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S GREILMARCU
YOU AIN'T 60IN' NOWHERE
THE BASEMENT TAPES
the 1960's defining anthems in "Blowin' In The
Wind". But it's the rage-filled "Masters of War'’ that
seems to predict America's prolonged involvement
in the Vietnam war. "Bob Dylan's Dream" waves a
reluctant goodby to the past while "Don't Think
Twice, It's All Right" suggests you never look back.
5) Blood on The Tracks (1975) An album full of
loss and bitterness usually doesn't make for a No. 1
record. But Blood On The Tracks was not only a
commercial success _ it also showed Dylan creating
an album that rivaled his greatest work of the
1960s. "Idiot Wind" is perhaps his most bitter song
on relationships, while "Tangled Up In Blue" and
"Simple Twist of Fate", with the lines 'People tell
me it's a sin/ to know and feel too much within/ I
still believe she was my twin/ but I lost that ring"
speaks volumes about a disintegrating
marriage/relationship.
6) Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964) After The
Times They Are A Changin' album, Dylan released
Another Side, which went beyond the straightfor
ward political protest of the work that preceded it.
Although "Chimes of Freedom" is direct, the goofy
"All I Really Want To Do" and the comical yet on-
target "Motorpsycho Nightmare" show Dylan grow
ing more and more creative with his words.
7) Blonde on Blonde (1966) Double albums usu
ally reek of self-indulgence, but Blonde on Blonde
maximizes the four sides it's sprawled on like no
other double ever has. Although guitarist Michael
Bloomfield is no longer in service, Dylan extended
the Highway 61 vibe, albeit more loosely, over the
course of the record, which culminates in the 14-
minute "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". The oft-
misunderstood and misleading "Rainy Day Women
#12 & 35" opens the album on a convoluted note,
but it's tunes like "Obviously Five Believers",
"Visions of Johanna" and "Most Likely You Go Your
Way (and I'll Go Mine)" that makp Blonde on Blonde
so powerful.
8) Before the Flood (with the Band, 1974) Live
albums are usually just a way to bilk fans, but
Before the Flood is a different matter entirely.
Surprisingly, what really makes the album worth
having lies on side three. Accompanied with only an
acoustic guitar, Dylan rips through "Don't Think
Twice It's Alright", "Just Like A Woman" and "It’s
All Right Ma I'm Only Bleeding" like a man pos
sessed. Truly one of the greatest performances ever
recorded.
9) Oh Mercy (1989) After the throwaway Down
in the Groove in 1988, it looked like Dylan had just
plain lost interest in music, but with the help of
Daniel Lanois, Dylan created an album that not only
sounded current but seemed to renew his creative
spark. On such cuts as "Political World" and
"Everything Is Broken" Dylan's trademark commen
tary had lost none of its potent sting.
10) Nashville Skyline (1969) Hints of a country
influence flowed throughout John Wesley Harding.
which preceded Nashville Skyline, but Dylan went
totally country with the latter. Some have dismissed
Nashville as a lark, but his duet with Johnny Cash
on "Girt From the North Country" and "To Be Alone
With You" should be enough to convince anyone
that this album wasn't a joke. Nashville Skyline
wasn't as cerebral as some of his previous work, but
Dylan still ended the decade with a great record.
Bruce Folkerth
If Invisible Republic also lures readers into
revisiting the original audio sources noted here,
especially The Basement Tapes, one of the
stranger rock recordings of 1960s, then maybe
it has done its job. But those readers will prob
ably find more egg-sniffing drunkards on those
old. weird discs than jeremiads for a fractured
American promise.
Richard Faosset
Longtime Dylanophile Greil Marcus is. in a
sense, the Bob Dyian of rock criticism: his work
has single-handedly raised the bar for a tradi
tionally low-brow genre, infusing it with wordy
intelligence, passion, and an unparallelled
sense of history and context.
Few works have made a more lucid argu
ment for taking rock ‘n’ roll seriously than
Marcus' Mys'ery Train (1975). His real tour de
force, however, was 1989's Lipstick Traces A
Secret History of the 20th Century, a mad attempt
to limn the antecedents of punk rock's anti-poli
tics, which meant exploring long-dormant
streams of fringe consciousness — from the
Paris Commune of 1871 to the Zurich Dadaists
of 1916 to the French Situationists of the late
1950’s, whose rallying cry "Think globally, act
locally," has, strangely, been adopted by
Clinton Democrats, national newspaper chains
and hippie bumper-sticker manufacturers
across the land.
Marcus has attempted something similar in
Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes.
to less satisfactory effect. This time around.
Marcus seeks to put the fabled 1967 recordings
by Dylan and The Band — oft-bootlegged,
never meant for release, but finally issued.in
part, on Columbia in 1975 — into the greater
context of a secret American history.
For Marcus, this means invoking Melville.
Hawthorne. Massachusetts Bay Colony
Governor John Winthrop. even the Susan
Smith, the housewife who rolled the car con
taining her two young sons into a South
Carolina pond in 1995.
It sounds intriguing, but the point or points
of Marcus’ endeavor are rather hazy. Marcus is
at his best when he simply shows what records
influenced Dylan — like the recently re-
released. 6-Ip Anthology of American Folk Music
from 1952 — and demonstrates how the half-
baked and crooked characters that meander
through The Basement Tapes are akin to the
Stack-O-Lees and Frankie and Johnnies of tradi
tional American music. The argument is that
The Basement Tapes are a take on an “old.
weird America" pregnant with "allusion" to “a
secret everybody already knows."
But exactly how the lyrics of The Basement
Tapes, many of which Marcus himself admits
characters (while not really getting at what
“bonds" were there in the first place), thus pre
dicting the fractured American polity of the
1990s, where “the quest for a single social
body" is no more.
For Dylan fans familiar with the Basement
Tapes and the Vaudevillean, surrealist goofs
who populate them — like the drunken narra
tor of “Please. Mrs. Henry" who admits to “snif
fin’ too many eggs." or the pus-nosed hero of
“Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread" who rides
the bus with his trusty comic book — many of
Marcus’ pronouncements will probabiy seem a
bit of a stretch at least, or at worst, poor schol
arship.
Still, as with Lipstick Traces, there are
enough unexpected and provocative passages,
as well as name- and idea-checks, to keep much
of the book readable, even as one realizes that
the work as a whole ain’t going nowhere. When
Marcus writes that it is "the insistence that the
singer is singing his or her own life" that "sepa
rates the song., from the ballad." it's hard not to
reflect on the current “narrative distance"
defense of gansta rap, the recent violent deaths
of two of the genre's leading artists, and the
Stack-O-Lee-style folklore that’s already being
built around them. And the summary of civil
rights worker Casey Haydet.'s account of her
days In the SNCC (from the Summer/Fall 1988
issue of the periodical Witness), with her pithy
declaration. "Our side lost. But we were right."
makes one want to drop Invisible Republic and
go right to the original source.
10 SHOTS OF LOVE
The definitive (er, right)
Zimmerman best-of list
When you're dealing with an artist who has
recorded as many brilliant albums as Bob Dylan, it's
pretty difficult to come up with ten albums that
constitute his best work. I know some people might
disagree with my selections, but I'd argue that that
is what lists are meant to do anyway.
1) Bringing It All Back Home (1965) Dylan's
move from acoustic to electric guitar elicited cries
of "Judas!" from folk purists, but Dyian has never
been about playing it safe. Simply put. Dylan has
never put so many great songs on one album. Side
one features the character study "She Belongs To
Me" and the hysterical "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream.
The unbelievable quartet of "Mr. Tambourin jn",
"Gates of Eden", It's Alright Ma (I'm Only
Bleeding)," and the closer "It's All Over Now, Baby
Blue" make up side two. The album never lets up.
With Bringing It All Back Home Dyian single-hand
edly raised pop music's stakes.
2) Highway 61 Revisited (1965) Dylan’s second
album of blasphemous electric guitar courtesy of
the late Michael Bloomfield. Besides featuring his
biggest hit in "Like A Rolling Stone". Highway 61
also offers the biting "Pallad of a Thin Mai." and
what might be Dylan's greatest song, "Desolation
Row"
3) John Wesley Harding (1967) Considering
Dylan had released Bringing It All Back Home,
Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde in
less than 14 months, the 19-month wait for John
Wesley seemed like an eternity for Dylan fans. After
recovering from a near-fatal motorcycle accident,
that many people dispute e/er happened, Dylan
turned away from the direct feel of Blonde on
Blonde toward a quieter, albeit still restless, set of
songs. There's a soothing beauty to "The Ballad of
Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" while "All Along the
Watchtower" influenced fellow great Jimi Hendrix to
come up with his own unique version.
4) The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963) With his
second album, Dylan created his first masterpiece.
Showing tremendous growth from his first album,
which featured mostly covers. Dylan wrote one of
INVISIBLE
REPUBLIC
BOB DYLAN'S BASEMENT TAPES
Invisible Republic
Bob Dylan’s
Basement Tapes
by Greil Marcus
Henry Holt/ 438 pp.
$22
are “nonsensical."
relate to the author’s
later lament for the
loss of "a single
social body" in
America as evi
denced in Clarence
Thomas' dissenting
opinion in the US.
Term Limits v.
Thornton decision,
is, well, not very
clearly expressed.
In the song
“Tears of Rage." the
author sees
a story that can no
longer be told
The Declaration of
Independence
itself is like a
rumor. as if
Jefferson's decla
ration of an irrevo
cable breach between past and future,
mother country and colonies, parent and
child, has erased itself...
and so on. arriving at the conclusion that this
one song — which mentions the Declaration of
Independence, but that’s about it — dissolves
all social “bonds" among the Basement Tapes'
OCTOBER B, 1997
