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I'm Not There

Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere

          When I was in college, I was over at my best friend’s house. It was then that his dad dropped the bomb. It was just one sentence, five little words, but I almost got whiplash from the double take that I did. The first word was “I.” The word “once” quickly followed and “dated” right on its heels. The last two words were as soft as silk sheets, “Miss” and “Missouri.” Now while I am a skeptical person about out of body experiences, I know I stepped outside of my body and, like my old English teacher, made sure I had the nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adverbs right. “I – once – dated – Miss – Missouri.” It was a sentence and made grammatical sense. “I dated Miss Missouri.” It was all there. This graying middle age man who I always thought boring and the personification of uncool, when he was a young man dated Miss Missouri. Translation, at one point in his life, he was 100 times cooler than I could ever hope to be. He had touched, kissed, and wooed one of the fifty hottest women in America. Yet, as I looked at him, the math still didn’t add up. He was just my friend’s dad, had been produced out of whole cloth to sit on the couch and ask us what stupidity we had planned that evening. We were the cool ones, not him.

          Recently, a bunch of kindergarten kids in Calabas, California complained that a “weird man” was showing up at class and singing “scary songs” on his guitar.  All they knew was he was Jakob’s grandfather, just the “weird guitar guy.” None of these Wiggles watching rug rats will ever be so close to cool again.  They were getting free concerts from the coolest man in our lifetime, Robert Allen Zimmerman. If there has ever been a man who has the right to wear the mantel of “the man,” the walking personification of hip, it is Mr. Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota. His name belongs up there in the pantheon of musical greats. Along with Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles, he defined an era, wrote the songs that still act as time machines, taking the listener back to when they were written, and helped end a war and change the world. Don’t know who Robert Zimmerman is? He is better known by the name Bob Dylan. He wrote such classics as “The Times They Are A-Changin’”, “Blowin’ In the Wind”, and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall".

          One of the things that has always made Bob Dylan special is that he has always been ahead of the curve. While most performers settle into one genre or style, audiences have had to work hard to keep up with Dylan. He grew up trying to find on his radio, the blues and country music coming up from New Orleans. Playing in several garage bands, when young Bob entered the University of Minnesota, he was soon frequenting vinyl collectors. He changed his stage name to “Robert Allen” because it sounded like a “Scottish king” but changed it again, this time to Bob Dylan when he discovered in Downbeat magazine that there was already saxophone player named David Allyn. After his freshman year, Bob hit the road and started playing the folk circuit. A year later in 1961 while performing in New York City, he stopped off in New Jersey to visit his idol, Woody Guthrie. Not only did he get to meet his hero, but New York Times critic Robert Shelton stopped in to the club the young man was playing and gave the young man a glowing review, which led to a recording deal with Columbia Records. Over the next three years, Dylan polished his song writing, with Peter, Paul, & Mary singing his most famous song from this era. It was his song “Blowin’ In The Wind,” based on the rhythms of an old slave song called “No More Auction Block,” that captured the zeitgeist of the growing youth movement. With the folk scene exploding out of Greenwich Village, Dylan was king. Even the Beatles were floored after listening to two of his albums in 1964 and realized that they would have to change their image and subject matter of their songs if they were going to remain relevant. Joan Baez, Manfred Mann, Herman’s Hermits, The Brothers Four, The Byrds, Sonny and Cher, and The Hollies were making Dylan’s songs the backbone of their performances. His record company became so concerned over the number of people singing his songs, that to promote his albums they began advertising that, “No One Sings Dylan Like Dylan.”

          Now most singers/songwriters would stay in their little niche, Dylan continued to press boundaries, becoming more and more honest in music. He began to touch on darker themes of racism and drug usage. Many commentators began to speak about him as if he was a modern day Huckleberry Finn. Just as America was catching up to Bob, he strolled out onto the stage at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 and plugged in his electric guitar. Until that moment, folk music was acoustic. Dylan lasted three songs before he was booed off the stage. While his fans were not ready for it, Bob was changing and the world was trying to catch up. He cursed in his concerts, unheard of for the time, and started performing songs that were longer than the three or four minute segments that radio was used to. Backed up by The Band (formally The Hawks), Dylan continued to push. While the other singers were finding flower power and the drug scene, Dylan returned to his roots, drawing on themes from the Hebrew Bible and American western heritage. By 1969, Dylan had moved on to his Nashville sound, even recording a Duet album with Johnny Cash. At times in the 1970s, he almost appeared to be driving his fans away by doing things like basing a whole album on Anton Chekhov short stories and refusing to play many of his biggest hits in concert. In 1979, long before it became hip to be born again, Dylan began recording overt Christian music and speaking about his faith on stage much to the chagrin of many of his friends, like John Lennon. Again, just as America was catching up with him, Dylan changed again. While supernatural themes were still to be found, his music contained none of the flavor of the evangelical fervor. By 1988, he was touring with other ’60 icons like Roy Orbison, George Harrison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne under the name Traveling Wilburys. Never playing the same song, the same way twice, throughout the 21st century, Dylan continues to perform at least 100 times a year, won an Academy Award in 2001 for Best Song, and hosts his own radio show on XM Satellite Radio

          I’m Not There is a biopic on Dylan’s life, just a strange, strange biopic.  Seven different actors, males and females, play Dylan at different aspects of his life. Director Todd Haynes has produced an art house film if there ever was one.  Yet, like Dylan’s singing, it kind of grows on you. Focusing mainly on events of the singer’s life in the 1960s and 70s, it does a good job of relating the events and personality of Dylan, but much like Bob himself, it might be too hip for its own good.  This is not the definitive Dylan biopic.  I am sure in a few years that he will get the glossy Hollywood treatment that Johnny Cash and Ray Charles have gotten.  In fact Martin Scorsese's award-winning documentary No Direction Home gives a better overview of the singer/songwriter’s life and is a must for anyone interested in the history of music.  Yet, if you want to know what it was like back in the 1960s watching Bob Dylan playing in some smoky New York City coffeehouse, this film has that feel.  It is an acquired taste, kind of like the coolest man ever.

Verdict: An Art House Film For Art House Audiences.