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Eschatology is that area of theology relating to the manner in which we should conduct ourselves at the end of the world; how we should prepare for Heaven and "the golden age foretold". It has always been top of the preoccupations that inspire the best work of Bob Dylan.
In Desolation Row, one of the most apocalyptic of those creations, so long ago now, he placed a great ship that was full of Jackson Browne's "Everyman", all bound by their tickets to die. Dylan called it "The Titanic" and sang, always so weary of the world: "The Titanic sails at dawn. Everybody's shouting "Which side are you on?"" where "dawn" rhymes with "on". As John Lennon declared, honest as he was, glad to be acknowledged kneeling at a master's feet: it was not the words of Dylan that mattered but the WAY he said them. Back then "Which side are you on?" was a question of real WEIGHT.
In the song "Tempest", another imaginary death ship sails again in all its awesome glory, complete with every barnacle of accretion since the making of the film Titanic. It has a new cast of characters. The website "expecting rain" that is manned by Dylan's most erudite enthusiasts, on 8 September, posted a link to the passenger list of the real Titanic to show, that last of all on the list of those who died beside the icebergs, was one Leo Zimmerman. The new song growls "Leo said to Cleo". The comedian is the letter "C". It could be Cleo Laine or Cleopatra rapt by any one of the many living Leonards on board; but it is also Cupid who is there on both sides, the god of love played in that film by the great Di Caprio himself. Perhaps, when Dylan found himself as watchman on this White Star liner, he imagined himself as a Leo asking another Leo, the only question he has ever asked any of us: "Which side are you on? Are you living or are you dead?" The passenger list also shows a "Blake" and a "Wilson"; but no "Calvin" (John?) or "Wellington" (the Duke?) "who strapped on both his pistols" or "Davy the brothel keeper, who stood up and dismissed his girls". Maybe it is William Blake on board gambling with Presidents Calvin Coolidge from the past, and Woodrow Wilson from World War I just around the corner, that populate the first class cabins of the latest surreal drama.
Above this liner "He saw the starlight shining Streaming from the east" reminds us of his vision of being called to Heaven away from the pains of the earth in "I shall be released". The lyric surfaced first on the flip side of the "single" The Weight by The Band; that "Crazy Chester" Dylanesque song that he never would admit as his own. No recording of Dylan singing that B side was released at the time from the basement tapes of the house called Big Pink. The pre-publicity for Tempest was organised around Dylan refusing to be tied down to admitting that this is his last album of all, in the way that Shakespeare's Prospero in The Tempest drowns his book and gives it all up.
The truth is that Dylan gave it all up a long time ago when he retired to the aforesaid Big Pink in Woodstock; perhaps the place where he stood on top of the mountain, blessed beyond endurance by a recognition of his incalculable gifts and not knowing what to do with them; when he felt worse than Christ did when he refused all the kingdoms of the world by refusing to release a thing; while down below, his bizarre gospel, celebrated in songs like " This Wheel's on Fire" by Julie Driscoll, shook the foundations of the known world. There was nothing for years. A pre-adolescent Kid Jensen, played a couple of songs for Nashville Skyline's "world premiere" on Radio Luxembourg. We had to be satisfied with "Si tu doit partir" by Fairport Convention. Along came "Self Portrait", a parody of his own first double album. There was "Dylan" and "Planet Waves". Apart from George Jackson there was nothing new. The bathos piled high right up until "Blood on the Tracks". The void was filled by Jimmy Webb for a while and then Bruce Springsteen. The appearance on the Isle of Wight was perhaps the lowest point, I was there hoping for a new epiphany. "Greatest Hits" archly included two new songs "Watching the river flow" and "Paint my masterpiece". I began looking for work by Happy Traum.
"Tempest" is proof that perhaps Dylan has been saving the best, in another Big Pink, till last. When Dylan dies who will be there of us left alive on earth to write an elegy such as "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed" which Walt Whitman wrote at the death of Abraham Lincoln; a long hypnotic trance about waking; which ends:
--for the dead I loved so well;
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands...and this for his dear sake;
Lilac and star and bird, twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines, and the cedars dusk and dim.
No one has the capacity to disappoint like Dylan.
Not since Natural Born Killers' "You Belong to Me"; not since "Series of Dreams" or "Hezekiah Jones" or "Blind Willie McTell"; not since "Seven Deadly Sins" or "Cross the Green Mountain"; have I felt that this is awe-inspiring talent; a talent that laughs at itself as Shakespeare does and then struggles with the humour and gambles differently with new cards again.
Not since I looked into McCowens record-player shop window in Monson Road, Tunbridge Wells; where I beheld for the first time a grey lovat album sleeve. The typeface was the same for BOB DYLAN and JOHN WESLEY HARDING. For a moment I thought the artist was John Wesley Harding singing songs by Bob Dylan. It was; of course.
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- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 September 2012
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M. Robert GanserReviewed in Germany on 12 September 2012
Neues Meisterwerk des wichtigsten Musikers der gesamten Pop- und Rockgeschichte
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