So one of the gifts RWB received this Christmas was the book Dylan: Visions, Portraits and Back Pages, put out by the people who bring Mojo Music Magazine to the world. Like I need another book on Dylan, right? But it does have lots of photographs, and would look just great on my coffee table if I had one.

I’ve only begun scanning the written content. The point of the book seems to be no less than to give you what the dust jacket describes at “the complete Bob Dylan saga.” We are assured that Bob Dylan remains “an enigmatic icon,” but Mojo promises us “new insights” and the revealing of “the stories behind the songs and albums.”

Uh-huh.

I do note that it has given Greil Marcus an opportunity to recycle his Masters of War theory yet one more time (see here), somehow working it into what passes for a review of Chronicles.

There is a foreword to the book by Bono. It’s fine—not fantastic writing, but he does lift up some Dylan highlights that the average critic would pass over, like Brownsville Girl, Saved and Under the Red Sky. However, it’s not a conventional “foreword” as such, since it doesn’t even refer to the Mojo book itself. It’s really just an appreciation of Dylan by Bono. Yet, the editors get to plaster “FOREWORD BY BONO” on the front cover.

The very first article asks what I guess is the big question for Mojo people: “Who Is Bob Dylan? … John Harris casts his eye over the enigmatic history of Bob Dylan, and wonders what it all means.” Oh, he wonders alright. In shockingly original fashion, he centers everything on the 1966 “Judas” concert at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, saying:

This, more than any other place, was where what we know as rock music—more cerebral than mere “pop”, more artful than rock’n'roll, laying a greater claim to contemporary relevance than any musical form that had gone before—was born.

…

Rock is more than mere music. It is clothes and drugs and generational revolt, and the sense that loads of people will never understand.

Oh, lawdy. I guess that sounds about right when you’re 16, until you realize that “rock” is no more “relevant” than the latest throw-away gadget or pair of sneakers. If you’re going to break off a part of popular music that you want to call “rock,” then the chief distinction for that genre would have to be that it exists to exploit the enormous disposable income of modern day youth—along with those still stuck in an arrested adolescence, or those indulging in nostalgia for same. Now, don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing so bad about this, so long as you understand the place of this music and enjoy it for what it is, and no more. Portentous claims about its artfulness and relevance as compared to other genres of music are absurd. When I think of “rock”— just that isolated word—what pops into my head are groups like Foreigner and Yes. Sure, it could encompass other more worthwhile people too, but the best of them would never be limited by a foolish and rootless label like “rock.”

Now, arguments about labels are usually pretty pointless, because everyone has the their own idea of what they mean. However, it is the writer of the piece in question, which anchors this book, who chooses to start out by defining Dylan as the grand initiator of “rock.” What a supreme backhanded compliment, if there ever was one!

The rest of the piece meanders through Dylan’s career in a sometimes appreciative and sometimes mean-spirited manner. Halfway through, Harris writes, “Back to the question at hand, anyway. What does it all mean?” If you think he’s going to arrive at any coherent answer to his fatuous question, I can tell you that you are mistaken. He comes closest to some theory of his own near the end with this:

But whatever Bob Dylan plays, and wherever he goes, it’s the same stuff that burns through. Love, hate, lust, loss, light, dark, family, divorce, revenge, cowardice, war, peace—the usual.

The usual, indeed. And Harris’s attempted summation of Bob Dylan’s career, for what I assume must be the generally young readers of Mojo, is nothing but the usual garbage masquerading as criticism that has been Dylan’s cross to bear down through the decades. And speaking of crosses:

During the ’70s, Dylan divorced, took painting classes that revolutionised his art, and—unfathomably—became a born-again Christian.

The unfathomable enigma that is Bob Dylan. Brought to you by the editors of Mojo.

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