One For The Road: Poet, prophet, man

Like a child who goes to see a superhero film and afterwards half-expects himself to be able to fly home, I left the cinema the other night ready to retreat into my bedroom and write a few world-changing tunes.

I’d just seen A Complete Unknown, the new film about the rise of Bob Dylan, of whom I am an adoring, but not obsessive, fan.

(One of the first songs I learned on guitar was a dumbed-down version of Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right. However, while I have occasionally toyed with the idea of buying both a harmonica and a contraption that would give me hands-free access to said harmonica, I have never owned either, much to the relief of everyone who cares about me.)

For those who haven’t seen it yet, the film follows the young minstrel’s almost supernaturally speedy ascent from anonymous singer-songwriter, to lauded folk artist, to one of the most famous people in the world, ending with his infamous electric set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

Before having seen the movie, I may have deployed a more exalting description than ‘one of the most famous people in the world’, probably opting for something like ‘poetic genius’, ‘musical prophet’ or, if I was feeling really heretical, ‘modern day messiah’.

However, I am a changed man for having watched the 2hr 22mins masterpiece, and post-movie me is keenly aware just how much Bob Dylan would think me a sensationalist fool for using such quasi-religious rhetoric to characterise him.

In saying that, though, it is still tempting…

You listen to the songs and, even for a 21st century heathen like myself, divine provenance seems like the only way to explain how good they are.

I mean, quick aside, Bob himself, despite always seeming poised to reply to such suggestions with one of his signature withering remarks, said in a 2004 60 Minutes Interview that his songs came from ‘a magic… a different and penetrating kind of magic’.

In the same interview, right enough, he also gave a more secular answer to a similar question, claiming his music came from ‘the wellspring of creativity’, but that’s by the by.

Wherever they come from, it doesn’t change the fact that they are works of genius, as recognised when in 2016 he became the first songwriter to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Personally, from the moment, as a teenager, I got past the abrasiveness of his voice and the tinny sound of some of his records, I was in.

I loved the imagery of Mr Tambourine Man and Like a Rolling Stone, the passive aggression of Don’t Think Twice and Forever Young, and the different keys of justice that he hit in songs like Masters of War, Blowin’ In The Wind and The Hurricane.

Later I started getting into other stuff from Blood On The Tracks, Highway ‘61 Revisited and The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and still I’ve only listened to a fraction of the stuff he has put out.

However, despite being a fan for more than a decade, watching the film the other night unlocked a new layer of context, placing his songs before a cultural backdrop against which I’d never previously viewed them.

Within the wider frame of the times, I was, for the first time, able to see how timely, prescient, important and powerful they were.

The Times They Are A-Changin’, for example, remains a great song to this very day, but in 1964 it was so on the money, so perfectly situated within the zeitgeist, so what the world needed to hear, as to seem like it had been written by a creature from a higher realm.

Anyway, if you haven’t realised by now, the film made a big impression on me – in the kind of way that usually a film can only make on a child.

I left the cinema, went home and grabbed my guitar, a pen and paper, and got to work.

And just like the child who leaves the cinema thinking he can fly, only to find his feet don’t leave the floor, I too found myself quickly brought down to earth.

Still, though, inspiring stuff nevertheless.