Bob Dylan’s selection as the 2016 recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature is as unexpected, inspired, and radical as is his songwriting. Therefore, that selection also could be called highly appropriate – how ironic! Among the reasons he is so unique are that his goals, influences, and techniques are nontraditional, diverse, and customized to his singular personality.
You probably know that after taking two weeks to acknowledge the honor, Dylan declined to attend the ceremony, citing other commitments. He finally accepted the award from Nobel officials privately and promised to mail them a DVD of his Nobel lecture.
I find Bob Dylan, his talent, and especially his songwriting to be at once fascinating, perplexing, and strangely satisfying. I think that the back-story to his approach to creating songs can inspire close observers to enhance their own creativity in communicating with the world.
The Nobel Committee’s choice of a writer of songs broadly identified as popular music steps beyond the bounds of the tradition of an author of novels. However, the choice of Dylan is far different than if the committee had chosen, say Barry Manilow or the Steve Miller Band! Few songwriters even begin to approach the profound nature of Dylan’s thinking, let alone his imaginative, poetic writing.
Robert Hilburn wrote a compelling, insightful article for The Los Angeles Times in 2004, based on an interview with Dylan. The paper reposted it on the internet when the Nobel organization announced Dylan won the award.
“Unlike rock stars before him, his chief goal wasn’t just making the charts,” Hilburn wrote. In fact, Dylan admired folksinger Woody Guthrie to the point that in Dylan’s Greenwich Village club days, some observers derisively called him a Guthrie “jukebox.” When he learned that Ramblin’ Jack Elliott already had become the premier Guthrie tribute singer, Dylan realized he should be himself and more open to varied inspiration.
Hilburn quoted Dylan as saying, “Popular culture usually comes to an end very quickly. It gets thrown into the grave. I wanted to do something that stood alongside Rembrandt’s paintings.”
Dylan explained that he had read a lot of poetry by the time he wrote his own early songs, saying, “I was into the hard-core poets. I read them the way some people read Stephen King…” He mentions John Keats, Lord Byron, John Donne, and Edgar Allan Poe.
At the same time, Dylan noted, “Chuck Berry wrote amazing songs that spun words together in a remarkably complex way.” He also praised Johnny Cash for giving life to inanimate objects, as in “Big River,” when Cash sings, “a freighter said, ‘She’s been here, but she’s gone, boy, she’s gone.” Dylan remarks, “That’s high art.” He refers to the existential angst in another writer's work. Then, he cites inspirations as diverse as old-time black blues singer Robert Johnson, William Shakespeare, Hank Williams, and Stephen Foster!
The most compelling turn of the conversation in my view focused on one aspect of Dylan’s technique in his writing process. While writing “Like a Rolling Stone,” he revealed, “I’m not thinking about what I want to say, I’m just thinking ‘Is this OK for the meter?” A short time later, Dylan said, “I’ll be playing Bob Nolan’s ‘Tumbling Tumbleweeds,’ for instance, in my head constantly… At a certain point, some of the words will change and I’ll start writing a song…” Interesting!
Dylan seems to revel in the fun of putting on the media and fans. One example is that 1965 San Francisco press conference where his hair is puffed up seemingly eight inches high and he’s smoking a cigarette. When a buttoned-down, coat-and tie-wearing reporter asked whether Dylan was more a songwriter or a poet, he famously replied, “Oh, I think of myself more as a song-and-dance man, y’know…”
There’s more than a little truth in that statement. I suspect the put-ons started as an escape for a private man in the public eye. He likely continued the image to maintain privacy and have some fun. In the process, it all added to his appeal.
Dylan’s lessons in communication, artistry, and marketing are right out there, hidden in plain sight, if we only notice. He has created and recreated himself as an artist continuously because he learned to be true to his own vision through his unique goals, influences, and techniques, which are nontraditional, diverse, and customized to his singular personality.
Question of the Week
How can you open up creatively, turning your influences into goals and techniques customized to you as an individual?