Dylan and the Beats: Part Five

When I started this on-going consideration of the influence of the Beat poets on rock and roll, I had no real idea how deeply they touched the work of Bob Dylan. There was a clear intuitive reaction based upon "Subterranean Homesick Blues" - and Ginsberg's part in the video - but it was always just a hunch. Well, a month later after lots of reflection, study and listening - to say nothing of a week spent hanging out in North Beach - two truths have become clear: Dylan is the heir of the Beat mantle - even in his current incarnation as perpetual troubadour, AND, through him the Beat spirit has taken up residence in almost every serious rock and roll artist since the Beatles embraced the blessings of Dylan.

As I've noted before, this would include artists like Beck and Springsteen as well as the following list (which keeps expanding and would benefit from your suggests, too):

+ Joni Mitchell
+ Nico and Velvet Underground
+ Lou Reed
+ Jefferson Airplane
+ Grateful Dead
+ The Doors
+ Pearls Before Swine
+ Marvin Gaye
+ Paul Simon
+ Gil Scott-Herron
+ Television
+ Voidoids
+ Laurie Anderson
+ REM
+ U2
+ Talking Heads
+ The Clash
+ Natalie Merchant
+ NWA
+ Eminem
+ Tom Waits
+ Patti Smith
+ Bruce Cockburn

What I find true within the music of each of these artists/groups is a deep commitment to the "politics of ecstasy," a poetry that embraces the joys and sorrows of real life, an ability to expose and embrace the wounds of our culture, a comfort with both form and improvisation and an almost organic sense of genre bending. These are not rip-off entrepreneurs, rather they are people who can hear what is part of the common experience of a discrete moment in time and give it shape and form. What's more, they aren't afraid to borrow and blend the sounds/insights of others so that the wisdom not only goes deeper but touches more lives.

From my perspective, Howl is the prototype for all of these artists - and those I can't recall - along with something of Kerouac's On the Road groove, too. And I sense that it was Dylan's insistence upon living into his version of these sensibilities that pushed the Beat aesthetic into the sphere of other artists. From 1963, he was a man on fire:

+ His electric troika - Bringing It All Back Home (a reference to bringing the energy and spirit of rock and roll back to the US after the British invasion), Highway 61 Revisited (a way of reworking the blues of the rural South amidst the industrial revolution and psychedelic poetry) and Blonde on Blonde (whose album cover was going to include Dylan with Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti in the alleyway behind the City Lights Bookstore - now renamed "Jack Kerouac Avenue" - during a meeting dubbed, 'the end of the Beat generation') unlocked Dylan's influence beyond the folk music world and showed other artists how to weave a new creativity into the back beat of rock and roll.

+ He returned to both the Beat aesthetic and the politics of ecstasy after recovering from his motorcycle accident with the Rolling Thunder Revue. This ever-evolving rock and roll/Beat circus on wheels brought together Ginsberg and Sam Shepherd along with Baez, Roger McQuinn and others to live into the joy and social critique of his new music. Both Desire and Blood on the Tracks pick up where the electric troika ended. What's more, the Rolling Thunder tour kicked off their wildness in Plymouth, MA - part of Dylan's NEW 'on the road' commitment - and then headed off to Lowell, MA and Kerouac's graveside.

+ A few years later, Dylan regroups with The Band - the very rockers who propelled his electric visions in 1965 upon the public to the horror and booing of the crowd - only to be treated like a conquering hero in this renewed quest.

There are a few excellent resources for teasing out the further implications of the Dylan/Beat connection and its impact upon the art of rock and roll. My favorites include:

+ Greil Marcus -Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes
+ Bob Dylan - Chronicles
+ Down the Highway - Howard Sounes
+ Highway 61 Revisited - Colin Irwin
+ The Rolling Thunder Log Book - Sam Shepard

And don't forget the web resource - Bob Links - at: http://www.boblinks.com/. And so it goes - even the current incarnation keeps the spirit alive - and I am grateful.