Bob Dylan

The title is a tad tongue in cheek it seems to me. It's a strange collection of "essays" and "riffs" on 62 songs, Dylan writing about both the "facts" behind the song, their authors and recordings, and also his riffs are character sketches, in the 2nd person, about the songs, the way they might make you feel, the way the people singing them feel. Those riffs are like little stories, often without plot, but they really show how Dylan is able to get into a character, and inhabit a character; it's what makes him such a great writer and especially singer.

I saw in a review where someone said these were his "favorite" songs, but I don't find evidence of that; I think it was songs he felt like writing about at a certain time, and songs that meant a lot to him, I think in those characters and situations he finds in them. "Should" there have been other songs, other songwriters, mentioned? Maybe, but if you want to read about those other songs, then write about them.

My only complaint about the book is that the audio version (which is really great, with chapters read by both Dylan and a number of actors, all of whom bring their own insights in reading) doesn't include the songs themselves; I would really have loved to see it as kind of an extended version of one of his Theme Time Radio shows.

This is one of the best books I've read this year, and maybe for a long time before that. It's a generous, idiosyncratic book that is well worth having around. I imagine I'll listen to all the songs over the next few weeks as I page back through it. I highly recommend it.… (more)

I have a better title for this book of essays and essaylets: Freewheelin’ Bob. The book is organized into 66 chapters that are named for a recorded song and its singer, an indiosyncratic group crossing many genres and decades. It’s a book with a misleading title; it does not deliver a philosophy of modern song. Rather, it is Dylan’s short musings on each song title or its lyrics or artist or lyricist or some other characteristic, or just some emotion the song elicits in him. Sure, there is some Dylan personal philosophy in the musings. Some essays evoke the early Dylan Beat poet: alliterating; hard-edged; lyrical; like Kerouac, but smarter. There are expansive themes, music and general cultural trivia, wild tangents, mini biographies of singers and songwriters, anecdotes, stories that fill out the stories in the songs – freewheelin’ Bob at his stream-of-consciousness best.

The selected songs and artists are eclectic, spanning nearly eight decades, heavy on Dylan’s own teenage years in the 1950s: Ricky Nelson (who, I learned here was a starting quarterback at my alma mater, Rutgers; go RU!) (“Poor Little Fool”), Elvis Presley (“Money Honey” and “Viva Las Vegas”), Bobby Darrin (“Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea”), Sonny Burgess (“Feel So Good”), Ray Charles (“I Got a Woman”), Little Richard (“Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally”), Johnny Cash (“Don't Take Your Guns to Town” and “Big River”), The Platters (“My Prayer”), Hank Williams (“Your Cheating Heart”, which I remember hearing on Saturday mornings, when my dad played his “honky tonk” records in our tiny apartment). In the chapter on “My Prayer” by The Platters, the melody of which, according to Dylan, is derivative of a traditional European melody, he discusses many other popular songs that have their origins in traditional or classical music. For example, per Dylan, “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again” derives from the 3rd movement of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, op. 27. In some essays he merely paraphrases the lyrics, tongue-in-cheek, particularly in story songs, or invents backstories.

The featured artists and songs are eclectic; there is no common thread running throughout although some songs follow on naturally from the one or ones before at times. And they range temporally from Uncle Dave Mason’s 1924 “blast furnace of a song”, “Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy,” to Warren Zevon’s 2003 “Dirty Life and Times”; genre-wise from country (Marty Robbins’s “El Paso”) to rock and roll (The Who’s “My Generation,” Elvis Costello’s “Pump it Up,” The Clash’s “London Calling,” Eagles’ “Witchy Woman,” Santana’s “Black Magic Woman”), rockabilly to rhythm and blues, blues singers, crooners (Vic Damone, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin [who Dylan described as a “lovable roué, everybody’s beloved uncle, charming and soused . . . and the man both Sinatra and Elvis wanted to be”]. Sprinkled in his discussion of the “featured” song are sometimes namechecks of other artists: the Rolling Stones (but not the Beatles); Eric Clapton (but not Jimi Hendrix); He muses on vice presidents, war, politics, presidents who were musicians, religion, America.

So, instead of a philosophy of modern song, we get a glimpse of Dylan’s musicality, the breadth of his knowledge of music and the contours of how he listens to music, what emotions or musings different songs inspire. I was entertained, informed, provoked, affirmed throughout. I read The Philosophy of Modern Song in print along with the audiobook, the latter of which deserves its own review. Dylan himself read at least a part of each chapter, but the other narrators were an excellent, talented array, bringing the prose to life in wonderful storytelling tradition. I recognized some: John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Rita Moreno, Alfre Woodard, Renée Zellweger, Sissy Spacek, Helen Mirren . . .
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