That wild unknown country where I could not go wrong

I was introduced to the music of Bob Dylan back in 1976 when I  was a sophomore in High School. Up until that point, the soundtrack of my youth had consisted of top 40 radio hits, 50’s rock and roll numbers from the soundtrack of “American Graffiti” and whatever my older brothers and sisters happened to be listening to at the time (Cat Stevens, Carole King, James Taylor, the Beatles and even Alice Cooper).

Then one day, I happened to hear the Dylan song “Hurricane” playing in my brother’s car. It was unlike any music I had ever heard before. The song was rough and unpolished and the words were being shouted out rather than sung. I had a hard time making out all the words to the song and I remember thinking to myself that this guy can’t sing. But the song definitely got my attention and I somehow knew he was saying something important.

Of course, I was vaguely aware of Bob Dylan prior to that event – after all I had read about him in my school History and English books as an influential musician during the 1960’s Civil Rights movement and the author of important songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’“. This only drove me to dismiss him as a character from the past who was not worthy of further attention.

As fate would have it, however, a few months later I was at home, switching between the three television stations that were broadcasting back at that time, when I came upon a CBS special broadcast of a a Live Dylan concert called “Hard Rain“.

This first glimpse of Bob performing live had me mesmerized. There was Bob in an outdoor concert venue, wind blowing and rain falling, head wrapped in a turban, a gypsy caravan of supporting musicians surrounding him, spitting out lyrics telling complex stories about love, anger, regret and redemption. He was like a modern day Homer singing epic ballads about the state of the world and the human condition.

The man I saw on TV that night was a force of nature and I decided I had to learn more about him and his music. The next day I paid a visit to my local record shop to purchase his album “Desire“. I played that record over and over again over the course of the next month – becoming hooked by the songs and marveling at the scope of the topics, the exotic background melodies and the cleverness of the lyrics.

The album was filled with unconventional songs – songs shining a spotlight on societal problems like racial inequality, corrupt legal systems and the struggle between the genders. Other songs delivered keen observations of the human spirit – people struggling with broken relationships, greed, mortality, doom and the vagaries of love and fate. It seemed like no subjects were off limits

Dylan’s sympathetic portrayals of mobsters, criminals and outlaws on the run echoed themes from the folk tradition (like Woody Guthrie’s song “Pretty Boy Floyd” who warned that “some people will rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen“) ; and from Dylan’s own previous work ten years earlier when he observed that  “to live outside the law you must be honest“. Dylan asks the listener to consider that the biggest villains in society are often the rich and powerful who take advantage of a system that protects their wealth and position.

Beyond the song topics was the immediacy of the performance. It is obvious from the first listen that perfection was not the goal of these performances. Emmy Lou Harris who sings backup vocals on many of the songs remarked that she had to learn the songs on the fly in the studio and regretted that she never got a chance to correct some of her mistakes.

Scarlet Rivera, the violin player who provides a haunting background melody to many of the songs, was just an obscure struggling musician who Dylan happened to see crossing a New York City street with her violin while he was on his way to the recording studio. He stopped to speak with her and invited her to play. She had to play songs she never heard before, without the benefit of sheet music, by following along with the other musicians as they played their instruments.

This casual recording process gave the songs a freshness and spontaneity that is lacking compared to the sterility and auto-tuned perfection of most modern recordings. The songs were captured in a moment of magic that could never be reproduced – like catching lightning in a bottle.

It would be impossible for anyone who is a lover of language not to appreciate the richness of the words, the casual inclusion of French, and Spanish phrases, the occasional use of profanity to reinforce feelings of outrage, the clever rhyming patterns (like Mozambique with cheek-to-cheek!) or striking verses like:

The way is long but the end is near
Already the fiesta has begun
The face of God will appear
With His serpent eyes of obsidian

It is not an understatement to state that my discovery of the Desire album when I was young and beginning to form my view of the world changed my life and had a profound influence on the man that I was to become. It led to my lifelong relationship with Dylan’s incredible body of work which has been a comforting companion throughout all the circumstances of my life and powerful medicine to ease the sorrows of my soul.

I don’t know why the album was named Desire. Dylan is not in the habit of explaining what his songs are about or what message he is trying to deliver with them. Instead, like most artists he leaves it up to the listener to determine what the song means to them.

In that spirit, I think the album title was perfect for me because it left that young 16 year old boy with a lot of desires:

• A desire to be a man of substance, to make a difference in the world and to be a force for good.
• A desire to fight injustice and stand up for those on the margins of society.
• A desire to think for myself and not blindly follow the crowd or their leaders.
• A desire to be creative and spontaneous and not worry when what I do is not perfect.
• A desire to seek out truth and not view the world not as black and white but with a lot of shades of gray.
• A desire to find companionship and connection and to love without regret.

To borrow a lyric from the song Isis on the Desire record, Dylan became for me “that wild and unknown country where I could not go wrong“. May each of you find such a place to help you successfully navigate your life journey.