Rewatching “No Direction Home,” Martin Scorsese’s epic 2005 documentary about Bob Dylan’s early career, requires stamina but is worth it. Not only does it contain dozens and dozens of tracks from his concerts in the early sixties, it contains the most extensive interviews he has ever given as well.
If you love Dylan’s music, which I do, the live footage of his performances is priceless. But whether you like it or not, the way he talks about his life and career bring us as close to an understanding of what we as a generation tried to do collectively as we are ever likely to get.
The unanswerable question is how and why this skinny, scruffy, raspy-voiced poet from Hibbing, MN, emerged at exactly the right place, Greenwich Village and right time, 1961, to issue a series of clarion calls for an entire generation.
He was and is by far our most authentic voice. He wrote and sang like a man possessed of some supernatural ability to channel the emerging spirit of the largest generation of humans to ever crowd our way onto the planet.
Meanwhile, just like many of the rest of us, Dylan has lived out his personal life and his career as a series of acts, changing and adapting to a world that’s never seemed quite as stable as the one our parents envisioned for us. Through multiple marriages and relationships, he’s somehow raised six kids, just like me, while stubbornly staying as far out of the limelight as his superstardom has allowed.
To this day, Dylan’s greatest songs give me chills and make the hair stand up on the back of my neck. His music, more than any other, helps me remember who I am.
Somehow he became us — or we became him — I’m not sure which. Or maybe it’s both.
He doesn’t know either — his modesty is not false. Like he said, he was just a song and dance man. He didn’t try to be a leader or the face of a generation. But he became that anyway and the world is a better place because of it.
Bob Dylan will turn 81 in a couple of weeks.
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TODAY’s LYRICS:
“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”
By Bob Dylan
When you're lost in the rain in Juarez, and it's Easter time too
And your gravity's down and negativity don't pull you
Just don't put on any airs when you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there and they'll really make a mess outta you
Now if you see Saint Annie, please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move, my fingers they are all in a knot
I don't have the strength to get up and take another shot
And my best friend, the doctor, he won't even tell me what it is I've got
Sweet Melinda, the peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English and she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind and careful not to go to her too soon
And she steals your voice and leaves you screaming at the moon
Up on Housing Project Hill it's either fortune or fame
You must pick one or the other, neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly, you better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you, and man, they expect the same
Now all the authorities, they just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms into leaving his post
And picking up Angel, who just arrived from the coast
Who looked so fine at first, but left looking just like a ghost
I started out on Burgundy, but soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they'd stand behind me when the game got rough
Yea, but the joke was on me, there was nobody even at my bluff
I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough
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