-- By Tom Phillips
If you've ever wondered about the mysterious reverence people born in the 1940s and 50s have for their contemporary Bob Dylan, you owe it to yourself to see Martin Scorsese's Bob Dylan Story -- "The Rolling Thunder Revue." This is Dylan and his crew at their most intense and powerful -- calling out the changes in America and actually making them happen. To see Bobby drop everything in mid-tour, visit the falsely convicted boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in prison, pound out the story of the Hurricane, convince CBS Records executives to put it out, and then sing it in closeup with his teeth clenched, eyes flashing, face masked in white, trading lines with the sphinx-like fiddler Scarlet Rivera, locked in to a song of howling protest -- ashamed/ to live in a land where justice is a game! --and then to see the delight on Rubin Carter's face, his amazed satisfaction with this eloquent new not-guilty plea, is to see what art in America is capable of.
The film is a documentary pastiche by a master film-maker, who weaves together footage of the sprawling, galactic bus tour with news clips from 1974, 75 and 76 -- mixed up chronologically but seamless artistically. We see Richard Nixon resign, and Gerald Ford become president, and then the target of two assassination attempts within a month. We see the face of a wacked-out Charles Manson follower after she fired the gun -- a face weirdly similar to some wacked-out people on Dylan's tour.
The tour was weird, but pointed in the right direction. Driving the bus himself, gestating lyrics as he sat silently at the wheel, Dylan took it not to the big arenas the promoters wanted, but to gritty places like Providence, R.I. where he picked up a teenage groupie -- Sharon Stone -- who came to the show with her mother and hung on with the tour. She's the least of it.
Allen Ginsberg came along to read his poetry, but the show was too long so they cut out his part. He and Peter Orlovsky stayed on as baggage handlers and poets in residence. Ginsberg puts it all in peaceful cosmic context. His remarks amount to a deep OM. He also dances, freely and expressively.
Joan Baez sings with Dylan as if they were brother and sister. She dresses up and makes herself up like Bob one day, puts on his hat and actually fools people. An ordinary gal with an extraordinary gift, she gets frustrated with Dylan's cryptic personality. But she wouldn't be anywhere else but by his side for this. As for him, he says he hears her voice in his sleep.
Scarlet Rivera is another sister. Jazz fiddler, sword and snake owner, she makes you understand why they call it the devils's instrument. Staring at Bob as he seethes into the microphone, she picks up his melody and gives it back slithered all over the scale, up into the high harmonics, fluttering down at the end. Her fiddle is electric.
Roger McGuinn is like a younger twin. His genius is on the guitar -- watch Dylan step back and marvel as McGuinn finger-picks a D-minor chord and turns it into a mantra. With the Byrds, McGuinn took Dylan's energy and classicized it, streamlined it for a mass audience. He did him a favor, and Dylan knows it. For McGuinn's part, he knows exactly his relation to the master, which is what it takes to get along with Bob.
Joni Mitchell is invited for a guest shot along the way, and she gets hooked and stays on the tour. We see a lovely jam session with several other guitars -- she doesn't hang back, but puts herself forward and leads it with a new song. This is the feminism of the 70's.
All this is framed by Scorsese's two major interviews --a rare interview with Dylan, who says he doesn't remember much about Rolling Thunder and then proceeds to remember a lot -- and with Martin von Haselblad, the film-maker who shot the original documentary footage. Dylan, with his uncanny gift for collaboration, invited this European aristocrat to shoot the tour, then adopted his mannerisms, such as holding a cigarette between his middle fingers. Life isn't about finding yourself, Dylan tells Scorcese -- it's about creating yourself.
Von Haselblad, asked if Dylan is a genius, responds at first as he responds to all questions, by scoffing at the questioner's naivete. Then he thinks about it. Dylan's genius on this tour, he says, is in allowing everyone to become their most extreme version of themselves -- including himself, the film-maker. This is seen in his extreme closeups of Dylan singing, catching every lightning expression as he sways his guitar, blows into his harp, catches the eye of his duet partner. This is Bob Dylan at full intensity, full commitment, the most riveting film of anyone singing my eyes and ears have taken in.
The film ends by not ending, the credits listing year by year all the hundreds of concerts Dylan has played in his never-ending tour, all the minor-league venues that producers and promoters sneer at -- Utica, Cedar Rapids, Springfield. Long before The Simpsons and then Donald Trump figured it out, Dylan knew where to find America.
Find it on Netflix. We saw it courtesy of our youngest daughter, who gave us a guest membership. We watched as "Mom and Dad." Now see for yourself, kids.
-- Copyright 2019 by Tom Phillips
If you've ever wondered about the mysterious reverence people born in the 1940s and 50s have for their contemporary Bob Dylan, you owe it to yourself to see Martin Scorsese's Bob Dylan Story -- "The Rolling Thunder Revue." This is Dylan and his crew at their most intense and powerful -- calling out the changes in America and actually making them happen. To see Bobby drop everything in mid-tour, visit the falsely convicted boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in prison, pound out the story of the Hurricane, convince CBS Records executives to put it out, and then sing it in closeup with his teeth clenched, eyes flashing, face masked in white, trading lines with the sphinx-like fiddler Scarlet Rivera, locked in to a song of howling protest -- ashamed/ to live in a land where justice is a game! --and then to see the delight on Rubin Carter's face, his amazed satisfaction with this eloquent new not-guilty plea, is to see what art in America is capable of. The film is a documentary pastiche by a master film-maker, who weaves together footage of the sprawling, galactic bus tour with news clips from 1974, 75 and 76 -- mixed up chronologically but seamless artistically. We see Richard Nixon resign, and Gerald Ford become president, and then the target of two assassination attempts within a month. We see the face of a wacked-out Charles Manson follower after she fired the gun -- a face weirdly similar to some wacked-out people on Dylan's tour.
The tour was weird, but pointed in the right direction. Driving the bus himself, gestating lyrics as he sat silently at the wheel, Dylan took it not to the big arenas the promoters wanted, but to gritty places like Providence, R.I. where he picked up a teenage groupie -- Sharon Stone -- who came to the show with her mother and hung on with the tour. She's the least of it.
Allen Ginsberg came along to read his poetry, but the show was too long so they cut out his part. He and Peter Orlovsky stayed on as baggage handlers and poets in residence. Ginsberg puts it all in peaceful cosmic context. His remarks amount to a deep OM. He also dances, freely and expressively.
 |
Scarlet Rivera is another sister. Jazz fiddler, sword and snake owner, she makes you understand why they call it the devils's instrument. Staring at Bob as he seethes into the microphone, she picks up his melody and gives it back slithered all over the scale, up into the high harmonics, fluttering down at the end. Her fiddle is electric.
Roger McGuinn is like a younger twin. His genius is on the guitar -- watch Dylan step back and marvel as McGuinn finger-picks a D-minor chord and turns it into a mantra. With the Byrds, McGuinn took Dylan's energy and classicized it, streamlined it for a mass audience. He did him a favor, and Dylan knows it. For McGuinn's part, he knows exactly his relation to the master, which is what it takes to get along with Bob.
Joni Mitchell is invited for a guest shot along the way, and she gets hooked and stays on the tour. We see a lovely jam session with several other guitars -- she doesn't hang back, but puts herself forward and leads it with a new song. This is the feminism of the 70's.
All this is framed by Scorsese's two major interviews --a rare interview with Dylan, who says he doesn't remember much about Rolling Thunder and then proceeds to remember a lot -- and with Martin von Haselblad, the film-maker who shot the original documentary footage. Dylan, with his uncanny gift for collaboration, invited this European aristocrat to shoot the tour, then adopted his mannerisms, such as holding a cigarette between his middle fingers. Life isn't about finding yourself, Dylan tells Scorcese -- it's about creating yourself.
Von Haselblad, asked if Dylan is a genius, responds at first as he responds to all questions, by scoffing at the questioner's naivete. Then he thinks about it. Dylan's genius on this tour, he says, is in allowing everyone to become their most extreme version of themselves -- including himself, the film-maker. This is seen in his extreme closeups of Dylan singing, catching every lightning expression as he sways his guitar, blows into his harp, catches the eye of his duet partner. This is Bob Dylan at full intensity, full commitment, the most riveting film of anyone singing my eyes and ears have taken in.
The film ends by not ending, the credits listing year by year all the hundreds of concerts Dylan has played in his never-ending tour, all the minor-league venues that producers and promoters sneer at -- Utica, Cedar Rapids, Springfield. Long before The Simpsons and then Donald Trump figured it out, Dylan knew where to find America.
Find it on Netflix. We saw it courtesy of our youngest daughter, who gave us a guest membership. We watched as "Mom and Dad." Now see for yourself, kids.
-- Copyright 2019 by Tom Phillips
Hi Tom!
ReplyDeleteWe saw it two weeks ago, and I needed three days to release from the intensity of the closeups of his singing (alone and with JOan). The chaos and the foreknowledge, with DYlan's white face and shifty eyes, of the time, really undid me. Mr Tambourine Man was like an explosion. SO was Joni!
In 1963 I somehow got to Princeton. NJ to hear him sing in a small
room, that was smokey and dark. I never forgot that image.
Love from PEI to you and the Mrs.