BlessedAlpaca909 discovers Bob Dylan. The folk poet now has an official account on TikTok. Don’t worry. The Nobel Prize winner doesn’t lipsync “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter, nor does he perform epic Ski Guy dance moves. Instead, the video clips give an insight into an era when folk became pop and pop became political. If that’s all too small and too short, you can now watch Dylan’s rise in the movies thanks to “A Complete Unknown”. At the age of 83, the Tambourine Man rattles extra loud for a new audience.
In 1963, a couple of old men in a swanky hotel ballroom present 22-year-old Bob Dylan with an award for his services to the civil rights movement. His career was just two years old. Now the troubadour looks out over a sea of mighty bald men who, on this evening, mainly want to pat themselves on the back. Defiant and drunk, Dylan states at the lectern: “It took me a long time to get young.” It is the tragicomedy of life that it takes quite a short time to suddenly become old.
The songs that Bob Dylan wrote and played in those days have survived the last 60 years. They are among the greatest treasures in music, even in literature. But for a younger generation, this treasure is probably buried deep. Under the digital sands of content, content, content, which are pouring down on us every year, every week, every second. That’s why it’s helpful when a treasure map pops up every now and then to pique your curiosity and lead you on the right track. Just like the new movie “A Complete Unknown”.
A stone starts rollin’
The biopic focuses on that crucial period in Dylan’s life when he arrived in New York City in 1961 and plucked his traveling guitar to become the idol of a generation. Four years later, he would play concerts for which his fans would buy tickets just to boo their hero. It is also the time when the hopes and dreams of American citizens escalate into rage and belligerence as the figures of positive change are gunned down before the eyes of the world.
When John F. Kennedy moves into the White House, Bob Dylan hitches a ride to Greenwich Village. It is bitterly cold in New York City’s artists’ quarter, but the folk scene attracts fascinating personalities from all over the country. Anyone who has something to say says it here. And soon Bob Dylan says it better than anyone else. Initially playing traditional songs and cover versions of protest singers such as Woody Guthrie, Dylan was soon clacking his own compositions into the typewriter. His words hit the zeitgeist – and draw on a poetry that makes them timeless. The mainstream initially struggles with Dylan’s performances. He sings with a nasal voice, plays rudimentary guitar melodies and windy harmonica interludes. But just as you drip bitter medicine onto a sugar lump, angelic voices like Joan Baez or Peter, Paul and Mary interpret the songs and make them accessible to a wide audience. The folk music becomes a pop star. Pop in the sense of: Popular music because it captures society at that moment in history like a piece of amber.
Wind blowin’ in other directions
Soon Dylan is no longer playing in smoky cafés, but in front of a quarter of a million people at the March on Washington. There, Martin Luther King, among others, proclaims his dream of a better America. Three months later, things take a turn for the worse. In November 1963, John F. Kennedy dies in an assassination attempt in Dallas. The perfect world has not been brought back. Bob Dylan has always been aware of this. In the months that followed, he rebelled not only against the warmongers and race-baiters, but also against those who wanted to use him for political campaigns. A vagabond all his life, Bob Dylan does not want to be a messiah for the masses, but instead a minstrel at the kitchen table. His song lyrics increasingly withdraw from the political and seek their stories in the personal, later exceptions such as “Hurricane” confirm the rule.
Hard rains keep fallin’
In 1965, a few young hippies gather at the Newport Folk Festival and want to listen to Bob Dylan play his idyllic guitar. But the singer looks over their tousled hairstyles and has other plans. Accompanied by a band, Dylan plugs in the instruments at the stream and disturbs the audience with a snotty, rocking performance. The audience booed, even at upcoming concerts. It will take two of the best albums of all time (“Highway 61 Revisited”, “Blonde on Blonde”) to justify the radical change in style. He, who took a long time to grow up, has come of age in just a few months.
Unfortunately, there isn’t enough space here to tell you everything that awaited Dylan in the following years. Perhaps the rest of his story has since been uploaded to Bob’s TikTok by the record label intern. But what does the old man still have to say to his young discoverers today? Perhaps that they also have something to say. Something to say. Not necessarily with Dylan’s eloquence, but with indomitable determination. Because even if singing a song doesn’t make the world a fairer place, it is still our duty to raise our voices against political cruelty. If we can think of a lovely melody to go with it? All the better.
A Complete Unknown
The primary school music teacher in the worn wool sweater and with the scuffed leather bag has to be very brave now: For most of the pupils in his class, Bob Dylan is exactly what the title of this film biography suggests. But perhaps that is about to change thanks to Hollywood heartthrob Timothée Chalamet in the lead role of “A Complete Unknown”. Director James Mangold, who already created a cinematic monument to Johnny Cash with “Walk the Line”, captures the songwriter during his early days in the Greenwich Village folk scene – until Dylan’s decision to plug in a power cable changed the music world.
“A Complete Unknown” by James Mangold, with Timothée Chalamet, Monica Barbaro and others, now in cinemas
He too has been singing his way through life for decades and will hopefully never stop: Bryan Ferry.
How does Timothée Chalamet do as Bob Dylan? You can get an insight here.
