Aaron Keith Harris: Happy birthday, Bob

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Bob Dylan (b. Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) turns 65 Wednesday. Far from retirement, he is more accessible now than ever before.

He still tours constantly, playing state fairs, casinos and bars as well as classy theaters. He recently became a DJ, playing his favorite music for XM satellite radio on the “Theme Time Radio Hour.”

In 2004, he published his engaging first memoir “Chronicles: Volume One,” with two more to come. But the best look at who Dylan is now comes from Martin Scorsese’s 2005 PBS film “No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.”

The two-disc DVD begins with Dylan’s lonely childhood in the Iron Range town of Hibbing, Minn. It documents the first stage of his career up to his prolonged retreat from the public after a motorcycle accident in July 1966.

Dylan himself narrates the film even though he hadn’t sat for a taped interview in decades. Who knew that Dylan would be relaxed, funny, candid and even a humble conversationalist? He’s still a little weird, but today’s Bob is a far cry from the amphetamine-addled joker who couldn’t resist winding up his interviewers in the Sixties.

In front of Scorsese’s camera, Bob has a self-deprecating glint in his eye when talking about the high-school crushes that “brought out the poet” in him or when admitting to stealing folk albums from friends. He shrugs apologetically about brushing off his erstwhile patron and lover Joan Baez after he surpassed her in popularity.

Dylan seems completely at ease with himself. Most of his folkie friends interviewed for the film — including Baez and everyone’s favorite old communist Pete Seeger — are still not comfortable with him.

They winced when Dylan began to write songs that didn’t exactly fit into the folk template. They excommunicated him for going electric in order to remake the commercial, capitalist rock scene in his own image.

Unlike the folkies, Dylan didn’t limit himself with musical tradition or political ideology. He says he was simply able to write songs that reflected, rather than created, “the spirit of the times.”

He points out that his involvement in the Civil Rights movement was not part of a larger agenda. “To be on the side of people who are struggling for something doesn’t necessarily mean you are being political,” Dylan says.

“No Direction Home” makes clear that Dylan’s only agenda was — and still is — his chosen career as a “musical expeditionary.” That career reached its zenith in the period between the spring of 1965 and the summer of 1966.

During that time Dylan released the three best albums of his career — “Bringing It All Back Home,” “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Blonde on Blonde” — and triumphed on a now legendary (in every sense of the word) world tour backed by the musicians that would later become known as The Band.

In those 18 months Dylan directly and permanently changed the worlds of pop and rock music. He showed the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and every other guy with a guitar that for music to be good, it doesn’t have to be pretty and less than three minutes long.

“No Direction Home” also features plenty of thrilling, raw, never-before-seen footage of the ‘66 tour. It reminds us that the most compelling facet of Dylan’s art is his voice.

To dismiss Dylan as merely a clever songwriter, to divorce what Dylan writes from how he sings, especially in concert, is to totally miss the point. The rough, sharp instrument he has to work with makes his art visceral and real.

It might be fair to say that Dylan’s voice is an acquired taste, but only if you back that up by saying it’s a taste worth acquiring. Thankfully, we can still go to the source.

Aaron Keith Harris writes about politics, the media, pop culture and music and is a regular contributor to National Review Online and Bluegrass Unlimited. He can be reached at aaronkeithharris@gmail.com.

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