No battle has raged as fervently as the one about the self of Bob Dylan—whether there was a true self beyond what had been invented for the audience. According to the Nobel Prize committee at least, he is a poet, and a literary genius of the first order—to others, not so much. In the mid-1960s the pop audience and pop critics were discovering new poetics and pop joined film as that paradoxical phenomena of mass art. Dylan and the Beatles are given dual credit for making rock music more adult, since as songwriters they plumbed themes that used to be the province of high art like loneliness and despair. This also earns rock stars biographical scrutiny. People began thinking of popular songs, especially Dylan’s, as a form of poetry. The public becomes curious about the stories behind the songs, the experience someone like Dylan could be drawing from to write, say, “Like a Rolling Stone.” Dylan’s biographer Robert Shelton wrote, “One’s image of a poet is someone, preferably under 25, revolutionary, good-looking, and doing something to excess, whether women, or drugs, or wine. It strikes the imagination very powerfully. There are many intimations of death in Dylan’s writing, but what has attracted me had been, rather, the affirmation of life. It’s like the blues, in which one is struck by the hopeful things that push through the gloom.” Rich Cohen also sees the blues running through Dylan’s music like “an homage fans don’t recognize.” Ellen Willis dissents, saying Dylan may or may not be a poet, but if Dylan is a poet, he isn’t a good one: “Poetry requires economy, coherence, and discrimination, and Dylan has perpetuated prolix verses, horrendous grammar, tangled phrases, silly metaphors, embarrassing clichés, muddled thought; at times she seems to believe one good image deserves five others, and he relies too much on rhyme.” Yet no less an authority than Oxford and Boston University professor Christopher Ricks sides with Shelton many years later: in 2004 his masterwork on the man he compares Dylan to Marvell, Marlowe, Keats, Tennyson, Yeats, and Hardy. Ricks’ Dylan’s Visions of Sin was published to mixed reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. A respected authority on Milton, Keats, and T.S. Eliot, Ricks claims, “Dylan is a performer of genius,” and that his songs in his voice rival those of any poet on the page.

Jon Landau’s essay on John Wesley Harding in early music fanzine Crawdaddy Number 15, May 1968, looked at that record as a summa of Dylan’s career, a musical and critical biography. It’s as insightful a piece of writing on Dylan at this stage in his career as any of Dylan’s full-length biographies, many of which stopped at or before this point. Landau sees circularity between Bob Dylan, the little-played debut record of one of the twentieth-century’s most mysterious and wanted men, and John Wesley Harding, named for a Old West outlaw and gunslinger. Dylan has “totally redefined himself by breaking with much that was consistently in evidence on the albums immediately preceding this one. Dylan’s abandonment of myths and melodrama that dominated all of his earlier albums” is further evidence of his growth as an artist, and adds to a sense of continuity. The new myth Dylan presents on Harding is that of himself as a “moderate man.” Landau explained, “Dylan created a myth that already existed. In a very real sense we could call it the myth of our own purity. Dylan was the only one on the scene who had the self-awareness, charisma, talent, imagination and lack of repression to give structure to this world view.” It turns out Dylan was a poet all along, Landau argued, not a prophet.



Grossman was as “ruthless in business as [Elvis’s manager] Col. Parker.” His gift was that he understood in that the folk scene was “concerned with selling authenticity.” His “initial interest was not the singer, but the song.” Grossman grasped that in music publishing was where money was, and he encouraged Dylan to veer from his Woody Guthrie-inspired schtick and write songs, in part, for his own pecuniary gain. The deal they made in July 1962 was that Grossman took 25 percent of Dylan’s publishing. His company, Witmark Music, took 20 percent cut of management and 25 percent on record and movie deals. Thus, Dylan got 40 percent of publishing while Grossman got 35 percent (half of Witmark’s 50 percent and a fifth of Dylan’s 50 percent). This deal came under much scrutiny many years later, but it set a standard for singer-songwriters at the time, and Grossman signed many other folk singers to similar deals. Though it might look like highway robbery, it was standard business practice, and Grossman guided Dylan in other ways. Many of Dylan’s biographers think Grossman and Dylan’s girlfriend at the time, Suze Rotolo, a Greenwich Village girl from a strong left-wing background, really pushed him into thinking about social justice and finding, as they say, his voice.

Dylan has never wanted a biography. It is as if it would freeze him with his mask on, leave him no room to escape being Bob Dylan. The closest he has come until writing his own oblique memoir, Chronicles Volume One, in 2004, was participating in Biograph, a three-disc retrospective of his career, in 1985, sitting for a somewhat candid song-by-song interview with Cameron Crowe (in which he still doesn’t clear up who his most vituperative song, Positively 4th Street, is about). In part this was his response to years of bootlegging, to reclaim the songs that had been released without his authorization and to reauthorize them by explaining his motives. David Hadju’s biography of Dylan, also called Positively Fourth Street, only examines the years of the folk movement, and is not about music as much as it is Dylan’s relationships during that crucial time. Greil Marcus’s first Dylan book, Invisible Republic, is largely theoretical and historical rather than biographical, and his second, Like a Rolling Stone, is clearly focused on a specific song. Christopher Ricks’ Dylan’s Visions of Sin is blatantly interested in the songs too rather than the life of the songwriter.

British critic Simon Frith wrote that people dream of Dylan not as a lover but as a friend, and as unusual as this is for a musician (it’s nearly impossible for someone to say the same about Mick Jagger, or Patti Smith), his biographers treat him as such. Though Dylan can be cruel, and has made many enemies along the way, there are few who seek revenge through the printed word. Many of the people closest to him, in fact, refused to cooperate with biographers at all: former road manager Victor Maymudes, the ubiquitous Bobby Neuwirth (of whom Dylan says in Chronicles that “He could talk to anybody until they felt all their intelligence was gone”), Sara Dylan, their children, and Albert Grossman (now dead) all refused to give interviews to any of his biographers. Clinton Heylin, who has written the most thorough if not the most penetrating book about Dylan, Behind the Mask (and updated it regularly), said of his subject, “The reader must be aware that there is much myth-building at stake here, and that Dylan’s friends and collaborators revel in that process as much as the man himself does. For each brick I pull down, there may well be another put in its place.” Heylin feels his work will never be done, the myth-making machinery will forever be undermining his search for the truth about Dylan.

The biographers Dylan got are an odd lot. In the beginning, there was Robert Shelton, the folk apostate and unapologetic Dylan worshipper, who tried to write the first authorized biography in No Direction Home (no book about Dylan has been authorized, though he has published three books, one of his lyrics, a knotty piece of experimental fiction called Tarantula, and Chronicles). Shelton had the fullest access to the man, though the stars in his eyes and the fact that his subject was at that point less than forthcoming about his past means the account was incomplete. Dylan told Shelton as he was writing, “Now, we have one thing straight about the book. I’m going to tell Albert [Grossman] we have come to an understanding about the book, Ill give you as much as I can. I’ll come very quickly to the point in all the things that I want done, but you can easily go back on me…. But I won’t forgive you for doing that, man. It’s not going to be a biography, because I’m not dead yet. It’s going to be a timeless thing. Right?” In actuality, there are at least two generations of Dylanists to consider: Shelton, and critics Ellen Willis, and Landau, followed by David Hadju, Clinton Heylin, Christopher Ricks, and Greil Marcus. None has had as much access as Shelton. They have to rely on the accounts of other people, and the songs, to tell Dylan’s story.



Over the course of his long career, there are many Bob Dylans. “Performers had always changed their names and adopted professional images that diverged from their biographies…. The irony of Robert Zimmerman’s metamorphosis into Bob Dylan lies in the application of so much elusion and artifice in the name of truth and authenticity.” This accusation by David Hadju, one of Dylan’s most astute biographers, is oft repeated in writings about Dylan’s participation in the folk movement. Folk gave Dylan his fame, and forced people to take him seriously, as folk was a serious business. Serious because it was “authentic, local, associated with hillbillies and hobos, antithetical to the times and sounded real.” And a business, as Robert Shelton points out, because, “the music business was jolted by such widespread decentralization of talent and audiences. For a time, the folk movement ran on greased wheels of anti-show-business idealism, more commercially oriented folk singers had to present themselves as idealistic, they had to dress simply and appear indifferent toward money.” Hadju’s summary of the folk ideal is “down with the aristocracy of the Hit Parade, up with egalitarian amateurism,” and the anti-commercial, underground sensibility it represented, that statement which teenagers utter with such pride: “no one else was listening to it.” (see more)

cc lalasticlala, seun, mynd44
http://www.dwartonline.com/the-man-bob-dylan-newly-crowned-nobel-laureate/

When you listen to his folk songs, you ll have no choice but to respect him. Bob Dylan is not just a poet, but a poet with a difference. He deserves it!

Knockin on heaven's door
Blowin in the wind
I ll keep it with mine

Above are a few of my favourites by him..

Congrats to him. One day, sooner than later, I might win a Nobel price for flirting and fucking.

SalomonKane:
Congrats to him. One day, sooner than later, I might win a Nobel price for flirting and fucking.

Maybe next year we can have the nominees as Jay Z, Eminem, Nas And Talib Kweli since we are all joking around

dont know him






but I know this nigga

SalomonKane:
Congrats to him. One day, sooner than later, I might win a Nobel price for flirting and fucking.

LWKMO...you be wereh o

SalomonKane:
Congrats to him. One day, sooner than later, I might win a Nobel price for flirting and fucking.

LWKMO...you be wereh o

One of my favourite artist of all time.Knocking on heavens door is still my favourite rock /pop song till these day,congrats to the man,the legend.

SalomonKane:
It's a world full of possibilities, wouldn't you agree?

No. A world full of crappy absurdities

i love his song ROLLING STONE

Men like this makes you wonder how they reason , what a gift he is got

"With Each Year Standards Seem To Slip And What Was Once Considered Absurd Now Seems Normal. Where That Leaves Us I Don't Know. Maybe By 2025 Donald Trump Will Be Awarded The Nobel Prize For Lyrical Texting" - Tim Stanley

Mynd44:

No. A world full of crappy absurdities

Yep. Absurdities make someone else' life a reality which brings possibilities...

We see what we want to see in life.

midolian:
When you listen to his folk songs, you ll have no choice but to respect him. Bob Dylan is not just a poet, but a poet with a difference. He deserves it!

Knockin on heaven's door
Blowin in the wind
I ll keep it with mine

Above are a few of my favourites by him..

Never heard his songs and won't. Rock music is demonic. But if Bob is such a great poet, then what does the committee think of Kendrick Lamar and eminem.

SalomonKane:
Yep. Absurdities make someone else' life a reality which brings possibilities...

We see what we want to see in life.

You missed my point. I was not refering to you as joking but the fact that Bob Dylan won is a joke

Lemme just

I'm surprised this is my first time of reading about him. I thought I have read about many people and many books, now I know I still have a long way to go.

The only song of his I've heard is "the times they are a'changing", the soundtrack for the movie "the watchmen", way back when, and it blew my mind away.

jejemanito:

"With Each Year Standards Seem To Slip And What Was Once Considered Absurd Now Seems Normal. Where That Leaves Us I Don't Know. Maybe By 2025 Donald Trump Will Be Awarded The Nobel Prize For Lyrical Texting" - Tim Stanley

Even in the so called "hallowed circles of learning and reasoning " standards seem to be dropping faster than 9.8m/s.

SalomonKane:
Congrats to him. One day, sooner than later, I might win a Nobel price for flirting and fucking.

Yea,after being knocked down by strange and a never seenaiailments.. Good luck to you shaaa

Mynd44:

You missed my point. I was not refering to you as joking but the fact that Bob Dylan won is a joke

Oh I know you weren't referring to me bro. Hope you can see what I was trying to say, now?

Esdb3:


Never heard his songs and won't. Rock music is demonic. But if Bob is such a great poet, then what does the committee think of Kendrick Lamar and eminem.

Which genre of secular song is angelic, lemme listen to it??

Well, I thought they should have left music people to their music awards. But then, what do I know?

Congrats Robert Dylan.

wetin concern rock music and noble literature

Tupac was a poet.

Nas is a poet

Kendrick Lamar is a poet.

will they give anyone of them noble prize for literature

Nonsense!!!

What's with the sensationalism? "Newly Crowned"? Is it a kingly title? Or is it that you Nigerians can't just ever get over these kinds of description that create superiors and inferiors?

Mynd44:

You missed my point. I was not refering to you as joking but the fact that Bob Dylan won is a joke

Oluwa_mynd, Have you bn following bob's works @ all?

I don't like this your post @ all!

People wey no sabi this man go dey talk.

For him to have stood a chance to win means he was nominated by a previous winner. So, people wey sabi pass us talk say dis man is worth the Nobel. And here I see some people, calling Eminem and Kendrick Lamar, and some Hip Hop peeps but truth is, none of them has or ever can positively affect the world like Bob Dylan, Bob Marley or The Beatles, Fela too. If any Hip Hopper can even be considered, it will be Rakim the god MC.

"Idiot wind blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot, babe
It's a wonder you still know how to breathe"
-Idiot Wind.

"As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh colored Christs that glow in the dark
Easy to see without looking too far
That not really much is sacred"
-It's Alright Ma (I'm only bleeding)

Now my favorite song of his...
"Oh, where have you been, my blue eyed son?
And where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and crawled, on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain a gonna fall"
-Hard Rain

SalomonKane:
Congrats to him. One day, sooner than later, I might win a Nobel price for flirting and fucking.

You know you will be crowned.....