Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot.
Like many Bob Dylan fans, I ran out on New Year’s Day to see the new movie, A Complete Unknown. What impressed me about the movie was how well it captured that time in the early 1960s when America’s old culture was coming apart and something new was being born.
The movie is a period piece. It takes place between the somnolent 1950s and the birth of the counterculture. Dylan was more in flux than ever, moving from acoustic folkie playing protest songs to his new electric incarnation.
That folkie time was best captured by his album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. That is the album with the picture of him and his girlfriend, Suzy Rotolo, on the cover. It was one of the first albums I ever bought. It was vinyl, 33 rpm. I listened to it so many times. I had a tiny record player that was like a little suitcase. It was a prize possession. It played 45’s and 33’s. I listened away from my parents, in the privacy of my bedroom.
It is amazing how many great songs were on that album. Although it was Dylan’s second album, it was his first that featured his own original songs. Eleven of the thirteen songs were Dylan originals. They included “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “Girl from the North Country,” “Masters of War,” and “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” Also on it was the masterpiece “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
The movie does a good job of placing the songs in a context that gives them more meaning. Of course, Bob was always enigmatic, the riddle who could not be reduced to any agenda. Still, the protest songs on the Freewheelin’ album had lasting power. Consider the start of “Masters of War:”
“Come you masters of war / You that build the big guns / You that build the death planes / You that build all the bombs / You that hide behind walls / You that hide behind desks / I just want you to know / I can see through your masks.”
Those lyrics could be about now but they were written near the time of the Cuban missile crisis when the danger of nuclear war was frighteningly close. Dylan has a funny take on it though. In “Talking World War III Blues,” he wrote:
“Well the whole thing started at 3 o’clock fast / It was all over by quarter past / I was down in the sewer with some little lover / When I peeked out from a manhole cover / Wondering who turned the lights on… / Well I rung the fallout shelter bell / And I leaned my head and I gave a yell / “Give me a string bean, I’m a hungry man” / A shotgun fired and away I ran / I don’t blame them too much though, I know I look funny”
Even on nuclear war, Dylan had his own original spin. He grew to hate that anyone looked at him as any kind of leader or protest icon. In his memoir, “Chronicles, Volume 1,” he made that so clear. The movie transmits the tension between the Dylan the folk movement wanted him to be and the Bob that was emerging.
Bob cultivated a sense of mystery about himself. The same person who wrote George Jackson could also sell Chryslers at the Super Bowl. He was not on anyone’s bandwagon. Dylan prided himself on being eclectic. In Chronicles, he mentions influences: the wrestler Gorgeous George, Joe Hill, Picasso, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.
The Woody Guthrie connection is developed in the movie. Dylan goes to visit Woody in New Jersey where he was institutionalized suffering from Huntington’s disease, a neurodegenerative condition. Bob sings “Song to Woody” a song he wrote. Because of his condition, Woody can’t speak but he pounds the wall, in appreciation I thought.
Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, both played superbly by Ed Norton and Monica Barbaro, perform very helpful roles in advancing Dylan’s career but they also can’t handle Dylan’s break when he goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. They both seem in awe of Dylan’s genius but entirely frustrated at his evolution.
Dylan, who is extremely well played by Timothee Chalamet, comes off as a self-absorbed jerk. In the movie, his romantic relationships are disasters and he appears to care little for either Baez or his other main girlfriend, Suzy Rotolo, called Sylvie Russo, in the movie. Baez calls him “kind of an asshole” and at one point gives him the finger. As portrayed in the movie, Bob’s relationships were erratic, impulsive, and selfishly inconsistent.
One truly impressive thing about the movie was that Chalamet, Norton and Barbaro all sang the songs and played the instruments when they performed. Norton especially captured Pete Seeger bringing out Pete’s moral integrity, his bravery, his helpfulness as well as his being square.
When the movie had Dylan singing “The Times They Are A’ Changin,” you could feel the urgency of the 1960s busting through. The Eisenhower 1950s were being left behind. One of the lesser-known tracks on the Freewheelin’ album was “Oxford Town,” a song about James Meredith’s integration of Ole Miss.
Dylan wrote: “He went down to Oxford Town / Guns and clubs followed him down / All because his face was brown / Better get away from Oxford Town. / Oxford Town in the afternoon / Everybody singing a sorrowful tune / Two men died neath the Mississippi moon / Somebody better investigate soon.”
Dylan was inextricably connected to the 60’s even if as an unwilling symbol. Like other folkies, he connected to the struggle for racial justice. Oxford Town was not a one-off. Think “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” and “Hurricane.”
America has periods where it is like any sense of morality goes to sleep. As we enter a time of darkness and suppression of the struggle against racism, we need Bob’s anti-authoritarian energy for the fight back against racism and fascism.