We went to see A Complete Unknown on Saturday night. When we came home I dived into No Direction Home, Martin Scorcese's 2005 documentary (currently on the iPlayer) and since then have set about cherry picking my way around Bob's mid- 60s back catalogue. A Complete Unknown was really good. Timothee Chalamet is totally convincing as Dylan, the young Dylan arriving in New York in 1961 and the Dylan we see by the film's end, 1965 Dylan, gone electric. The attention to detail in the film- the sets, clothes, New York- are superb, early 60s New York brought to life vividly. The rest of the cast are good too- Ed Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Elle Fanning as Sylvie (as disguised Suze Rotolo) all stand out. There are some inaccuracies, the director taking a few artistic licences with what happened and where but it really doesn't matter (the famous shout of 'Judas' happened at Manchester's Free Trade Hall not the 1965 Newport Folk Festival). If 'print the legend' applies to anyone it's Bob Dylan.
A Complete Unknown is an exercise in velocity. Dylan is fast, in permanent motion, speeding his way through the city, through people and through scenes. He leaves people in his wake- the folk scene, Suze, Joan, the Newport folk purists, New York high society- living in a blur of forward momentum. When he becomes famous and is recognised in the street he retreats behind sunglasses, arming himself with barbs and sneers and protected by a few close to him (Bob Neuwirth). He rides a motorcycle- more speed (and we all know how that ends)- and though there's no drug taking seen in the film, his speed freak persona can't just fuelled by cigarettes (and everyone is smoking all the time). The only times he slows down slightly are when he's with Sylvie. Sylvie introduces him to the struggle for civil rights and CORE. He takes from that, writes songs, and then keeps moving.
His relationship with Joan Baez is spikey and combative- 'you're kind of an asshole', she tells him and later on kicks him out of her room in the Chelsea Hotel. The songwriting and performance scenes are totally convincing too, Chalamet more than able to portray the transition from 1961 folk Dylan and 1965. The scene in A Complete Unknown where he sings The Times They Are A- Changin' at Newport is genuinely moving. The furore around Dylan Goes Electric looks even more quaint now than it did in the past, the folk gatekeepers desperate to keep the future- rock 'n' roll, The Beatles, electricity, drummers- out of their world. The archive footage in Scorcese's film of British folk fans in Sheffield and Manchester complaining about Dylan's touring with his band as 'corny' and inauthentic is hilarious. Looking back at Dylan's songs in the 60s, it's clearly one perpetually moving body of work, from Song For Woody to Like A Rolling Stone.
Here's a folk era Dylan song (not actually in the film), One Too Many Mornings from 1964's The Times They Are A- Changin'.
One Too Many Mornings
I first encountered Bob Dylan in 1988, the autumn term in my first year at Liverpool university. We were hearing new music every day, every hour almost and much of it was revolutionary at the time. I heard Like A Rolling Stone on the radio and went out and bought three Dylan albums- all were available at CBS's Nice Price! promotion (less than a fiver). I bought Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (a 1967 compilation with a cool cover photo and ten classics) and the pair of albums he made in 1965, released four months apart from each other- Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Between them, those two albums are a pair of game changing records that re- wrote what music could be. Dylan's words are enough in themselves, a cast of characters, allusions, rhymes and imagery that are unequalled (in an end of year politics exam, a module on US politics, I quoted Dylan's line from It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) about the president of the United States sometimes having to stand naked. I was that kind of nineteen year old I'm afraid- I quoted Chuck D in the same essay. Pretentious, moi?! They let me progress onto the second year of the course too). He skewered culture, politics, society, consumerism, modern life. The music- some still based in acoustic guitar folk and some full electric mid 60s rock- is wild, alive and endlessly moving.
I'm not sure I can pick between Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. The former contains Maggie's Farm, a song Dylan nailed in a single take in the studio. At Newport it was the motherlode, the moment Dylan plugged in and pissed off the purists. Too loud. Too much. Mike Bloomfield's lead guitar. Pete Seeger and his supposed attempt to cut the power with an axe. It's the climax of A Complete Unknown. It's in Scorsese's documentary too. And it's here, introduced by Pete Seeger...
Maggie's Farm (Live at Newport Folk Festival 25th July 1965)