator
of one of the most perfect pop songs ever crafted The Year of the Cat. Like Dylan, Stewart started out as folksinger
and later shifted into rock. It was the historically themed and generally overlooked
album Past, Present, and Future where
Stewart left behind his folk roots for good.
The album features several brilliantly
written songs that set Stewart apart from most of his contemporaries. The Road to Moscow is as chilling in its
execution and subject matter as Dylan’s The Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll. The
Last Day of June 1934 may very well be the song that future historians
discover and use as the best evidence to refute the claim that all of late 20th
and early 21rst century American culture was one vast sewer. The song juxtaposes a
lover’s picnic, a pre-war
aristocratic party, and the death of Ernst Rohm whose death freed Hitler to
take over the German Army and commence both the Holocaust and World War II.
On the night that Ernst Roehm died voices
rang out
In the rolling Bavarian hills
And
swept through the cities and danced in the gutters
Grown strong like the joining of wills
Oh echoed away like a roar in the distance
In moonlight carved out of steel
Singing "All the lonely, so long and so
long
You
don't know how I long, how I long
You
can't hold me, I'm strong now I'm strong
Stronger
than your law
Among contemporary American
singer/songwriters, the artist most likely to be described with the term
dylanesque would have to be the former
mailman from Chicago, John Prine. Often labeled as the” the next Dylan” early
in his career, Prine has the distinction of being mentioned as one of Dylan’s
personal favorites. Singing in gravely nasal twang, like Dylan, Prine’s songs
have been extensively covered by many other successful recording artists.
Some might ask how someone who injects so
much good-natured humor into a lot of his songs might be included in the same
breath as Dylan, but the answer would be that he is also the same guy who wrote
Angel From Montgomery, Souvenirs, and the absolutely lovely
lost-love ballad Far from Me.
Prine’s anti-war song Great Compromise is one of the most brilliant uses of allegory ever
put into song.
Well you know I could have beat up that
fellow
But it was her that had hopped into his
car
Many times I'd fought to protect her
But this time she was goin' too far
Now some folks they call me a coward
'Cause I left her at the drive-in that
night
But I'd druther have names thrown at me
Than to fight for a thing that ain't
right
When I started writing this, I knew it
would probably generate a lot of disagreement. This is all well and good. As I
stated at the outset, the conclusions I have reached are very subjective, and
all that I wish, is that the article leads to some deliberation on what the
adjective dylanesque truly means, and
hopefully to a more selective use of the term when one is tempted to deal out
an excessive amount of praise when describing every scraggily dressed young man
or woman with some fancy words and a guitar.
