American folk/rock singer and songwriter Bob Dylan smiles during a meeting with the British press, April 28, 1965. (H. Thompson/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images/TNS)
American folk/rock singer and songwriter Bob Dylan smiles during a meeting with the British press, April 28, 1965. (H. Thompson/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images/TNS)
The great jazz musician Louis Armstrong once said that there are only two types of music, good music and bad music. The music we hear in our teen years tends to linger most profoundly throughout our lives and defines what good music is for many. In a new book by Bob Dylan, America’s greatest songwriter of the last half of the 20th century, “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” offers the reader a master class on the art and craft of songwriting. Dylan is in his 80s now, and although he writes about the allure and the magic of music that he listened to in his bedroom as a teenager, he has much more than just music on his mind as his writing reveals.
Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” His songs, with lyrics that incorporated a broad range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, so he knows of what he writes.
The Philosophy of Modern Song features 66 short essays on songs that Dylan grew up with. Every single song but one, Warren Zevon’s “Dirty Life and Times,” is from the 20th century. No modern hip-hop, contemporary pop, or post-Seventies rock and roll is covered. Dylan pays homage to the time when vernacular forms of music like folk, gospel, country and blues were the solid foundations of songs, rather than the beats, production techniques, and soundscapes of the last few decades. Dylan simply reveres the way songs were written, recorded and sung for a long period of time in America.
The songwriters and singers of these 66 songs represent an eclectic mish mash of artists ranging from Hank Williams and Perry Como to Elvis Costello and Web Pierce. Many of the writers and singers will be unknown to the casual music listener. Dylan writes as a music critic and historian, and his writing can be likened to resemble a stream of consciousness similar to a blogger on a podcast rant. He lost me numerous times with his evocative and weird takes on songs or people- I failed to discern his interpretations many times, but that is why he is Bob Dylan and I’m not.
Interesting stories abound, however, throughout the book. My favorite was his take on Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty.” Songwriters across multiple genres respected Van Zandt as one of the most influential songwriters of his generation. His songs were considered masterpieces of American songwriting and sung by dozens of artists.
Van Zandt asked Gram Parsons of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers to record “Pancho and Lefty,” but Parsons passed the song on to Emmy Lou Harris, who then passed the song to Willie Nelson, who teamed with Merle Haggard to take their rendition to No. 1 on the country charts in 1983. Songwriters absolutely love this song.
In a few other selections Dylan meanders into interesting sidebars. Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up” propels Dylan off on a tangent about British rockers. He admired that they often donned suits, unlike their American cousins. In Webb Pierce’s honky-tonk “There Stands the Glass,” Dylan introduces the reader to the tailor Nudie Cohn and his iconic cowboy suits for the country stars of the 1960s. No one had better suits from Nudie than Porter Wagoner, and I watched my grandmother swoon over Porter when our whole family watched his show every Saturday evening in Kentucky. Even I thought his fancy sequined suits were cool!
With other songs, he jettisons the music connections entirely, ruminating on political and cultural conditions. As the most influential musician of the counterculture and protest movement of the 1960s, Dylan is quite the critic of today’s America as well. Sonny Burgess’ jump swing and rockabilly, “Feels So Good,” results in Dylan ruminating about the days “before America was drugged into a barely functioning torpor … If you’re wondering how a nation will fall, look to the drug dealers.”
In Dylan’s selection of Johnnie Taylor’s “Cheaper to Keep Her,” he devotes one page to the song, and the next couple of pages against the money driven divorce industry that he has personal experience with. He takes on Hollywood in “Saturday Night at the Movies” by the Drifters with “when people keep talking about making America great again, maybe they should start with the movies.”
Dylan listens to Johnnie and Jack’s 1950 country-harmony “Poison Love,” and grumbles about how rock and roll strayed from the “actual leather-jacketed greaseballs making rockabilly records.” “Your Cheatin’ Heart” leads him to complain that there is “no shading, no nuance, no mystery in current music.” The Hillbilly Shakespeare, Hank Williams, as well as Junior, would probably agree, along with Chuck Berry, Doc Pomus, Kris Kristofferson, Smokey Robinson, Brian Wilson, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, and the Motown powerhouse of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Brian Holland.
Along with great stories, “The Philosophy of Modern Song” also contains photos of artists and songwriters, album covers, record stores, fairgrounds, movie theaters, and numerous other pictures that conjure a nostalgic portrayal of American cultural life in this era.
The photos of much simpler times are just as interesting as the stories, and elderly readers will certainly be reminded of the “good old days!”
Dylan argues that rock and roll was a direct outgrowth of America’s early musical traditions, enormously influenced by the blues, gospel, and hillbilly music of the South.
In choosing to showcase so many obscure songwriters and singers, Dylan recognizes those who planted the seeds of rock and roll and honors them.
He makes the case that music was special in the ‘60s and ‘70s- it was central to that time and it was the glue that kept our generation of teen aged and young adult Baby Boomers from falling apart in a time of great political, social and cultural upheaval. These songwriters and singers played an enormously important role in American life at the time, and Dylan leaves the reader wondering if the generations after ours will experience that same reverence for the songwriters and singers of their music. As for me, growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, I do not think there will ever be another two decades of music that will be as good as what my generation experienced over those two decades.
However there is hope on the horizon. A sudden resurgence in the popularity of classic rock is evident in seeing young people at Rolling Stones concerts or streaming The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. These bands are enjoying a newfound popularity with younger audiences because they are rediscovering the music of their parents and grandparents and realizing the music is pretty good! But they should also listen to Dylan.
