Being Bob Dylan is tough for Dylan too

I have an issue with the title of the latest movie on Bob Dylan – ‘A Complete Unknown’. I understand it focuses on the American singer-songwriter’s early years when he was just starting out to make a mark on the music scene in the early 60s, which is all fine. But the title comes from his 1965 track ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, by which time Dylan was the biggest voice in the popular American culture, or counterculture to be precise. By then he was anything but ‘a complete unknown’. Anyway, the biopic has given me a reason to go down memory lane, which I fondly call ‘Dylan Street’.

The first time I came across Bob Dylan in my music journey, I wasn’t drawn to him instantly the way I got sucked in when I first listened to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, John Denver, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, Black Sabbath…. Metallica.

Often I wondered how a man with only an acoustic guitar and a harmonica could be a force to reckon with in the evolution of rock and roll as a new cultural phenomenon.

I remember I even learnt some of his songs before I could call myself a Dylan fan. I sang ‘Blowing In The Wind’ early in my life, not really knowing the song had been an instrument that helped unleash the angst of a generation against the Vietnam War (‘Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly, before they’re forever banned?’). I didn’t know it had also become an anthem of the civil rights movement (‘Yes, and how many years can some people exist, before they’re allowed to be free?’). No, I didn’t know the power of his songs then, though the words somehow always lingered in my mind.

But as my love for rock and roll grew, I also embraced its history – way back from its origins in the cotton fields of America around the late 19th century where black farmers sowed the seed of the blues in the form of work songs, which later became a big part of the popular black culture.

By 1950s Elvis Presley came along and turned it into a ‘thing’ for the whites too -- and rock and roll was born as a genre. But beyond the genre per se, the words ‘rock and roll’, or simply rock music, also came to signify rebellion, especially youth’s rejection of parents’ choice of music, attitudes and expectations. It is easy to see why and how rock and roll became a vehicle for the counterculture movement that the early 60s witnessed. That is the time Bob Dylan appeared on the scene. He was only 20 when he wrote ‘Blowing In The Wind’.

It was a time marked by anti-authoritarian sentiments among the youth, who were questioning societal norms, political authority, and the conservative values of the previous generation and Dylan’s songs served as a voice for change.

There were bands and artistes, there were blues and jazz musicians and singers, and there were post-Elvis stars in the genre popularised by the King himself. There were the Beatles. But why did the universe pick Dylan? What was it about him that made him a change-bringer?

The Beatles, in their own revolutionary way, were also leading the counterculture movement by rejecting conformist norms and advocating a more open lifestyle. They were rock music’s biggest global phenomenon after Elvis.

Yet, I remember reading, as a college student, how Dylan single-handedly accomplished what the Beatles did as a foursome in taking the voice of rock and roll to society, which had hitherto been reluctant to embrace the new cultural uprising.

A comment on an online forum goes: “The Beatles made everyone want to be in a band. Bob made every band want to write songs that mean something.”

Those early days, when the Beatles gave ‘Love Me Do’, Dylan gave ‘Blowing In The Wind; when the Beatles had ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, Dylan had ‘A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall’; when the Beatles came out with ‘A Hard Day's Night’, Dylan came out with ‘The Times They Are a-Changin'….and so on.

I know I am guilty of attempting to compare two pioneering icons of rock and roll, yet I couldn’t help but notice the weight of the words and the depth of their impact on a changing society. In that regard, Dylan stands unsurpassed and the Nobel Prize is the acknowledgement.

But where is Dylan now? Wars are back and times are bad but where is the voice of change? Can he re-invent himself one last time? Can he deliver another anthem?

As I toyed with the questions, I stumbled into one of his interviews where he revealed he could no longer write the kind of songs that made him a darling of the rock and roll world.

He said: “I don’t know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were like all almost magically written… there’s a magic to that. I did it at one time.”

When asked if he was disappointed that he could no longer write like before, Dylan wistfully replied: “You can’t do something forever. I did it once. I can do other things now but I can’t do that.”

The answer was no longer blowing in the wind.