Often, when confronted with huge amounts of disparate information gathered over a long period of time, one needs to pause and connect the dots. It’s only then that the pieces take form and give shape to a larger, more coherent story. That happened to me with Sean Wilentz’s excellent presentation this week on his upcoming new book, Bob Dylan in America.
Wilentz, one of best writers on Bob Dylan, does on a wider scale what Greil Marcus did in The Old, Weird America, his revealing examination of Dylan's Basement Tapes and their links to a now lost American tradition not found in most history books. Wilentz, through a series of linked essays, attempts to examine what Bob Dylan tells us about America and what America tells us about Bob Dylan.
Sean Wilentz at the 92nd Street Y. Photo by Frank Beacham
---
In a preview of the work-in-progress presented at Nina Goss’s Dylan class at the 92nd Street Y, Wilentz discussed two parts of the book: the effects on Dylan by the American composer Aaron Copland and beat poet Allen Ginsberg and the other writers of the Beat Generation.
Aaron Copland
---
In essence, Wilentz connected the dots between the American Communist world of the 1930s, the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s, and the folk music era of the 1960s. From those connections, he showed how Bob Dylan fused the beat literary tradition with his own music, while somehow wielding huge political influence without revealing his personal political preferences to his audience.
While I was aware of so many of the individual events cited by Wilentz, I had not made many of the connections between them. That’s the true value his new book, due to be out in September, 2010.
Aaron Copland, who was very close to Charles Seeger, Pete’s father, wrote the film score in 1939 for Of Mice and Men, the John Steinbeck novella, for director Lewis Milestone. Young Jack Kerouac saw that movie in high school and later wrote about it in Chorus 54 of his poetry book, Mexico City Blues.
Pete Seeger, who got among the first permits to sing folk music in Washington Square Park, was—with Earl Robinson and Alan Lomax—directly connected to the leftist political movements of the 1930s. When Dylan reached Greenwich Village in 1961, the Gaslight—where he played—had earlier alternated folk musicians with beat poets. Among those poets with Allen Ginsberg. By the time Dylan got there, the beats were replaced by comics.
Allen Ginsberg and Frank Beacham in 1975
---
Even so, Ginsberg and Dylan would become close. Dylan taught Ginsberg to play his harmonium and influenced the poet to perform musically in his later years. From 1963 until Ginsberg’s death, he and Dylan would work and travel together, influencing each other with their talents. Dylan gave Ginsberg the money to purchase a Uher tape recorder on which he composed Wichita Vortex Sutra, the great antiwar lament of the Vietnam era.
Dylan acknowledged his debt to the beats for his classic song, Chimes of Freedom. "Making music out of nature's sights and sounds had attracted Dylan before in his mystical song Lay Down Your Weary Tune, just as Jack Kerouac had tried to render the ocean's roar as poetry in his book, Big Sur, published in 1962," said Wilentz. "Chimes of Freedom was far outside the old politics of left and right and black and white."
Jack Kerouac
---
Dylan and Jack Kerouac never actually met. But Dylan was greatly influenced by his work. In 1965, Kerouac released Desolation Angels, his last great novel about his experiences in the beat circle of writers. In early August of that same year, Dylan recorded Desolation Row on his album, Highway 61 Revisited. The titles were too close to be an accident.
When asked at a news conference where is Desolation Row, Dylan said somewhere down in Mexico. "The ambiance of Desolation Row is reminiscent of Kerouac's Mexico—a mixture of cheap food, fun and ladies for hire, but with a certain sad darkness," said Wilentz.
In fact, Wilentz said Dylan’s Desolation Row is a Beat-influenced update of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. "It is enough to see the characters from the Bible, Shakespeare, folktales, the circus in Victor Hugo, most of them doomed, as well as Albert Einstein disguised as a noble outlaw, sniffing drain pipes and reciting the alphabet," said Wilentz. "Strange sites and sounds, but all too real. Everything a symbol of itself. Viewed by the singer and his lady looking out on it all, detached, on Desolation Row."
In 1997, in New Brunswick, Canada, Dylan dedicated a performance of Desolation Row to Ginsberg the night after he died. He told the audience it was Allen’s favorite of his songs.
Dylan—who is known for soaking up the cultural environment around him—more than anyone else in his time merged music and literature. In fact, when Dylan and Ginsberg met in 1963, it was a changing of the guard—with Dylan continuing to evolve the work of both the Beats and the political movements that began in the 1930s.
Connecting all the links can be an enormous help in understanding Bob Dylan’s music and his contribution to American culture. I personally knew so many of the players in Wilentz’s new book, but never quite understood the profound connections until this week. I look forward to this important work as a valuable bookend to Greil Marcus’s already influential The Old Weird America.
---
Other influences cited by Sean Wilentz on Bob Dylan:
Michael McClure in 1975. Bob Dylan gave McClure an autoharp, with which the poet began composing a new kind of verse. Dylan was photographed with McClure outside the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. Photo by Frank Beacham
---
Izzy Young, an aspiring bookseller and square dance enthusiast from the Bronx, born in 1928, struck up friendships with the most prominent Washington Square regulars. In 1957, he opened a store on McDougall street for selling folk records and books and called it the Folklore Center. Young prized music over ideology. The store became a clearing house for musicians, record company executives, scholars and enthusiasts. It was in Young's store that Bob Dylan hung out, and later met Dave Von Ronk. Young promoted one of Dylan's first concerts. It sold only 53 tickets and Young lost money, but he paid the young Dylan a $50 fee anyway. Photo of Young in Washington Square Park in 2007 by Frank Beacham
---
Suze Rotolo was Bob Dylan's girlfriend in the 1960s. She worked on the production staff at a local Greenwich Village theatre and when Dylan visited there to pick her up one day, he was introduced to the theatre work of Bertolt Brecht, the German poet, playwright and theatre director. In his memoir, Chronicles, Dylan recalled Brecht on Brecht, a musical revue he saw there. He said Brecht had an enormous impact on his development as an artist. "My little shack in the universe was about to expand into some glorious cathedral, at least in songwriting terms," Dylan wrote, describing his reaction to the music. "They were like folk songs in nature, but unlike folk songs, too, because they were sophisticated." Dylan was struck in particular by Pirate Jenny from The Threepenny Opera. Photo of Suze Rotolo in 2007 by Frank Beacham.
