Planet Waves:
‘Not Too Far Off’

Planet Waves is often cited as one of Dylan’s most underrated albums, but it’s more accurate to say that there’s a consensus that it’s not as strong a work as our abiding affection for it might indicate. In this, it is like Another Side of Bob Dylan, the ‘transitional’ album of the 60s. Both albums lit a fire in Dylan that eventually resulted in the creation of greater works that overshadow them, and both albums, despite their shortcomings, can still light a fire in listeners, too.

The resemblances between these albums go even deeper. Each lit a fire in their creator because each releases imaginative energies that had been stifled or blocked. In both albums the energies released are erotically charged – they are arguably Dylan’s two sexiest albums – and the eroticism of each album has its own distinct flavor. The sensuousness of Another Side is physical, while that of Planet Waves is spiritualized. Another Side bristles with a raw horniness that Planet Waves romanticizes. The change is reflected in difference between ‘the strength of your skin’ (revised in performance to ‘the touch of your skin’) that draws the singer to Ramona and the ‘little touch of your love’ he seeks from Hazel or the intangible ‘something’ that the singer, in ‘Something There is About You,’ ‘can’t quite put my finger on.’

In both albums the governing mode is extravagance, and this extravagance takes various verbal forms, from the hyperbolic rhetoric of ‘Chimes of Freedom’ and ‘Wedding Song’ to the antic sexuality of ‘I Don’t Believe You’ and ‘On a Night Like This’ to the moralistic hysteria of ‘Ballad in Plain D’ and ‘Dirge.’ The paired songs in my examples also share aspects of theme and/or subject matter, and indeed every song on Planet Waves could be viewed as a revisiting of the material on Another Side: ‘Forever Young’ and ‘Dirge’ for instance, both have vital affiliations with ‘My Back Pages,’ as does ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’ with ‘Going, Going, Gone’ and ‘Something There Is About You” with ‘Spanish Harlem Incident.’

The similarities between the two albums are instructive in and of themselves, but they also point to what’s different about Planet Waves, and what’s new in Dylan’s 70s songwriting. A central difference between the songs on these two albums is the mode and flavor of their extravagance. The extravagance of ‘Chimes of Freedom,’ for example, is an inspired naiveté: it offers a vision of the world unhindered by the so-called reality principle. The extravagance of ‘Wedding Song,’ on the other hand, is harder to pinpoint, and it is certainly more problematic. It offers a vision of love that seems to challenge not just the way things seem to be but also what they might even be imagined. A skeptical critic of ‘Chimes of Freedom’ might charge Dylan with having lost his senses, but ‘Wedding Song’ might make the same critic wonder if Dylan has lost his mind. Another Side succeeds to the extent that its songs persuade us that their singer is coming to his true senses, and Planet Waves succeeds insofar as its singer seems to be finding his right mind – perhaps for the first time.

‘I Don’t Believe You’
Chronicles, thru the eyes of a Critic.

One of the many things Dylan doesn’t reveal in his draft proposal for a biography, clandestinely booklegged by Simon & Schuster – wrapped in the kind of tacky cover that makes you think Sweet Smell of Success – is his favourite films. I’d wager one of ‘em is The Man Who Killed Liberty Valence, for if ever there was a man who would always prefer to Print the Legend it is Dylan.

Chronicles, a typically ironic nom de Dylan, would make a great film, where truths are usually subverted to the demands of entertainment. They certainly are here. Very little Dylan says, outside the realm of musical criticism, has the ring of Truth. But he generally says it with elan, as if he somehow knew he would be perceived as startlingly honest simply for throwing out the odd opinion on books he’s read and records he’s heard.

The gaping chasms in chronology, even within the corset-tight remit he imposes, and the echo of omitted souls central to his growth, should give any knowledgeable reader simultaneous doses of vertigo and tinnitus. For Dylan has, self-consciously and with relish aforethought, written his book around those that have come before. Which is, in itself, revealing. But not in the way its auteur may presume.

To recognise the deliberation at the heart of Dylan’s conceit one needs to constantly remind oneself that this a conscious artist painting a flattering, self-serving portrait, not an end-of-the-line, staring-into-the-abyss sign-off of a repentant sinner. The key is Frank, as found in those notes to John Wesley Harding which represent Dylan’s best prose fiction to date. It is Frank who asks to be allowed an insight into the man’s latest fab waxing, but ‘not too far … just far enough so’s we can say that we’ve been there’.

Dylan has written Chronicles for just such a fan, toying with his audience’s preconceptions, asking them to buy into his version of events – and his alone. Successfully, it seems. One American reviewer called Chronicles ‘strikingly candid’.

So how come Chronicles is populated not so much by known characters from Dylan’s meticulously documented past; but by invisible individuals, some of whom have morphed into a historical space previously inhabited by a.n. other?

The implication seems to be that he is revealing nooks and crannies that none of those who have gone before have managed to, or could, excavate. But this curmudgeonly chronicler doesn’t buy it. Not because there cannot be seminal figures in Dylan’s life who have lived a life below previous biographers’ radar, but because he trips himself up too many times in details that can, nay have been, documented.

Lies That Truth Is Black And White 

From Bob Dylan right up to Masked And Anonymous, the footprints of Elvis Presley can be seen on the musical path that Dylan has trod. As Nick Hawthorne recently noted, ‘Presley’s was a seismic influence.’ It’s an influence that Dylan has frequently acknowledged in songs and interviews.

The liner notes for Dylan’s first album outline some surprising influences on the new voice on the folk scene:

All the time, he listened to everything with both ears – Hank Williams, the late Jimmie Rodgers, Jelly Roll Morton, Woody Guthrie, Carl Perkins, early Elvis Presley.

(Dylan has recorded songs for tribute albums to four of the people listed above. For all his inconsistencies, he has remained steadfastly faithful to some ideas for his entire career.)

One way that Dylan has acknowledged his debt to Presley is by recording or performing songs that were associated with him. Unfortunately, some of Dylan’s most well-known covers of Elvis – related songs are also regarded by many as being the direst: ‘Fool Such As I’; ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’; and ‘Blue Moon’. However, some of the later cover versions are much more successful: ‘Tomorrow Night’; ‘Frankie And Albert’; and ‘Dixie’. Other songs covered by both Dylan and Elvis include ‘Early Morning Rain’, ‘Let It Be Me’, and ‘Froggie Went A Courting’. Unreleased Dylan recordings of Elvis songs include ‘That’s All Right’, ‘I Forgot To Remember To Forget’, ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’, ‘Money Honey’ (which Dylan also played live in 1999), and ‘Any Way You Want Me’. The last three were recorded for an unreleased Elvis tribute album. Don Was gives a tantalising description of Dylan’s performance:

I think he did a great version of Money Honey, that he abandoned because I don’t think he felt the band was swinging enough… I thought he sang the fuck out of it. Any Way You Want Me was good, too.