Waiting for Self-Portrait

Waiting for Self-Portrait

BOOKS

BOB DYLAN: AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY Tony Scaduto Grosset and Duhlap

For 200 pages this is just what a Bob Dylan biography ought to be. There is everything about Dylan�s life up to his rock period in 1965 except an interview with Hibbing�s Good Humor man, and it�s the best of everything at that. All the people who knew Dylan best make their appearance and speak their piece, from Hibbing�s high school to Minneapolis� Dinkytown to the early Village hangers-on and performers. Sometimes that piece is colored a tawdry shade — by jealousy, time or vengenance but it is comprehensive.

The only persons absent from this portion of the book are Dylan and his ex-manager, Albert Grossman. Grossman because he�s equally as inacessible as Dylan and Dylan because . ... well, he�s writing his own book, you know and other eyes may tell the story with a somewhat larger perspective.

There�s no better topic for a rock book than Bob Dylan, of course, and Tony Scaduto nearly pulls this one off. There is a sense of authority to those first couple hundred pages, and I think it is probably largely justified. If you were wondering what the deal was with Suze Rotolo (the woman on the Freewheelin� cover) or what Dylan did before he came to the village (he played in a lot of obscure Hibbing rock and roll bands, rode motorcycles, hung around Minneapolis with a crew of postbeatniks) what was REALLY going on between Bob and Joan Baez (just about what We all suspected) or even if Dylan was very much like the portrait we are presented in Don�t Look Back (yep!), then this, henceforward, will be the place to turn.

What this Intimate Biography is missing is crucial, however. It�s not really very close to comprehensive, for it misses the most exciting aspect of Dylan�s career, the rock and roll days of 64-67. Those first 200 pages take us up to �65, concluding with a long (maybe too long) interview with Joan Baez; the next six years of Dylan�s life, up to the present, are glossed over irr 64 pages. Unless I miss my guess, this is totally ■ out of proportion, both in terms of the wealth of space devoted to the high school days, when he wasn�t really creating anything at all — save the first myth — and the amount of time spent pondering whether or not he really means it.

As a result,. Robbie Robertson is never quoted, nor is A1 Kooper. Nor is anyone else who played on any of those magnificent rock albums, nor Naomi Saltzman, the public link to Dylan ever since the Grossman split. Worse, there�s no acknowledgement of any attempt to talk to these people, if,, by some odd chance, none of them were willing to comment. One begins to get the suspicion that Scaduto is locked into New York, and that only what people in New York think of Bob Dylan matters: though, in that case, how Tony Glover and Paul Nelson got left out boggles the mind.

The consequences of all this are several, none of them good: Sarah Lowndes Dylan, for instance, becomes a faceless Zen freak with no personality of her own, totally immersed in �caring for� Dylan.

What�s worse, in the long run, is that Dylan�s work is portrayed as that of a poet and a mystic. One would have thought, after all this time, that we had effectively disposed of the former charge: as Ed Ward put it in Rolling Stone�s New Morning review, Dylan�s lyrics are poetry, �if poetry can be a story that must be sent by telegraph.� But one way or another it doesn�t matter that much: even if Dylan is the American Rimbaud, he�s still mostly his own man, and for once one would like to read a lengthy discussion of his work that can allow him his real virtues without sliding off onto any limbs.of classical platitude. Dylan just isn�t a poet, as any one who has ever read his words on paper can attest; they�re not meant for it, so it doesn�t matter, but as a poet he�s pretty poor. It�s sure not what we all loved him for.

As for the allegation that Dylan is a mystic, big deal! All rockandroll stars are cosmic, that�s how you can tell Mick Jagger from Elton John and la-de-da. I find it highly offensive, and even more irrelevant, to presume that everything Dylan did after Another Side was the working out of &ome great psychic allegory.

This all leads us to the point where, in a discussion of New Morning that is all of two pages long, the two most important songs on the album, �Went to See the Gypsy� and �Sign On the Window,� aren�t even mentioned.

This isn�t just rock cnuc mtpicKing, either. There is something very dangerous about those notions of Dylan. For one thing, they set him up on a pedestal above us all, just at the time when he is making his most valiant attempt to rehumanize himself in a pop context. This isn�t an easy job, and to remove him to the never-never world of zen-fed vision is not only unfair, it�s ridiculous.

The reason Dylan seems cosmic (and is) is that his vision was so human;.not super-human, but so totally human. He may have been writing about himself, as Scaduto says he says, but that doesn�t matter. What really matters is that Dylan was speaking in a voice, yes, that came from you and me. And which came to us so clearly because it was about us. Not about psychic pain so much as adolescent anguish, in the highest sense. If Dylan has worked this out differently in his own mind, I don�t even think that really matters, when trying to assess what the man has accomplished. It misses the point.

Dylan was never merely a raucous auteur. He had something he wanted to say to people, and it wasn�t just something about himself, either. No one claims so vast a group of people, and maintains his hold on them for so long, by merely indulging himself in prattling vanity. He never would have gotten away with it. Self-Portrait proves that — despite the fact that criticism of the record is written off here to disgruntled �radicals,� whoever the fuck they are. Ralph Gleason is the only source quoted directly and if he�s a radical, I�m a rutabaga.

Nonetheless, it is a bit unfair to lay waste to Scaduto�s book merely because the last few pages of it are naive and incomplete. For the most part, this book gives a very complete look at Bob Dylan folk-singer. I can�t help that what I�m interested in is Bob Dylan rock and roll star but I sure would like to see someone chronicle that part of the dude�s life. Meanwhile, I�m not that unhappy with this. Just leave room on the shelf for the Autobiography.

And remember, �He did it in Las Vegas and he can do it here.�

Dave Marsh

ROCK FOLK Michael Lydon Dial Press

FEEL LIKE GOING HOME Peter Guralnick Outerbridge & Dienstfrey

THE ROLLING STONE INTERVIEWS Paperback Library

When does the interviewer become PR man? Or vice-versa. It�s depressing how often rock papers, in Britain and in the States, are prepared to let promo men do interviews for them; and equally depressing, how often rock papers use their own staff as no more than blunted prods for star egos.

But then again, if you dig rock stars in exactly the same way that mom, maybe pop too but especially mom, used to go for the kings and queens of Hollywood, these intervieWs that Rolling Stone offers must be nice, better than the Hollywood movie mags used to give mom because instead of reading what a �reporter� .made up in the office about Gable and Harlow and all those, you get what rock stars make up about themselves.

Lucky for you, but depressing for me. I used to like John Lennon when he made as much a joke out of interviews as he did out of making records and singing them or something else or nothing at all on stage. His interview with Jon Cott in the Stone collection was done in 1968, before he had begun to treat interviews as free and public psychiatric sessions, a technique that has made him a natural talk-show man (how long before he is host instead of everybody else�s guest?) but which doesn�t contribute much when transcribed and stretched across all those pages. But even here, when Lennon was relatively straightforward, the interviewer gave more away about himself than Lennon.

I hear that �Strawberry Fields� was written while you were sitting on a beach alone. Sadly, John answered it seriously, but he was better later on:

A critic has written about A Day in the Life of� as a kind of miniature �Waste Land. �

�Miniature what?� asked John.

Eliot�s �The Waste Land.�

�I don�t know that. Not very hip on me culture you know.�

That�s nice, and so is:

Is there anybody else you�ve gotten something from musically (besides Dylan).

�Oh millions. All those I�ve mentioned before — Little Richard, Presley.�

Anyone contemporary?

�Are they dead?�

Are they dead? That might be some kind of subtitle to the collection. Little Richard, more or less alive, is interviewed, after a fashion. This time it�s David Dalton who �asks�:

One of the differences between the rock audience today and in the fifties is drugs . . .

This comes after long explanations of how Little Richard came to write several songs that were actually written by other people, and how his career started in 1955: no discussion at all about records he made from 1950 onwards. The transcription has him saying �shut up� all over the place, as if he camps non-stop. Yet I�ve seen him talk for a couple of hours without ever lapsing into his show-biz image.

There�s a saying that an interview is as good as the questions, but that�s only partly true; it also depends on the intelligence and insight of the person being asked the questions, and on how the final material is presented. The Rolling Stone interviews too often fall flat because ill-considered questions are answered too casually and are apparently reproduced with no editing at all. I understand that quite a bit of cutting is in fact done, but what�s needed is a context for the interview, some kind of theme that the reader can hang on to and follow, so that the material builds up to a full character portrait.

Frank Zappa, Phil Spector, Pete Townshend and John Lennon come across anyway, because their perceptions are so clear, but even here the pictures are by no means as complete as they should have been. Compare any of them with Michael Lydon on Chuck Berry, or Peter Guralnick on Robert Pete Williams, and the laziness of the Stone approach is harder than ever to accept.

Michael and Peter actually did some research on their subjects, backing up the impressions of their experience with enquiry into areas that radio, press, and TV had distorted or ignored. Both writers understand that the performer is not always the-one who can give most insight or information about his art, success, effect. And they also realise that their own questions might not be so perfectly tuned to the mind of the performer that they should transcribe the interview literally as it happened.

They make an art out of the interview, creatively distorting the reality of what was said in order to represent the person more truly.

I cried as I read the Carl Perkins chapter in Michale Lydon�s book. Admittedly, the story is extreme, even by the incredible standards of American show business: the down home country boy has a freak hit, a million seller that gets him a trip to New York, and just as he seems ready to make the big time he has a car crash that puts him in hospital and out of action for months. He never has another hit. But where Stone writers would tend to be cynical or wry about such a story, �now ain�t life tough at the top,� Michael puts himself out of sight and lets Carl come to the front; he�d never speak ten pages of continuous narrative, but that�s the only way the story could work.

Chuck Berry wouldn�t talk to Michael Lydon. (He wouldn�t, or at least didn�t, talk to Stone either, but Greil Marcus transcribed a public lecture — questions-and-answer session — and used it instead.) But if he was discouraged or dismayed, Michael didn�t let Chuck�s silence stop him; instead, the confrontation between them holds the piece together, and it�s difficult to see that anything Chuck might have said could have added to the picture.

The portraits of B.B. King and Smokey Robinson are inevitably restricted to the professional fronts those two men put on for us, but at least the interview material relates to what they did on record (in contrast, to Stone�s Little Richard interview), while those of Janis Joplin and the Qrateful Dead go some way towards explaining the inperson appeal of performers whose stage act had much more impact and �meaning� than their records. So does the last, long chapter on the Rolling Stones, but somehow it doesn�t go far enough. The feeling that comes off the pages is that the overall impact of the Stones cannot be explained by looking -at what apparently makes up their act, by transcribing the lyrics, describing the music, portraying the five people in the group, picturing the things they do on stage. What it comes down to is, they behave like stars and people treat them like stars; by definition, they are stars. It doesn�t matter what they do, because whatever they do, they are stars doing it. But I don�t think the chapter works very well, maybe because it�s impossible to pin down the aura with analysis and an overall picture. (I can�t resist the heretical suggestion that it is impossible because there isn�t as much there as so many people, Michael evidently included, want to believe is there.)

Peter Guralnick�s book, subtitled Portraits in Blues & Rock �n � Roll, escapes (evades?) such problems by dealing with people whose talent is beyond doubt, and making his own attitude toward them and their work very clear. Pursuing people and subjects he is personally interested in, Peter is never caught in the interviewer�s trap of trying to represent an abstract readership who may be more or less ignorant, innocent, stoned, snobbish, hungry for gossip, or awed than he is. He takes care at every, step to explain how he became interested in various general forms of music, and what it was that attracted him about the particular performers he chooses to focus on — old blues singers such as Skip James and Robert Pete Williams, younger ones including Muddy Waters and Johnny Shines, and their southern white counterparts, Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Rich.

Because he lives so close to the music of these men, Peter�s judgements somehow seem reliable. I had never listened to Robert Pete Williams, but after reading the chapter on him I borrowed a couple of LP�s from a friend and listened. I haven�t yet heard what Peter says is there, but I�ll keep listening. And that is really all I can ask of a writerabout-music, that he leads me into people whose records I had ignored, not appreciated, never heard of. The Rolling Stone interviews scarcely ever have that function; I�d like to hear Johnny Thunder�s �I�m Alive,� which Dylan tells Jann Wenner was �the one thing happening on the current scene that strikes (him) as good,� and after reading the interview with Booker T and the M.G/s, I went back to some of the Stax and Atlantic hits to listen to instruments and phrases I hadn�t noticed. But too often, those interviews don�t turn into the music enough, whereas Feel Like Going Home is focused clearly on it.

A chapter on Sun records reveals nothing new, quoting from too many already familiar sources, and another on Chess is inadequate because Peter doesn�t find anybody who will tell him about the recording sessions in the 50�s. But chapters on Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Rich simultaneously establish the greatness of each man and explain why neither has managed to get as far as several people with substantially less native ability (Presley, Tom Jones, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash). Integrity, the grit that would tear show biz apart if it were allowed to get too deeply into the system.

Try this: read first Feel Like Going Home, and then Rock Folk, listening to appropriate music as you go along. Then take two copies of The Rolling Stone Interviews, scissors, and paste, and reshape the material, throwing away misleading or irrelevant stuff and substituting necessary comments on the records of the people being interviewed. Welcome to the gang, you�re a rock writer. Not a minute too soon because Peter Guralnick just announced his retirement at the end of his book, in a passage which must represent the thoughts of quite a few others in the trade:

�In the course of doing this book I became aware of two things. First, that my enthusiasm for the music continued unabated. And second, that I would have to stop writing about it if I wanted it to remain so. I consider this chapter a swan song, then, not only to the book but to my whole brief critical career. Next time you see me I hope I will be my younger, less self-conscious and critical self. It would be nice to just sit back and listen to the music again without a notebook always poised or the next interviewing question always in the back of (my) mind.�

Charlie Gillett

GRAPEFRUIT Yoko Ono Simon and Shuster

�Criticism is to artists what ornithology is to birds.� — Barney Newman. But we do need suggestions on how to see, for so much of our life is spent learning how not to see.

Why did a great rock musician find such affinity for the work of a concept artist? Because, like rock, Yoko�s art is basically sensual. �Concept� art is only one of many misleading labels making the rounds (into squares). The word �concept� is supposed to distinguish it from art as an artifact — like a painter�s painting — the complete work is on the canvas. In concept art the work is not complete out in space; it is primarily active somewhere else. The word �concept� leads us to believe that it�s active in the head, but that�s not completely true. Yoko�s art exists in the eye, the ear, all the organs of touch, including imagination (the ultimate embrace).

The theory behind Grapefruit is expressed, nicely enough, behind Grapefruit, at the end of the book, in two Zen poems (or in the spaces between them):

The body is the BodhiTree The mind like a bright minor standing Take care to wipe it all the tune And allow no dust to cling. (Shen-hsiu)

There never was a Bodhi Tree Nor bright minor standing Fundamentally, not one thing exists So where is the dust to cling? (Hui-neng)

On the subject of mirrors, Yoko writes:

Instead of obtaining a minor, obtain a person. Look into him. Use different people. Old, young, fat, small, etc.

Objects exist in Yoko�s work mostly as objects of wonder. Sensations of the body or the mind — the connections we call feelings — are the first focus of a child�s attention. We can never be sure of much more.

TOUCH POEM

Give birth to a child. See the world through its eye. Let it touch everything possible and leave its fingermark there in place of a signature.

�You can feel yourself thinking,� the poet Tom Clark writes, �but can you think yourself feeling?� The art exists not only in being but in doing. Participation. Participation is what artists do in their own work; Yoko�s instructions allow people who don�t usually make art to make it.

There is more to it, of course. And less. Much of it is fanciful, like the title, �Grapefruit.� John liked the word, too; he had a group named after it and put it in a song. That was before we knew about John and Yoko. John must have felt incredibly close to Yoko right away to put her name in a song about his mother — on the white album, �Julia� contains Yoko�s name translated — �ocean child.�

She is. But the kind of fancy that latches onto the sound and feeling of Grapefruit can be important to people — having something, even something silly, that may mean all kinds of unarticulated but emotionally cohesive things can be a link of intuitive levels of being and awareness that is substantial. Maybe they feel, or felt, about �grapefruit� as I felt about Toothpaste, or some friends of mine did about doorknob.

�I think it�s nice to return to having many different arts,� Yoko writes. Or, as John Cage puts it apropos criticism, �They ask what the purpose of art is? . . . Say there were a thousand artists and one purpose, would one artist be having it and all the nine hundred and ninety-nine others be missing the point?� Sometimes it�s difficult to search through media crosscurrents and cement interpretations to get at something on its own terms; so difficult that we often want to be guaranteed it�s worth it before starting. Just start. Take Grapefruit as it comes. A fruit — enjoy it. Sweet and tangy? Silly, absurd, enlightening, these pieces, paintings, events and films are strategems to get ourselves to feel again, to play, to discover. So loosen up. Squirt yourself with the juice. Maybe you�ll have a good time.

William Kowinski

INSIDE DOPE Marvin Slobodkin Dutton

No, this book doesn�t tell you anything about narcotics. It�s a poor attempt by some Berkeleyite who�s scared that he�s thirty to satirize the Sixties by half-heartedly �proving� they were staged, or that�s what he says at the beginning. The theme is never developed.

�Most of the (VDC) crowd went home that night, but the next day there were still a few thousand left and even now there are some like me still circling around Berkeley.�

And how.

Ed Ward

ERRATA

In Arnie Passman�s review of How A Satirical Editor Became A Yippie Conspirator, in the January issue, two misstatements (our fault, not his) need correction: The Realist was founded in 1958, not 1968, as published. Even worse, we have misidentified Krassner�s radio show producer as John Tartar. Her name is really Joan Tartar and to both Ms. Tartar, and Mr. Passman, We apologize. You know?