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How To Be Bob Dylan

Senior Times




HOW TO BE BOB DYLAN
(In 40 not- so- easy lessons)

Bob Dylan recently appeared in Dublin for two concerts. Perhaps now that the great man is nearing the end of his performing career (should we call him Bob Zimmerman or Bob Zimmerframe?)

Aubrey Malone offers a rough guide for wannabe Dylans for the next generation.

1. Sport an Afro hairstyle, dress in pre-punk get-up, and smoulder into microphones with a contemptuous grin.
2. Disavow your small-town roots in favour of a youthful flirtation with Greenwich Village and all it (mis)represents.
3. Dose yourself on the French surrealist/impressionist school and embrace their imagery into your would-be prose poetry.
4. Experiment with speed – both kinds.
5. Play cat and mouse with interviewers for 40 years, answering perhaps one in ten of their questions.
6. Become a protest singer and then say you don’t know what a protest singer is or does.
7. Debunk yourself at every available opportunity, thus taking the sting out of other people’s debunkings of you.
8. Say things like “‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’ was originally supposed to be 12 different songs but I didn’t think I’d live long enough to write them all so I put them into one.”
9. Start off your career with people like Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez on the coffeehouse circuit, fall (sort of) in love with Joanie and then give her a hard time when your success starts to outstrip hers.
10. Be influenced by Woody Guthrie and visit him in hospital before he dies.
11. Get rich singing about the poor.
12. After a near-tragic motorcycle accident, get back to nature.
13. Release an album called Self-Portrait which is anything but.
14. Live such a weird lifestyle that people ask, “What’s yer man on anyway?”
15. Write songs so obscure that you get loads of publicity from critics’ differing opinions of them.
16. Have a film career that’s execrable, except for (some of) the music.
17. Steal “The Last Waltz” from The Band by wearing a funny hat and getting a mega-back-up from all the guest celebs for “I Shall Be Released”.
18. Become a born again bible-thumper when your career hits the skids, writing a collection of lyrics that make Billy Graham look like Gabriel Maria Marquez.
19. Speak to everyone who’s anyone in oblique monosyllables that may or may not be significant.
20. Outrage your diehard acoustic fans by going electric at the Isle of Wight.
21. Write lyrics that leech off Allen Ginsberg’s poetry and then sing them through your nose so no one will notice.
22. Never smile at anyone, even when you’re ecstatically happy.
23. On the odd occasion that you sing some of your hits at live concerts, make sure they’re unrecognisable.
24. Attract attention by saying that you refused to sing “Tomorrow Is Such A Long Time” after listening to Presley’s rendition of it.
25. Become the most hyped and over-rated songster of your time, and then the most rubbished one … but realise that the outrage and sycophancy are both equally precious for garnering precious column inches in the trendy folk/rock fanzines of the day.
26. Write songs about women (like “Just Like A Woman”, “Like A Rolling Stone”, etc.) that portray you as the fall guy, but in real life walk rings around them.
27. “Borrow” the melody of one of your most famous tricks from “The Patriot Game”.
28. When asked what your songs are about, reply with a typically off-putting, “Oh, some of them are about four minutes, some about 6 or 7 minutes, and some even 11 or 12 minutes.”
29. Become so reclusive as to border on the paranoid.
30. “Sing” in a manner that suggests there are electrodes in your larynx.
31. Write songs so off-the-wall they make David Lynch look like The Waltons.
32. Compose a body of work that alternates between songs that contain about 37 verses of quasi-apocalyptic poetry and those with do-de-do melodies and a-b-a-b rhyming schemes.
33. Create rabid controversy about every socio-political cause you can lay your hands (or voice) on, but when someone asks you what your off-the-record view is, shut them up by saying “I got nuthin’ to say” or, even better, “I’m just a song ’n dance man.”
34. Tell Bono, with characteristic self-deprecation, “Your songs will last longer than mine … the only problem is, nobody will be able to sing them.”
35. Grow old disgracefully, looking like a geriatric hippie about 20 years before your time.
36. Specialise in frustrating people’s expectations in your albums/concerts/emanations so that they’ll always be more shocked than fed up.
37. Get written off by the rock cognoscenti every few years and then bounce back with some creosote-laden mystery like ‘Modern Times’.
38. Revive you flagging career by joining a group called the Traveling Wilburys … then send yourself up by recording songs like “Wiggle Waggle” a year or so later.
39. Write your memoirs in a style that’s totally at odds with everything you’ve ever said in an interview about yourself before.
40. Almost die of a disease that’s as rare as everything else about you, confessing afterwards, “I thought I was about to get a live gig with Elvis.”

The Essential Bob Dylan
Two discs of music don't exactly provide for a thorough overview of four decades of recording, particularly if the subject of the retrospective is one of the most important and prolific performers of his time. So The Essential Bob Dylan definitely skates over the leagues-deep oeuvre of Dylan, summarizing his monumental first half-dozen years in disc one and skirting over the following 34 years in disc two.
Track Listings: Disc: 1 1. Blowin' In The Wind 2. Don't Think Twice It's All Right 3. Times They Are A' Changin', The 4. It Ain't Me, Babe 5. Maggie's Farm 6. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue 7. Mr. Tambourine Man 8. Subterranean Homesick Blues 9. Like A Rolling Stone 10. Positively 4th Street 11. Just Like A Woman 12. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 13. All Along The Watchtower 14. Quinn The Eskimo 15. I'll Be Your Baby Tonight Disc: 2 1. Lay Lady Lay 2. If Not For You 3. I Shall Be Released 4. You Ain't Goin' Nowhere 5. Knockin' On Heaven's Door 6. Forever Young 7. Tangled Up In Blue 8. Shelter From The Storm 9. Hurricane 10. Gotta Serve Somebody 11. Jokerman 12. Silvio 13. Everything Is Broken 14. Not Dark Yet 15. Things Have Changed

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