A Free Man

“When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez
And it’s Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don’t pull you through…”

Bob Dylan - “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blue’s”

Every week that Z and I spend an hour or so listening to an album together I get a little bit more out of it. As he gets older week by week, his expressions get more dynamic and its easier to tell what he likes and what he doesn’t. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been noticing that he responds to the sound of a harmonica in songs, usually with a little bit of a smile. This led me to the one musician who I think of first when I think of the harmonica - Bob Dylan.

I’ve been a Dylan fan for as long as I can remember. My Dad was a big fan of Dylan’s early folkier stuff and played a lot of it when we were kids. He will still occasionally drawl out a tune from “Freewheelin’” or “The Times They Are A Changin’”. This is one of the things that makes me keen to carry on with this Zach’s music project, a lot of the music that I was exposed to as a kid I still enjoy today. Some of that music is classic - like Dylan, The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel - and I would probably love it even if my folks didn’t expose me to it as a little boy. But some of it, like the Bee Gees, Neil Diamond and Gordon Lightfoot, is not only not classic but just not very good and the only reason that I can think that I still like it is that my parents loved it when I was growing up.

Now, Dylan is not everyone’s cup of tea. A lot of folks find his trademark nasal voice more than a little bit annoying. Dylan is not the best musician either - in his early albums he’s just a smidge better than adequate on guitar and harmonica and even now it’s the musicians that he chooses to work with that make him sound great.Where Dylan is a master is as a songwriter, he’s more of a modern rock poet than a songwriter. For someone like myself who is a lyrics man, Dylan is the standard by which all others are judged.

I’m pretty sure that Z doesn’t get much out of the lyrics of music that we listen to yet, so Dylan was kind of a risky proposition this early in the project. And for the first part (Side 1 for those of you that remember when records had sides) of the album I thought I had made a mistake. He seemed to groove along with “Like A Rolling Stone, but you would expect that - it’s a classic track and I sang along with it, something he still enjoys. But things went downhill from the opener. Z started to get restless, irritable and discontent midway through “Tombstone Blues” and was well and truly screaming by the time we got to “Ballad of a Thin Man”. This was the first time I have ever played music that seemed to upset Z, maybe it was a bit early for Dylan.

“Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero the Commander-in-Chief
Saying, “Tell me great hero, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?”

Early maybe, but this is probably Dylan’s best rock album which is why I chose it for Zach this weekend. “Blonde on Blonde” is slightly more mature and stronger musically, but it is a bit long for our purpose. “Highway 61″ has always been one of my favorites anyway. It was the first complete Dylan album I owned - on cassette of course - and I wore it out on the tape deck in my pick-up driving around the panhandle of Florida in the early 1990’s. The rollicking honky-tonk blues of this album is nearly perfect driving music. But what makes “Highway 61″ a classic is Dylan’s songwriting. It’s surreal and angry at the same time and this was the first real album of the late 60’s preceding both “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band” and “Let It Bleed”. Dylan, with this album, opens the dam for most of the music of the rest of the decade. Bruce Springsteen described it as the “snare shot that sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind.”

It was certainly one of the records that opened my mind. It was one of a handful of albums that made up the soundtrack of my cross-country move from Tallahassee to Seattle. There is nothing like the freedom of the American highway, particularly through the Dakotas and Montana where you may not see another soul for a hundred miles. It was on this trip that I learned the words to every song on the album by heart and I realized while I was playing it to Z, I still know all the words.

“When your mother sends back all your invitations
And your father to your sister he explains
That you’re tired of yourself and all of your creations
Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?”

It was always the second side of “Highway 61″ that I liked the best and that is where Z started to enjoy Dylan a little this weekend. As an aside, can I say that I really miss having to flip tapes or records. There’s a natural opportunity for a change in the feeling of an album when you have this break. “Highway 61″ is a great example - when you flip the tape and the piano of “Queen Jane, Approximately” comes sliding and Dylan’s voice comes crooning out of your speakers your dealing with a different sort of album. It’s a change that I don’t have the words to explain, but try it yourself. Pause for a few seconds after “Ballad of a Thin Man” and pretend your flipping over a record and I guarantee you’ll hear a difference. Z picked it up - he began to calm with “Queen Jane” and when Dylan plays the toy siren at the outset of the title track I got the first smile of the day. Lyrically it’s a pretty disturbing song, covering topics as broad as incest and human sacrifice, but for reasons known only to him it was Z’s favorite.

This week, though, I’m sharing Z’s Dad’s favorite - “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”. This song reminds me of lots of little moments of defeat, times where I learned a little bit about humility. The final trip back East from Seattle a few years after the first with no money and a couple of suitcases is a good example.

“But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to call my bluff
I’m going back to New York City
I do believe I’ve had enough…”

By halfway through the epic “Desolation Row” that finishes this record we were both dozing on the couch. At this stage of things that is Z’s ultimate sign of enjoying music - quietly drifting off to sleep. Maybe it was a bit early to introduce Dylan’s poetry and tumultuous harmonies, but we have lots more time and lots more Dylan.

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Highway 61

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