Lester Bangs, Bob Dylan's Dalliance with Mafia Chic

I was hanging out at a buddy's house and saw a compilation of Lester Bangs essays laying on the floor, entitled "Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste:  A Lester Bang Reader."  I started to browse through his writings on the Stones and Stevie Nicks and found myself agreeing with everything he was saying.  Stevie Nicks is a total space cadet, but she's honest.  It's Only Rock N' Roll will not endure, but Exile on Main Street will.  The usual stuff I think any lover of rock n' roll would agree with (right?)


This morning I woke up, got a big ass cup of coffee, and vegged out to read Lester's thoughts on Bob Dylan.  I expected only the warmest words because now, with the 60's behind us, Dylan has become a dreamy image for us twenty-first century songwriters (with the exception of his 80's stuff and latest Christmas album....what I would give to have a conversation with him asking what the hell that was about).


 Over the past few years,  I have spent countless hours listening to his albums, picking apart his words, trying to get to the root of who he was and what he was trying to say.  His albums to me are like the Bible to christians.  Even if I don't understand it, I agree with it.  And with most of the songwriters I talk to, they don't really question his early and middle-career stuff either.  They only listen as devout believers, trying to absorb it all like a sponge because they assume it's all the real deal.  That's why I was floored with what Bangs had to say about one of my favorite Dylan albums, Blood on the Tracks:


I discovered that I only really wanted to play this record whenever I had a fight with someone I was falling in love with--we would reach some painful impasse of words or wills, she would go home, and I would sit up all night with my misery and this album, playing it over and over, wallowing in Dylan's wretched reflection of my own confusion: 'Women--who can figger 'em?'  I imagine it was also a big hit with the recently (or soon to be divorced).


At length I concluded that any record whose principal utility lay in such an emotional twilight zone was at worst an instrument of self-abuse, at best innocuous as a crying towel, and certainly was not going to make me a better person or teach me anything about women, myself, or anything else but how painfully confused Bob Dylan seemed to be.  Which was simply not enough.






This is a guy that really looks to music for the answers, who views music as the moral force of society. I'm kinda freaked out now.  Probably mostly freaked out because I agree with him, but I just never thought to think that for myself. I got swept up in the twenty-first century starry-eyed vision of Dylan's earliest albums.  I forgot to question if they were for real or not because I grew up in a musical community that never did that.  


I've never really cared for them before, but it's because of pieces like this one that rock writers are so important.  They keep musicians in check and honest. But they've gotta be good writers, the kind that love music so much because of the goodness it brings to society--not just a swollen sense of self-worth.  No way do I agree with everything I've read of Lester's, but I'm glad he's there to bring up an opposing argument.  It promotes hard work and authenticity.  If we continually praise people that sing a word or two on love lost or love gained, music is gonna plateau and fall to shit.  As a songwriter, that goes for me too! What am I singing about that must be said?    Am I writing and performing to look cute and get attention or because I believe in the underlying message of the songs I sing?  I don't think I've written one song yet that HAD to be written.  Something to shoot for.


I'll disagree with all of this in the morning.


n. 


Here is the entire essay if you want to read it, it starts on page 210:


http://books.google.com/books?id=6DyE-UAdYD0C&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=%22bob+dylan's+dalliance+with+mafia+chic%22&source=bl&ots=D928Ps0eYt&sig=cKU1zwSDZ84NR9VvP5ADr-aXkq0&hl=en&ei=tS_oTLSMCI2-sQOl2pCxCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22bob%20dylan's%20dalliance%20with%20mafia%20chic%22&f=false