Book Review by Sam Schraeger
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SONG by BOB DYLAN (Simon
& Shuster)
Before I get
into this review, I have to confess something. Bob Dylan is now, and has always
been, my favorite songwriter. The lyrics he put together are magical to me.
Desolation Row
may be the best song ever written, followed by several other Dylan songs, like
Highway 61 Revisited, Like a Rolling Stone, All Along the Watchtower and so
many others.
But I digress.
In this book,
Dylan takes a deep dive and looks at several songs in detail, 66 songs, in
fact.
I must
digress once more to add that Dylan did not choose to review one Jimi Hendrix
song for some reason. I bring this up because it is pretty well-known that
Dylan loved whenever Hendrix did his songs, most notably All Along the
Watchtower and the live version of Like a Rolling Stone, performed at Monterey
Pop in 1967. When I first saw what this book was about, I thought surely
Hendrix would be included. Alas, no.
Dylan started working on this
book in 2010, according to the “about the author” feature at
the end of the book.
Mr. Dylan
obviously had a lot of fun writing this book. He got to put words together as
only he can about one of his favorite subjects, songs.
And he got to say whatever he wanted to say, in his own inimitable style.
This is a wonderful tour through Dylan’s universe of his favorite songs.
It is an amazing exploration as he explains why he thinks these songs have
something powerful and amazing in them.
The songs
themselves, considered modern by the title of this book, actually go back as
far as to Stephen Foster in the 1800s. Well, that is fairly modern, I guess.
In describing
Elvis Costello, he says, “Elvis is one of those guys whose fans fall somewhere
between the two poles of passion and precision. There are people who check off
the boxes of his life with the same obsession of someone completing a train
schedule, while others don't know anything beyond the fact that he sings a song
that accompanied a particularly devastating breakup.”
Here's another
snippet: “There's a lot of people in Little Richard’s songs, all the
stereotypes; Uncle John, Long Tall Sally, Mary and Jenny, Daisy, Sue and
Melinda. They're all slipping by in the shady world of sex and dreams and
giving you a run for your money.”
Also: “The only
reason money is worth anything is because we agree it is.”
And: “A record is so much better
when you can believe it.”
Additionally:
“The thing about being on the road is you're not bogged down by anything, not
even bad news. You give pleasure to other people and you keep your grief to
yourself.”
One of the things
that draws me into this book is that, while Dylan is analyzing each of the 66
songs, he is doing each one in a way there's personal, each analysis is a short
story. He’ll say something like, “You come home, you're tired, she wants to
fight, you just wanna sleep.”
The story he
often tells is not how you originally thought of that song, but so often it
makes so much sense. You see a whole new dimension you hadn't thought of
before.
The man can express himself!
For example, “Desire fades but
traffic goes on forever.”
And: “Being a
writer is not something one chooses to do. It's something you just do and
sometimes people stop and notice.”
Also: “Anyone
who has hunted with a shotgun will tell you, you might enjoy the rabbit, but
you're gonna spend a certain amount of time biting down on buckshot.”
In addition to
the lessons Dylan gives us about the songs themselves, he often takes a detour
to give us a history lesson, as he does when he reviews Black Magic Woman,
which was done by Santana in 1970. We find out about the script writer Leigh
Bracket in a two page aside before being brought skillfully back to the topic
at hand, which Dylan does masterfully several times in this book.
Sometimes, he
makes a short comment on a song, a few paragraphs that leave you wondering, and
other times he goes on for several pages, giving his ideas of the origin of the
song, the songwriter and the singers and he passes on some obscure facts that
liven up the reviews.And, of course,
he makes several comments such as, “There is nothing scarier than someone
earnest in a delusion.”
The book is also replete with
many pictures, some photographs of the singers, others representations such as
ads for shoes when he reviews Blue Suede Shoes. There are a good selection of
these and they are a nice enhancement to Dylan's writing.
In this book, as
in his songs, Bob Dylan takes us on a dizzying journey into his vision of the
universe, this time as it relates to songs.
And, as usual, it is well worth
the trip. Get your copy by clicking here.
ANOTHER REVIEW:
The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan
Book Review by John Krieg:
In
many ways this book reveals more about Bob Dylan by
inference than anything ever directly written.
In short, this is rarified
air from the mountain top. Drink it in,
hold it until your lungs are about to burst, and then revel in the high. Drugs such as this don’t come around very
often.
The predominately first-person narrative, aimed
directly at you lets you know that Dylan is on to you. That’s
intuition on steroids, and he lays it on thick. Personally, I’m humbled and
terrified that he seems to know me better that I know myself, or at least that
part of myself that I’ll admit to. Dylan draws back the curtain before we are
ready to perform and the audience learns more at that moment than we could ever
act out in front of them.
The selection of the 66 songs he profiles is
staggering and surprising. He skips
around with the dates with a lot of time spent in the fifties when he was just
beginning to evolve into his expansive world view.
Sifting through his snippets of admiration and tidbits
of nuanced advice here are just a few of his illuminations on the art of song
writing:
“Knowing
a singer’s life story doesn’t particularly help your understanding of a song.
Frank Sinatra’s feelings over Ava Gardner allegedly inform “I’m a Fool to Want
You,” but that’s just trivia. It’s what a song makes you feel about your own
life that’s important.”
“A
serial killer would sing this song. The lyrics kind of point toward that.
Serial killers have a strangely formal sense of language and might refer to sex
as the art of making love.”
“Rock
and roll went from being a brick through the window to the status quo —from
actual leather-jacketed greaseballs making rockabilly records to Kiss belt
buckles sold in mall stores, to Thug Life press-on tattoos. The music gets
marginalized as the bean counters constantly recalibrate the risk-to-reward
ratio of public taste.”
Dylan
is most definitely having fun here: lock the editors out of the room, and let
it rip like Kerouac did when he taped pages together so that they would flow
like a torrent through his typewriter and not interrupt his unencumbered stream
of consciousness. A perfect example of Dylan’s still freewheeling riffing would
be his profiling of the song “Pancho and Lefty” as written by Towne’s Van Zandt
and sung by Willie Nelson and Merl Haggard:
“…The
worst thing about a song like “Pancho and Lefty” is that it put enough money in
Towne’s pocket for him to poison himself.
He died on New Year’s Day. Just
like his idol Hank Williams had forty-four years earlier.”
“Willie
Nelson could, as they say, sing the phone book and make you weep – he could
also write the phone book …”
“The
underclass (the Honest World), the downtrodden peasants, are scared shitless of
the ruthless Pancho. He squeezes them for all they’re worth, and makes them suffer. Lefty is some kind of backstabber. Both these guys are nonconformist
thieves. The aristocratic establishment,
the upper-class landowners, are too strong for them, and the lower classes have
nothing much worth stealing, so they attack the middle class, taking advantage
of and exploiting their false values, materialism, hypocrisy, and insecurities…”
“Pancho
and Lefty. Two reflections of each
other. Neither of these guys thought
about how to make a successful exit.”
The
Philosophy of Modern Song is an exhilarating and no-holds-barred romp into the
world of the song writer, into the minds and craftsmanship of those who are in
reality the true poets of these chaotic and tempestuous modern times. The songwriters, performers, and subjects are all tied up in a tidy little bow masterfully drawn tight by a man that is at least their equal and their sympathizer. This book grabs your attention quicker
than nails on a chalkboard and hits harder than a cattle prod enema. Long live
Bob Dylan, and God bless him.
Get your copy by clicking here.
Other Books by Bob Dylan:
Click on book covers for more info. . .
Other Writings by Sam Schraeger: