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February 15, 2006
A A review of Greil Marcus' recent book of music criticism, Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan At the Crossroads. An explosion of vision and humor that forever changed pop music (Public Affairs Books, 2005). That happens to be one of my favourite songs from one of my favorite Dylan albums.
It is one of the most influential of Dylan's songs and I've always found it to be an expression of surrealism in rock music and an example of the commodified chintz of rock becoming art and myth.It was made at a time when young people focused their energies and their aspirations and got much of their identity from popular singers and popular songs. Rock music then was a language between people and a kind of conversationwith a sense of rebellion or revolt.
The reviewer says:
It is, precisely, America that Greil Marcus loves and writes about so well in his many books, especially Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music (1975) and Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (1997). Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" isn't simply American, as American as Coca Cola and Mickey Mouse. It is about America and it is literally and figuratively addressed to America. But what is "America"? It is two -- no -- three things: 1) a "promise," a Promised Land, a Heaven-on-Earth; 2) a whore, a betrayal, a Hell-on-Earth; and 3) an invisible republic or an unknown or unmapped country (both a geographical location and a society) in which nothing is settled and everything is up for grabs.
All that's in the music?Sounds like American Studies to me. Marcus hasa seriousness to the critical art form, of rock critiicsm and has displayed a keen foresight for the more widespread effect that rock music was having on mainstream American pop culture. Marcus rightfully places Bob securely in the tradition of American folk songs and tales-with Uncle Remus, Doc Boggs, Leadbelly, and all those hillbillies, gospel singers, and bluesmen who tell the story of America and its diverse lives.
Okay, but we listen, and relate to, the song in Australia as well. We can relate to the historical moment that Marcus captures so well in an earlier book
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