All Along the Watchtower

A serious and great attempt to chronicle and understand Bob Dylan hits the theatres

It comes at you unexpectedly, a rendezvous with the past. With your teenage years and what you were trying to do and achieve, decades ago. And what you loved. Like for instance endlessly singing Bob Dylan songs, buying a harmonica and trying to do the same. And if you could not be Bob, you could always go and see him. In 1978 in Rotterdam. And wondering before going to that concert if Bob would be doing it ‘acoustic’ or ‘electric’ that night. That question however was more or less settled in 1965, but what did we know in those pre-internet days. Yet the latter is the theme of the recently released ‘A Complete Unknown’ a movie that tracks the young, introverted and headstrong Robert Zimmerman as he sets out to conquer the American folk music scene in the early 1960s.

It is rare these days - at least from my perspective - that a movie, its script, its actors, and its music manage to blow you away, but it happened: the Bob Dylan biopic is something else. For me it was also a confrontation with music that impressed me at a time when things like that etch themselves into your young soul. And get this, I have not listened to Bob for some forty years. No playlists, no iTunes, no nothing. Not even a CD in my collection of hundreds. Bob somehow was the only artist that miraculously missed the multiple phased digitization of my record collection. He left me for decades and came back, waltzing in forcefully last week. Like every day Bob is on this week, at home, in the car, on the laptop while working, you name it. All the songs that were once my biggest favourites, and I can still sing them along word for word. As if it was yesterday.

And with it of course comes a deeper dive into the man himself. His life and his body of work in music is probably comparable to what Picasso was for art. An endless journey, searching for meaning and combining it with an almost superhuman level of productivity. And that quest was not an easy one for his friends, family and fans. The movie gives you a great insight into Bob’s incompatibility with the world around him, an unrepentant einzelgänger is probably the best way to describe him.

The gang of friends around him with folk singer Pete Seeger being the most visible in the movie was deep into left-wing politics and social change. Dylan himself was far from interested in all that and that apparently was the real root of the conflict that the movie depicts. Seeger remained an avowed communist until his death, Dylan however kept searching. And so it was that the Jewish born Dylan converted to evangelical Christianity in the late 1970s, something that left many fans confused and wondering. But that wonder haunted Dylan himself and he later somewhat distanced himself from that particular move while still emphasizing his deep religiosity which remained floating and less attached to organized religion. And yes, his Jewish roots influenced a lot of his work, notably the sarcastic but deeply pro-Israel song, “Neighborhood Bully”, here are a few excerpts from it:

The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive
He's criticized and condemned for being alive
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He's wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He's always on trial for just being born
He's the neighborhood bully.

It is from the early eighties, but sadly fitting some forty years on. The kicked in door takes you straight to that fateful day fifteen months ago.

The movie only covers the first four years of his long and illustrious career, but the dive into that era and the way Dylan moved up the ladder quickly is really well done. The sort of movie you keep thinking about weeks and months after you have seen it. Casting Timothée Chalamet as the lead actor portraying and actually singing Dylan was an Oscar worthy move, so watch out for the eventual award night. The nasal voice is something else. You will also get a kick out of Joan Baez (played by Monica Barbaro) with whom Dylan had an affair and their relationship formed the creative inspiration for the song “It Ain’t me Babe”. And it doesn’t stop there in terms of names as Boyd Holbrook takes on the role of the late Johnny Cash who together with Dylan coined the beautiful "Girl from the North Country".

Dylan is a cross-generational phenomenon and he taps into some of our own deepest doubts and emotions. And that is maybe why, in retrospect, he landed into my life as a teenager, stayed there and came back at the right time. The movie is a foundational piece upon which we can learn to understand the man and perhaps ourselves better.

Go see it. Really do it.

Here is a list of the 100 Greatest Dylan songs. It is a fascinating list and surprising to see how they are all ranked. You may know what my favourite Dylan song is the moment the newsletter hit your inbox. Drop yours in the comments.