Forever Young

by Eric Francis Coppolino, May 28, 2011

If I could write one thing to Bob Dylan, it would be a thank you note. Bob turned 70 on May 24, so this seems like a perfect moment. Of course, it’s hard to imagine him being 70 years old, but I’m sure he’s saying the same thing.

If I could thank Dylan for one thing, it would be for setting an example that it’s okay to be relevant. A rock critic once wrote that he saved the world from “terminal, irrelevant schlock,” taking up real subject matter in every song. He did so (most of the time, anyway) without conveying the feeling of what some call “statement songs.” Many of his older songs definitely were, though the poetic strength of his writing made that either less obvious or more exciting. In writing, it’s always better to show rather than to tell, and Bob has showed us American life.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to teach a university class called Rock Music as Journalism, and I think of Dylan as being the innovator of this genre. And this has some resemblance to how he perceived himself, and how he actually created those songs.

“He said he was never a spokesman for a generation,” said Rob Faboni, who produced Dylan’s 1974 Planet Waves album. “He was just writing about what he felt was pertinent at the time.” Dylan, he said, would spend time in the New York Public Library keeping up with world events. As a writer, he paid attention to injustice, on many different scales. On of his most moving early songs, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” comes straight out of a news clipping.

So here we have an artist who is not afraid to get his hands dirty with ink from newspapers. He was never above politics, or detached from it. He got Robbie Robertson to do the same thing, and from that, we get songs like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”—which was written by a Canadian who did some research.

“Dylan has got something to say,” Fraboni continued, speaking in a late May interview. “Whether he wants to be a spokesman for a generation or not, he definitely has brought a lot of things into the forefront. The other thing to consider historically is that music was about dancing before Bob Dylan. The parents of the generation born in the 1940s were into the dance bands. Then along comes Bob Dylan and he changes the whole framework. Suddenly these songs mean something. There is a message, whether you want to call it that or not.”