Speil
A Bard of the Old School by Dale Williams Barrigar
Bob Dylan is a bard of the old school, and also of the school that never gets old. Long after every single Hollywood movie ever made will be penned by androids, computers, zombies, vampires, and “AI,” scattered humans everywhere will still be searching out the work of Bob Dylan, whether to read or listen to it. When Dylan released “Murder Most Foul,” his longest song, in the middle of the Covid Pandemic, he proved every critic who’d ever said he didn’t deserve the Nobel Prize in Literature wrong.
With a terrifying title from Shakespeare, this long song and short fiction is a mini-novel about the Kennedy assassination. And all assassinations, and all murders ever committed, now and in the future. Almost as if to prove that he’s a poet and story-teller more than a musician, Dylan doesn’t even sing this song. He speaks it. He tells the tale like an ancient bard, maybe even going as far back as Homer.
Dylan is often compared to Shakespeare, and for good reason. It could be that a more apt comparison is with the older writer. Homer, like Bob, spent his life traveling from town to town and speak-singing his story-songs to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. This image of Homer has been accepted for so long that it’s become a fact of fiction that tells the truth, as real as any other Greek mythology, from Zeus to Athena.
Dylan has always cited literary writers as some of his most important, if not his most important, influences. He claimed that “Blood on the Tracks” was inspired by Anton Chekhov’s short stories. He listed his two favorite writers as Emily Dickinson and Arthur Rimbaud. He read T.S. Eliot and James Joyce in high school. He resurrected Charles Baudelaire in “Idiot Wind.” He said that all writers and artists should read John Keats and Herman Melville.
He acknowledged Walt Whitman’s genius. He went to the grave of Jack Kerouac and read Kerouac’s poetry aloud with Allen Ginsberg. He wrote his songs on a typewriter. He created an absurdist book of prose poems, and he composed a memoir that isn’t his best work but is highly readable, filled with signs of the times, then and now.
Someone once compared Bob Dylan to Ernest Hemingway, another writer for whom Dylan has expressed his approval. Both writers diagnosed their times, and fought the wars of their times. While Hemingway went to Italy as an ambulance driver, Dylan went to Mississippi as a liberal Jew who stood out in an open field and sang Civil Rights protest anthems, surely as dangerous as Hemingway heading to the front as a non-combatant who wanted to help injured soldiers.
Dylan has already entered the canon of great American authors. When we look back at history, we see that there are many authors who did not deserve the Nobel Prize, and many authors who did deserve it who didn’t receive it (James Joyce, Leo Tolstoy, and Jorge Luis Borges are a famous three of these). A hundred years from now, Dylan will be seen as a writer who deserved this prize, and then some. His humanity, and his ways of expressing it in English story-language, will last a very, very long time, even, or especially, as the rest of the mainstream world continues to become more and more robotic, tyrannical and inhuman.
literally stories 
Good morning Dale
This is a brilliantly written article worthy of the subject. Dylan deserved the prize and I think he should have received it sooner. He may very well be the greatest influence on the arts of music and songwriting still living. And it’s tremendous that he has never indulged in lucrative self parody, as a tribute band version of his earler self. Won’t name people, but plenty of active “legends” stopped writing new material decades ago. They don’t do it for the love of it; they stopped because no one wants to hear cuts from the new CD. Business decision.
Top work!
Leila
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Refreshing & timely. Listen to Dylan, hear echoes of Dante, Shakespeare, Blake, Ezekiel, Eliot, Corbiere & numberless others.
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This is fantastic! I’ve long been a Bob Dylan fan and now even more so after learning so much from this article. Thanks to Mr. Barrigar for writing it and to LS for sharing it.
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Dear Leila
Thank you!
It’s amazing to look back at music articles from the ’80s and ’90s, and see how many people called Bob Dylan a has-been over and over; and with very certain language, and in no uncertain terms.
I’ve seen Dylan in concert multiple times across four decades and counting: ’80s, ’90s, ’00s, ’10s, and I’ve got tickets for September in Chicago. As much as is humanly possible, he NEVER repeats himself. Every song in every show is not golden. But every single show contains magical gems that one never forgets. (Also saw him play with Tom Petty, Willie Nelson, and the Grateful Dead).
If anyone wonders how Dylan can truly be compared to Shakespeare, I suggest “Idiot Wind” from “Blood on the Tracks.” Dylan always claimed this album is NOT autobiographical in the strict sense. If you think of the speaker of “Idiot Wind” as Charles Baudelaire, or Poe, or Rimbaud, or some other cursed poet from the 19th century, and you listen to the whole performance, you can see the relevance and accuracy of the Shakespeare comparison.
Thanks again, Leila!
Dale
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Dale, glad you made this point about about Dylan’s tremendous durability as a lyricist: he hasn’t crashed and burned. Later numbers like ‘Not Dark Yet’ stand up really well against the earlier material.
The comparisons with other great lyricists have often been made, but I’d like to mention the great ballad tradition as one of his influences. The Scottish ballad, Lord Randall, and the English ballad, Scarborough Fair, are echoed in ‘A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall’ and Boots of Spanish Leather and Girl From the North Country.
Thanks for a good read!
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Dear Mick,
Thanks for pointing out “Not Dark Yet,” one of my favorites. Also absolutely right of you to point out the ballad tradition. One of his late, great songs, “Highlands,” makes this debt explicit, I think. I also think about how Robert Burns was a poet, AND a songwriter and collector. Thanks again!
Dale
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This is a very fine, enlightening and informative article; I enjoyed it very much. Bob Dylan — little Bobby Zimmerman, of Minnesota — is worthy of the homage. For more than six decades he has been at the forefront of all things musical. He is known almost as much for the covers that other artists have made of his work as for this own recordings: “All Along the Watchtower” (Hendrix); “I Shall be Released” (Joe Cocker); “Blowin’ in the Wind” (Peter, Paul and Mary); “Mr. Tambourine Man” (The Byrds) and many, many others.
Dylan ain’t perfect: he’s a mediocre guitarist (He’s no Eddie Van Halen, but then he doesn’t need to be). Dylan plays a good harp (but can’t compare to Neil Young) and is a really poor vocalist. However, his lyrics more than make up for any gaps in his musical resume. List-makers often confute the good and bad of artists; I read a Google assessment of “The Best Vocalists of all Time” and the compiler put Dylan at some improbable pinnacle up their with Steve Winwood and Ann Wilson and Freddy Mercury and Robert Plant! Please! He is, however, one of the best lyricists in history.
Dylan has earned the envy of other good musicians. At an Arlo Guthrie/Pete Seeger concert I saw a half century ago, Guthrie talked jokingly about performing one night in front of an artist who was “getting drunk with a bunch of Indians….” Then then went on to sing a song Guthrie said that he wished that he had written. Guthrie then played “Blowin’ in the Wind.” He went on to call Dylan the “most talented songwriter in the universe.”
Again, I really like this essay; the author did his homework and his good feelings for the legendary Bib Dylan shine through. Good job@!
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Thanks so much for adding Dante, Blake, Ezekiel, etc.
Dante in “Blood on the Tracks” especially, including the title. William Blake in his newer work, and in some of his great lesser-known works as well. And of course the Bible. Ezekiel is a brilliant reference. Thank you! All three of Dylan’s Christian albums from the ’80s have great material on them, whether one is Christian or not. “Lenny Bruce” is a great example from “Shot of Love.” I plan to do more research soon on Corbiere now. Thanks!
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Dear David Henson,
Thanks so much for your comments. They are greatly appreciated!
Sincerely,
Dale
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I also want to mention “Brownsville Girl,” from the album “Knocked Out Loaded.” This eleven-minute-song, co-written with none other than Sam Shepard, who can be mentioned in the same breath as Tennessee Williams, is another argument for why Dylan is like an American Shakespeare who deserves the NPL. dwb
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Thanks so much for the story about the Guthrie/Seeger concert. It tells a lot about the man and is fascinating. I remember watching Dylan in an interview where he says, “I can sing at least as good as Caruso.” He then went on to enumerate a list of all the reasons why. And it was hard to tell if he was being completely serious or not. He definitely belongs with other rough, “dirty” singers, like Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. Elvis is America’s greatest opera singer, especially later in his career, including the last few weeks. Thanks again! dwb
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Subterraneon Homesick Blues (Get sick, get well, anything is going to sell)
Masters Of War
I Shall Be Free (Any day now)
All Along The Watchtower
Like A Rolling Stone (His accurate of assessment of Andy Warhol)
My Back Pages (I was so much older then)
Highlands
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Don’t follow leaders; watch the parking meters
Don’t want to be a bum, you better chew gum,
The pump don’t work ’cause the vandals took the handle
A bowling ball came down the street and knocked me off my feet
Any day now, any day now, I shall be released
Dylan — a wonderful lyricist
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Doug,
Thanks for bringing up “Subterranean,” the world’s first rap song! I had never heard this interpretation of “Rolling Stone” before but it makes perfect sense. “Watchtower” is a classic and your other choices are too. We can never be done with Dylan, his work is so wild, wide and various. Thanks again!
Dale
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Hi Dale,
I love music but to be brutally honest lyrics don’t mean much to me. (Although I do love the line – ‘My expectations may be high, I blame that on my youth’ by Fergal Sharky and ‘Once bitten twice as shy (That’s clever) by George Michael…I know!!!!)
Music to me is all about memories – I remember where I heard it, what I was doing and what I was thinking. For example, I was a very fucked up kid and the abomination that is ‘Seasons In The Sun’ by Terry Jacks made me think and stress out on death, fuck me!!! I was probably only seven!!!
When I was called when my gran died, the taxi had the radio playing and it was ‘Berlin’ with ‘Take My Breath Away’ I can probably give you more examples from most songs but that would take forever.
…And don’t get me started on funeral songs – Not the fucking hymn shite, but the songs that mean something to folks. (My dads funeral was ‘Lara’s Theme’, ‘Strangers On The Shore’ and ‘Distant Drums.’ A young guy I knew’s family had ‘Sweet Child Of Mine’ playing as we walked out of the Crematorium) These songs are never about the lyrics now, they are all about where I was.
However, I ain’t the biggest Dylan fan but I will say this…Any guy who can diversify between ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’ and ‘The Man In The Long Black Coat’ will always make me listen!!!!!!!!!!
No matter whether any reader loves or hates, you have written something that should tweak interest for those who don’t know!
Brilliant!
Hugh
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Hugh I never knew you were so young.
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Sorry Doug for not replying – I missed this.
I hope you think my wisdom is surprising?? (HAH!!)
Or maybe my senility is premature???? (Sadly no HAH!!)
Young?? Well 57 ain’t old but my body tells me other wise!
Attitude, I enjoy, but pain not so much!!!
All the very best my individual friend!
Hugh
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Dear Hugh
Thanks for sharing the way you experience music in a well-written mini-essay.
I have family members who can’t stand Dylan and will raise a ruckus when you try to play him. Both of my 17-year-old twin daughters mostly like newer music (like Lana Del Rey and Amy Winehouse), but they are fans of Bob.
As for myself, I’m even a fan of his Christmas album you mentioned (some people think I’m mad). And thanks for mentioning “The Man in the Long Black Coat.” It’s a great story-song. The atmospherics are amazing.
Your writing always tells it like it is: a very rare talent! Thanks for refreshing honesty in clear and vivid words.
Dale
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Thank you for the kind comments – You are a gentleman fine Sir!!!
Hugh
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I enjoy Bob Dylan’s lyrics and poetry, but am (at the risk of offending) unsure about his prose. I do agree that he deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature and that there are many worse that did. I’ve actually been on an approximate three-year mission to read every Nobel Prize for Literature winner and am currently on 112/120. Unfortunately, the 8 I haven’t read are almost impossible to find in print in English, but I’ll keep looking!
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Thanks for pointing this out, and I agree with you about his prose: it isn’t his strongest suit, for sure (for the most part). I also feel the same way about most of his paintings, sad to say. Both are competent, and interesting, especially as they come from the master’s hand. But neither the prose nor the paintings are truly deserving of high praise, I don’t believe. They are both overflow from his endless creative gift, and not his highest, most lasting work.
Reading all of the Nobel literature winners is a noble project! Makes me want to go back and look at the list. I know I’m woefully behind compared to you. Good luck looking for the 8 you can’t find so far. That is a noble mission. Thanks again.
Dale
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