Monday morning and again that evening, I dropped the needle into the pickup groove of “Fallen Angels,†listening, for the 10th or 15th time, to 75-year-old Bob Dylan sing “Young at Heart.â€
As the album played, I picked up the musty old paperback of “On the Road with Bob Dylan,†Larry “Ratso†Sloman’s 1975 account of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder tour, and read a chapter or two.
Next, I set to thumbing through “Chronicles: Volume 1,†Dylan’s partly truth and partly fiction memoir, casting about to find something fresh and perhaps enlightening to write about him.
Then I came upon this:
“Bob Dylan will never be solved, and I am not here to solve him.â€
That’s the opening line from Chris Morris in his new book, “Together Through Life: A Personal Journey with the Music of Bob Dylan.†It’s also one of the most honest statements ever made about the man who battles with The Beatles and Elvis for the title of the most-written about artist ever.
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“Solving†Dylan, you see, is an impossibility, in part because Dylan has spent the last 54 years refusing all efforts to pin him down or define him in any way.
That means, as Morris, a longtime music journalist, points out that Dylan's as likely to lie as tell the truth in his rare interviews and has constantly changed -- with his music and image.
“Among his breed, he is the great sleight-of-hand artist, a sly and slippery Melvillean confidence man and shape shifter, a man possessing an obsession with privacy so extreme that he hid the existence of two wives and at least one daughter from the public,†Morris writes.
So what we’re left with isn’t Dylan himself, but the music -- and pivotally, our relationship to it. For Morris, that relationship is largely defined by Dylan’s albums, from 1962’s self-titled debut, the only album he didn’t hear roughly as it came out, through “Fallen Angels.â€
The book is a series of short essays about each album, triggered by the release of a boxed set of all Dylan’s recordings a few years ago. Some of the essays are traditional reviews. Some blend in live observations and some detail Morris’ life in relationship to the music that, in a couple cases, seems to have saved him.
For those who come to Pinewood Bowl Wednesday, that relationship will be with Dylan’s live performances, whether it is the initial Dylan concert experience or the 10th or 20th.
One thing that is certain about Wednesday’s show -- the music and image that Dylan presents will be far different than the Haymarket Park show in 2010, his last Lincoln appearance.
Back then, Dylan played familiar songs far differently than the recorded version mode, for example, messing with the phrasing of “Lay Lady Lay†to the point that, try as it would, the audience couldn’t sing along with the chorus.
That was before “Tempest,†his 2012 masterwork, and “Shadows in the Night†and “Fallen Angels,†his explorations of tunes from the Great American Songbook, most of which were previously sung by Frank Sinatra and, as Morris wisely points out, music Dylan would have grown up hearing.
Not surprisingly, Dylan’s done a bunch of the pop standards in his California shows last week, with a handful of “Tempest†tunes and just a couple of his songs from the ‘60s and only one from the ‘70s.
That’s pretty much a guarantee that the Lincoln show won’t be a greatest hits affair in any way, shape or form. But that’s the only indicator of what is to come.
Over the decades, I’ve seen Dylan shows that have been wretched -- a date with the Grateful Dead was especially awful, and his Nebraska State Fair show with, in Morris’ dead-on term, “a trio fronted by G.E. 'Guitar Enema' Smith†wasn’t much better.
Some shows have been so-so. His 2007 CenturyLink Center show that was opened by a superb Elvis Costello was boring but not bad. And some have been weird; the 1980 Orpheum Theater performance of songs from “Slow Train Coming,†his Christian album, tops that list.
And I’ve seen some brilliant performances, at Pershing Auditorium, at the Lied Center for Performing Arts and its sister Lied Center in Lawrence, Kansas, and at the old Omaha Civic Auditorium and at Haymarket Park.
I may have been alone in enjoying some of those performances. I long ago embraced Dylan’s twists and turns, quirks and changes, taking him as a theatrical performer not concerned about altering his source material or anything resembling perfection.
The latter, of course, includes his notorious raspy vocals. Dylan would have never been a candidate for “American Idol’ or “The Voice.†But to claim that he can’t sing is to say that you don’t listen.
Just drop the needle anywhere on “Fallen Angels†and hear him interpreting the old songs with sly, revealing precision. That’s true singing from a musician inhabiting the song, not just replicating notes with perfection.
Wednesday at Pinewood Bowl, those interpretations will be heard live, another step in the ever-changing journey with Dylan and his music.