DYLAN LOOKS BACK

Bob Dylan thought he'd had it. "Many didn't feel my heart was in it any more," he says. They were right. He was a burned-out rock star. Then he went into a bar and heard a small jazz band. Suddenly he felt inspired. "It was mostly the singer," he says.

In what's believed to be his first broadcast interview in 19 years -- to promote his new memoir "Chronicles, Volume One" -- Dylan talks about how every day he still thinks of quitting and why he's bothered when people call him "the voice of his generation." He says simply, "these colossal accolades and titles, they get in the way."

Is he back on track? Judging from the concert at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y., which opened his tour this summer with Willie Nelson, I didn't think so then. And judging from the tone of his NPR interview yesterday, I don't think he thinks so now. But more than any other poet/songwriter of our time, including all the Beatles, Bob Dylan is irreplaceable. Also unstoppable. That's just how it is and how it should be.

October 13, 2004 11:37 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
more picks

Sites to See

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CriticalMASS published on October 13, 2004 11:37 AM.

OF DOODLES AND DIAGRAMS was the previous entry in this blog.

DEBATING WHAT THEY FORGOT is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.