Trouble In Mind

Trouble In Mind
Bob Dylan’s Gospel Years – What Really Happened.
By Clinton Heylin
Route – £16.99

Gospel music is about the love of God. And commercial music is about the love of sex.

When people don’t get threatened and challenged…in some kind of way, they don’t get confronted, never have to make decisions, they never take a stand, they never grow. [Instead they] live their lives in a fish-tank, stay in the same old scene forever, die and never get a break or a chance to say goodbye. I have views contrary to all that. I think that this world is just a passing-through place and that the dead have eyes and that even the unborn can see, and I don’t care who knows it. [You] know, I can go off on tangents.

Regardless of wherever Bob Dylan happens to be; or wherever he’s been throughout his packed, fraught, colourful, inspired, confrontational, mesmerising and sometimes fractious career, there have always, always been interesting and highly compelling words bouncing around. Whether bouncing around his head, the vicinity, his latest recording(s) or within the all-round, general ether of Bob Dylan.

The above two quotes alone, are surely enough to trigger much debate amid part-time listeners as well as acute aficionados of the artist.

After all, is gospel music really about the love of God? Some would contest that gospel music is more about the love of life, as seen through the prism of God. And while a lot of (today’s) commercial music may indeed hinge upon the love of sex, such isn’t necessarily, always the case. The second quote meanwhile, is more dense than a book on the history of Chinese algebra. Just the last line (”[You] know, I can go off on tangents.”), is capable of triggering a trajectory of colossal, cryptic thought – from the hilarious to the understated to satirical confrontation.

And hey, up until now, this is just two quotes I have been writing about!

The particular period of Trouble In Mind: Bob Dylan’s Gospel Years – What Really Happened (the absolutely full-on religious stage of the late seventies and early eighties) is no exception to any other Dylan- whether past or present, in love or in pain; whether acoustic or electric, social or political.

To be sure, the songs Dylan wrote during his ”conversion to Evangelical Christianity,” are, as the author of this terrific book, Clinton Heylin, has since substantiated : ”[…] in person and in print, the consummate songwriter composed a body of work in the period 1979-81 which more than matches any commensurate era in his long and distinguished career – or, indeed, that of any other twentieth century popular artist.”

There again, the material in question, along with this truly exceptional publication, are about Dylan doing what he essentially does best: being himself; and who else to better assimilate and write about it, than Heylin? A fan, as well as perhaps the most knowledgable of writers on Dylan, who, according to The New York Times, is ”the only Dylanologist worth reading.”

Divided into three prime sections (‘Ain’t Gonna Go To Hell For Anybody,’ Watered-Down Love’ and ‘Outro’) these fourteen chapters make for more than compelling reading, which, as the author makes clear: ”There is more new information in this book than there is in any book published about Bob Dylan, ever, mine included.”

This is not only inspiring to know, but something almost every Dylan fan (or fanatic) will want to clearly, as well as fully investigate.

After all: ”Everything passes, everything changes.”

David Marx

E Street Shuffle – The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band

E Street Shuffle – The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band
By Clinton Heylin
Constable & Robinson – £20.00

Just as Stellas Artois brew great lager and BMW build reliable and fantabulous cars, so Clinton Heylin writes tremendous biographies – rock’n’roll biographies in particular. So much so, that it really is possible to sometimes sink beneath the slipstream waves of such considered writing, and almost feel as if you’re there. Whether it’s in the studio with Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions 1960-94) on stage with Van Morrison (Can You Feel The Silence? – Van Morrison: A New Biography), in the tour bus with The Sex Pistols (Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols) or in the rehearsal room with Fairport Convention (No More Sad Refrains: The Life & Times of Sandy Denny).

Albeit on the periphery, Heylin’s well-honed and more than honest approach to writing, usually invites/enables the reader to enter the private space of his subject, quite a few of whom more often than not shun publicity, Dylan and Morrison in particular; and (t)his highly readable latest offering, E Street Shuffle – The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band is no exception. Although in this instance, it’s the inspiration behind some of the song writing itself, along with the process by which Springsteen often struggles to come to an agreement with his own inner-self, which comes under most scrutiny.

Be it influence: ‘’I lived in a house where there was a lot of struggle to find work, where the results of not being able to find your place in society manifested themselves with the resulting lack of self-worth, with anger, with violence. And as I grew up, I said, ‘Hey, that’s my song’ …I still probably do my best work when I’m working inside of those things, which must be because that’s where I’m connected. That’s just the lights I go by.’’ (‘Kicked Open A Door To Your Mind, 1964-72’); relationships: ‘’My fear of failure always held me back in dealing with people or relationships. I always stopped right before I committed to the place where, if it failed, it would really hurt […]. You meet somebody, you think that they can take away all of your loneliness, when in the end nobody can take away the loneliness. You just hope that you can find somebody maybe that you can share it with.’’(‘The E Street Shuffle, 1981-82’); or recording: ‘’it was Springsteen himself who was responsible for the technical agony and ecstasy… [because he] was astigmatic and short-sighted, a perfectionist who frequently took the long way around simply because he didn’t know the short one.’’’ (‘Growin’ Up,’ 1982-84).

The meticulous research undertaken by the author to chronologically assimilate through the above – a mere tip of the iceberg might I add – is in itself, more than meritorious. But unlike previous Springsteen biographers, Dave Marsh especially – whose own books on he who was born to run, are about as annoyingly obsequious as sticky saccharine writing is allowed to be – Heylin isn’t afraid to pull a few punches and tell it as it is. Or at least as he sees it, of which the following (in relation to Springsteen’s first manager Mike Appel) is a perfect example: ‘’Integrity, a word Springsteen bandied around a lot at this time, did not include honouring contracts, or recognising the key role another had played in his success. Without Appel there would never have been any pot of gold, just summer nights on the shore as an oldies act, like his friend Southside Johnny. But every time the manager offered a compromise solution, he was sent away with a flea in hisear: ‘I told Mayer that I was still willing to give Bruce half the publishing back, retroactive from the first album, but Mayer… said in response, ‘’We want Bruce to have all of his publishing.’’’’ (‘Cashed In A Few Of My Dreams,’ 1975-77).

Admittedly, some readers might be a little put off by the fact that E Street Shuffle fundamentally concentrates on what the author feels is Springsteen and the E Street Band’s unquestionable golden period, the seventies; but if younger fans simply weren’t old enough to have been there, surely it’s impossible to second guess. This, along with a (surprising) mighty howler on page 288 where Heylin writes of the 1969 anti-Vietnam War anthem, ‘War,’ having been written by Edwin Collins (!), when it was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, are to my mind, the only two contentious issues with regards an otherwise relentlessly comprehensive and magnificent read.

David Marx

All The Madmen – Barrett, Bowie, Drake, Pink Floyd, The Kinks, The Who and A Journey to the Dark Side of British Rock.

All The Madmen
By Clinton Heylin
Constable & Robinson – £20.00

What is it with certain rock stars, predominantly English ones at that, that are deliberately drawn to professing they’re a snare drum short of a full drum kit?
In so doing, do they somehow (cryptically) mis-comprehend that it makes them more cool? More interesting? More important? More lavishly idiosyncratic? Or is it more a case of them feeling less likely to be horribly ridiculed – by both fans and critics alike – should they release the repetitive dregs of their long-forgotten years of former fabness?

In other words, should they release pointless pants.

Indeed, madness can quite often come to the aid of many so-called maudlin musicians such as Nick Drake et al, because madness, for all its seemingly kooky sense of diversion, is quite often regarded as something of a sexy smokescreen. A top topic of both crude and complacent conversation, which is honestly analysed and infectiously wrought to bear by one of the world’s leading rock historians, Clinton Heylin in this, his most recent and un-put-down-able book All The Madmen – Barrett, Bowie, Drake, Pink Floyd, The Kinks, The Who and A Journey to the Dark Side of British Rock.

Un-put-down-able for several reasons really: partly because of some of the new light it sheds (particularly in relation to the ever fantastic Peter Green), partly because of some of the author’s pert rawness (especially with regards Roger Waters) and partly because of some of the sheer audacity: ‘‘It would be great for me to be actually mad, [but] I’ve got a terrible feeling that I’m not.’’

Said pathetic words are myopically espoused by none other than Ray Davies of ye Kinks following the disappointing sales of Muswell Hillbillies (what a complete and utterly annoying bell-end cum twat of the highest order).

I’ve worked within the Mental Health Service and it really, really isn’t a lot of fun.

Those who suffer with mental health problems are quite often taken hideous advantage of – socially, financially as well as sexually. They are also abused, ostracised, isolated and are only begrudgingly accepted within the everyday norm of society – a deplorable symptom of madness I should imagine the apathetic Davies knows very little about.

A deplorable symptom of madness which Clinton Heylin touches on quite substantially, especially when quoting R.D. Laing (who in 1960, released the rather inflammatory The Divided self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness): ‘’The [divided] individual in the ordinary circumstances of living may feel more unreal than real; in a literal sense, more dead than alive; precariously differentiated from the rest of the world, so that his identity and autonomy are always in question… He may feel more insubstantial than substantial, and unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable. […]. It is lonely and painful to be always misunderstood, but there is at least from this point of view a measure of safety in isolation… He maintain(s) himself in isolated detachment from the world for months, living alone in a single room… But in doing this, he (begins) to feel he (is) dying inside… (so) he emerge(s) into social life for a brief foray in order to get a ‘dose’ of other people, but ‘not an overdose’… (before) withdraw(ing) again into his own isolation in a confusion of frightened hopelessness.’’

So how dare the likes of Davies, and perhaps to a marginally lesser degree, David Bowie – whose own manager Tony Defries, in referring to Bowie’s half-brother Terry, is herein quoted as saying: ‘’The only thing about Terry’s madness that seemed to be a constant was David’s ability to use it as a public-relations ploy, something he would refer to when he wanted to capture someone’s attention or impress a reporter with ‘’truths’’ about the pain of his existence’’ – tread the murky waters of madness to suit their own (Wretched? Selfish? Financial?) needs?

All the Madmen is a fractious, fabulous and what’s more, truly fascinating read. But then it was written by he whom many refer to as ‘’the only Dylanologist worth reading,’’ so it ought hardly be surprising.

David Marx

Behind The Shades – The 20th Anniversary Edition

Behind The Shades
The 20th Anniversary Edition
By Clinton Heylin
Faber and Faber – £20.00

This 20th Anniversary Edition of Clinton Heylin’s Behind the Shades is a terrific, and at times, mesmerizing read; which ought hardly be surprising considering the author is recognised throughout much of the western world, as perhaps being the leading authority on Bob Dylan He was after all, co-founder of Wanted Man – the British magazine devoted to studying the songwriter’s life, times and work – while for a number for a years, he also edited the news section of its quarterly magazine, The Telegraph. He has also written two exceptionally comprehensive books on artist’s huge collection of work: Revolution in the Air (Vol. 1) and Still on the Road (Vol.2) both of which, really do stand alone amid the ever-increasing pantheon of publications on Dylan.

In other words, the author knows his subject.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Clinton Heylin knows things about Bob that Dylan himself doesn’t even know. A conspirational intrigue that may partially explain why this book succeeds in taking the reader on a thought provoking and undeniably complex journey; a journey best described as Dylan’s vast, colourful and seemingly endless career.

Having just turned seventy, the artist still shows no sign of letting up or slowing down. He recently played shows in Vietnam and China for the first time in his career, both of which garnered as much praise as they did controversy. The latter of which is absolutely nothing new in a career crammed with some form of provocation and altercation.

He is after all, the archetypal song and dance man with something to say.

And boy, doesn’t he say it. With the exception of John Lennon, Dylan says it like no one else ever has. Nor is capable. Of Blood on the Tracks – a veritable masterpiece, my favourite ever Dylan recording and perhaps one of the finest albums ever released, Heylin writes (in the chapter ‘Spring Turns Slowly To Autumn’): ‘’Blood on the Tracks remains not only the central pivot of Dylan’s career but of the rock aesthetic itself. With this album, the man shifted axis. Ten years after he turned the rock & roll brand of pop into rock, a self-conscious, albeit populist, art form, he renewed its legitimacy as a form capable of containing the work of a mature artist. He also gave it a new self-consciousness, just as the linchpins of first-generation rock were coming to the end of their respective streaks of inspiration. The Rolling Stones would never top their four albums from Beggars Banquet through Exile on Main Street, 1968 through 1972; neither Lennon nor McCartney would come close to the quality of Revolver, The White Album, or Abbey Road; Pete Townshend was rock-operaed out after 1973’s Quadrophenia; even David Bowie had concluded his early seventies trilogy of consecutive rock classics.’’

Naturally, not everyone would agree with such sentiment, but Heylin’s words are rather hard to argue with. Depending on viewpoint, Dylan was, and to a degree, still is, somewhat relentless in relation to the quality control of his official recording output. And this from an artist, renowned for not ever wanting to record more than three takes of any particular song.

Moreover, the author goes on to substantiate the above when he writes: ‘’Only Dylan, whose mid-sixties canon was more daunting than all of the above, succeeded in producing an album that stoked up his genius quotient nearly ten years after he was thought to have left it by the roadside. And he had done it by reinventing his whole approach to language. Gone were the surrealistic turns of phrase on Blonde on Blonde, gone was the ‘wild mercury sound’ surrounding those mystical words. In their place was a uniformity of mood, a coherence of sound, and an unmistakable maturity to the voice – as if he had had to make Nashville Skyline, Self Portrait, and New Morning to assimilate those aspects of his voice into a stronger whole. He had never sung better.’’

Again, it’s difficult to disagree with what Heylin has to say here. For a start, the singer really hadn’t sung better. Even today, hearing Dylan sing ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ or ’Idiot Wind’ from said album, still transports me to a place way beyond the ether of artistic evaluation.

Suffice to say, there is so much more to read in Behind the Shades that is of equally candid and considered importance. It truth, it doesn’t get any better (nor captivating nor comprehensive) than this. This book is simply brilliant.

David Marx

Still On The Road

Still On The Road – The Songs of Bob Dylan
Vol. 2: 1974-2008
By Clinton Heylin
Constable – £20.00

Just like the subject upon whom Clinton Heylin so authoritatively and painstakingly waxes lyrical, Still On The Road – The Songs of Bob Dylan Vol. 2: 1974-2008 is as equally complex, charged, involved, in depth, loaded, thrilling, provocative and mesmerising – and that’s before even having reached the eighties!

Following on from where Revolution In The Air left off, this totally engrossing tomb is the essential, if not quintessential thesis (for that is what it fundamentally is) on the mastery of Bob Dylan. It’s everything any serious Dylan fan could ever wish for. It’s also the perfect reference for all musicologists, Dylanologists, and those of an academic persuasion.

As John Somners (RIP), an old Irish friend of mine used to say in relation Samuel Beckett: ‘’you don’t enjoy Samuel Beckett, you study him’ – so too might the same just as readily apply to yer man Zimmerman. But where the Irish playwright was a nerve-rackingly cryptic contender, who simultaneously admitted yet (forever) refused to ever step down from his high wire of literary existentialism, Dylan, as recently as last year, professed: ‘’I’m not a playwright. The people in my songs are all me.’’

Indeed they are, which makes them almost as interesting as the man himself. Hence his simultaneous donning of numerous, questionable hats: from that of Christian proselytizer to radio DJ, jealous lover to tempestuous troubadour, sage like sociologist to unnerving minstrel, musical and historical archivist to whom Allan Ginsberg once referred as ‘’the greatest ever poet.’’

Like the songs themselves, all the aforesaid Dylans and a whole more besides, are wrought and written about in this book, in such a way as to be applauded at the nigh turn of each and every page.

For instance, commenting upon 1974’s ‘Tangled Up In Blue,’ Heylin writes: ‘’He later informed Ron Rosenbaum, ‘I haven’t come to the place that Rimbaud came to when he decided to stop writing and run guns in Africa.’ Which is not what he says in ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ – and I’d rather trust the tale than the artist. The couplet ‘’Then he started into dealing with slaves/And something inside of him died’’ explicitly equates Dylan’s Woodstock period with Rimbaud gun-running in Abyssinia.’’

That the author admits in writing, that he’d sooner ‘trust the tale than the artist,’ is in itself, as defiant a statement as (m)any ever made by Dylan. Although the songwriter coming clean in reference, to not having reached such a pronounced precipice of change as that of the revered French poet, is as equally defiant as it is defensive and perhaps didactic in the extreme.

Similarly, Heylin homes in on Dylan being as equally defiant and didactic some eight years later (shortly after the space shuttle disaster of January 1986) when in Australia, he both defends and prefaces ‘License To Kill’ with: ‘’Here’s something I wrote a while back; it’s all about the space program. I suppose you heard about this [recent] tragedy, right? I don’t need to tell you it really was a tragedy… You see, these people had no business going up there. Like, there’s not enough problems on Earth to solve? So I wanna dedicate this song to all those poor people, who were fooled into going up there.’’

I didn’t know Dylan had ‘’a bee in his bonnet about the space programme, and […] had decided it was time to start waving his arms and banging his drum.’’

Did you? Did anyone?

Perhaps the so-called ‘corny’ couplet: ‘’Man has invented his doom/First step was touching the moon,’’ ought to have been the give away. But then Dylan refers and name checks so many people and places, themes and things, and the variant perplexities of history. So much so, that on many an occasion, his song writing can prove to be something of a smokescreen dalliance, especially when one chooses to take Dylan at his every word, diversion, sub-text and subliminal trajectory.

In a way, the author hints at this, when he later writes: ‘’’License To Kill’ is one eighties work that successfully demonstrates Dylan’s maxim: ‘Songs need a structure, stratagems, codes and stability, and then you hang lyrics on them… [but it is only] when we transfer all that to the stage… [that] all those elements come into play.’ In performance, time and time again, Dylan has transformed this righteous rant into a message-song that compels its audience to sit up and take notice (if not actually adhere to its edicts). And he began its transformation with its first live outing, on Late Night with David Letterman, when he plugged into the song with a conviction last seen when he still carried the Good Book on stage with him.’’

The vast variance, depth and sheer complexity of Dylan’s huge body of work, is, to a certain degree, anchored to that of a somewhat straight-laced, linear and profound understanding when placed in the mercurial hands of Clinton Heylin. In fact, his last two books, strongly suggest that he understands Dylan more than Dylan does himself; which, from an objective and philosophical perspective of standing on the outside looking in – might not be that far removed the centrifugal (literary) truth of the matter.

As such, Still on the Road is an absolutely outstanding and imperative work.

David Marx
www.davidmarx.co.uk