Bob Dylan –The Stories Behind The Classic Songs 1962-1969-By Andy Gill Welbeck – £21.71

 "Whatever the merits (or otherwise) of his subsequent work, and notwithstanding in particular the greatness of Blood on the Tracks, it's upon his sixties songs that Bob Dylan's reputation ultimately rests: that extraordinary sequence of records which unerringly tracked the tenor of the times as he moved through his various incarnations as raw young folkie, prince of protest, fold-rock innovator, symbolist rocker and country-rock pioneer."

Andy Gill

"In the dime stores and bus stations, People talk of situations, Read books, repeat quotations, Draw conclusions on the wall. Some speak of the future, My love, she speaks softly. She knows there's no success like failure and that failure's no success at all.

Love Minus Zero/No Limit Song by Bob Dylan

"In those days, artistic success was not dollar-driven. It was about having something to say."

Bobby Neuwirth

"The riot squad they're restless / They need somewhere to go / As Lady and I look out tonight / From Desolation Row".

Bob Dylan.

"Of all nations, the United States, with veins full of poetical stuff, most needs poets and will doubtless have both the greatest and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common reference as much as their poets shall. "If the time becomes slothful and heavy, he [the poet] knows how to arouse it . . . he can make every word he speaks draw blood. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation, he never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it."

Walt Whitman

It would be a foolish man or woman who would disagree with Andy Gill's supposition that Bob Dylan's work from 1962-69 was his best and established him as Rock and Roll's only genius and Noble Prize winner. The book takes the form of a dictionary of songs in chronological album order, allowing the reader to pick and choose which song they read about. Each album has an introduction by Gill.

Gill looks at every Dylan song on the following albums: Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin', Another Side of Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde, The Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline.

Gill writes on the recording of Blonde On Blonde, "Given the lyrical malleability […], it's perhaps best not to try and ascribe too literal an interpretation to 'Visions Of Joanna,' which is more of an impressionistic mood anyway. If it doesn't matter to the writer whether it's the peddler or the fiddler who speaks to the countess, why should it matter to us? The song remains one of the high points of Dylan's canon, particularly favoured among hardcore Dylanophiles, possibly because it so perfectly sustains its position on the cusp of poetic semantics, forever teetering on the brink of lucidity yet remaining impervious to strict decipherment."[1]

The book chronologically covers Dylan's formative years in small-town Minnesota, his move to New York City, and the folk scene in Greenwich Village. It ends with the controversy surrounding his "electric" conversion up to 1969.

Gill's book examines Dylan's controversial early period when he was accused of betraying the folk scene. His move to electric was openly and vocally seen as a betrayal, culminating in the iconic moment from the 1966 tour of England at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. When Dylan plugged in his electric guitar for the second set, a fan shouted, "Judas!" Dylan snarled, "I don't believe you," before turning to the band and urging them to "play it fucking loud!". 

Andy Gill's Bob Dylan – The Stories Behind The Classic Songs 1962-1969, while well written and at times insightful, is limited when it attempts to place Dylan's work in a more precise objective context. The period between 1962-69 was an extraordinary political time. Gill does little to examine Dylan's place in this ferment. Gill does not seem that interested in exploring the relationship between art, artists and social liberation.

As Paul Bond writes, "The folk music scene was regaining ground with the decline of McCarthyism and was seen largely as a product of "the Left." The idea of music that was able to articulate social and progressive concerns brought many broadly "leftist" artists to folk. Many of the guiding lights of the folk movement, like Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and the editorial circles of such influential magazines as Sing Out! and Broadside, had some affiliation with the Stalinist Communist Party of the USA. The Stalinists took a somewhat proprietorial attitude to the folk scene, but it attracted many songwriters trying to tackle serious social and political subjects in song. They were motivated, as the opening editorial in Broadside (which published many of Dylan's songs) put it, by the idea that "a good song can only do good."[2]

He continues, "Dylan's rejection of what was weakest in the folk scene, which stood in the way of a more complicated way of representing the world, took place under conditions of intensifying political crisis in the United States. He seems to have used the weaknesses of the folk milieu as part of a general move away from tackling social concerns altogether. (Although he has continued to write topical songs since that period.[3]

It remains to be seen if Gill will write on Dylan's more contemporary work. As David Walsh wrote, "A perusal of Bob Dylan's lyrics, at least its first half a dozen years or so, reveals a lively imagination at work, and sometimes deep feeling. Dylan can be witty, satirical, insightful, and genuinely outraged at American society's injustices. The lyrics can convey physical and psychic longing, both for "the beloved" and for recognition by society at large ". As said earlier, Gill is not interested in placing Dylan's art in a social or political context. He does not seem that interested in Dylan's later work.

As Matthew Brennan writes of Dylan's later work, "Cutting himself off from the source of the inspiration for earlier impactful songs, the career ambitions and an unfocused iconoclasm were nearly all that persisted. Except for some of his more moving songs about love and heartache in a later period, evasiveness and vagueness would become Dylan's guiding principles. The protracted process has led to the current news about the sale of his catalogue. Now very wealthy, Dylan has nothing to say about events that are overtaking the circumstances of his younger days.[4]

 

 

 

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[1] https://davidmarxbookreviews.wordpress.com/2021/04/20/bob-dylan-the-stories-behind-the-classic-songs-1962-1969/

[2] Ceasing to be the voice of a generation Paul Bond-9 November 2005 www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/11/dyla-n09.html-

[3] Ceasing to be the voice of a generation Paul Bond-9 November 2005 www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/11/dyla-n09.html--

[4] Bob Dylan sells his songwriting catalog to Universal for a reported $300 Million- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/16/bobd-d16.html

Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen-Peter Apps-Oneworld Publications 10/11/2022-Paperback- 352 Pages.

Peter Apps's book on the Grenfell Fire is a well-written and empathetic account of the corporate murder of 72 people. The book combines a degree of humanity, terror and technical detail in one book. Apps is a journalist and editor for 'Inside Housing' and has  written significant articles on the Grenfell Inquiry on Twitter and in newspapers that few have matched.

The Grenfell Inquiry into the fire has lasted five years and has largely been a whitewashing of events. Apps is heavily critical of the Inquiry but not to the extent that he believes this was an act of social murder. It has been clear from the outset that the ruling elite has covered up the true nature of this crime. Such a cover-up has been compared to the one involving the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in which 97 people died.

The British ruling elite is an expert in denying justice using public inquiries. They are deaf to the demands of the survivors. Yet still, millions of people live in unsafe, dangerous housing. Still, the government even refused to implement all of the limited housing safety measures recommended by Moore-Bick.

As Charles Hixson and Robert Stevens write, "The Inquiry bore witness to endless self-justifications by corporate and government bodies, shamelessly passing the buck for the use of shoddy, dangerous and illegal materials on the refurbishment of the tower even as documents confirmed that residents' concern about safety was treated with contempt. It has been painfully obvious to everyone since the immediate aftermath of the fire that a small number of individuals are culpable for the mass deaths at Grenfell, including the owners/decision makers at major contractor Rydon, cladding manufacturer Arconic, Irish insulation provider Kingspan, manufacturer of foam insulation, Celotex, the Conservative Party-run Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), and its Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) which managed the tower".[1]

One of the most important parts of the book is how Apps writes about the night of the fire, as told through the experiences of the people involved. According to one writer: "They put a human context to the tragedy: the lives, loves, challenges, dreams of those who died or whose lives were changed forever by what happened".

Still, after six years since the fire, nobody has been charged, let alone jailed. As Peter Apps correctly states, "Grenfell can feel like a past story—it's not. It's something that needs to be kept in the public eye if we want to see the companies responsible held to account. Grenfell didn't have to happen. This was a problem people were worried about—adding combustible materials onto the outside of buildings. The book brings together the story about how a tower block in one of the richest parts of the richest cities in the world clad a building in material chemically similar to petrol."

Apps book shows that The Grenfell Tower Fire resulted from profiting, negligence and a lack of regard for people living in social housing. A raft of construction companies, regulators, the Tory-led council and the government, have blood on their hands.

As the Marxist writer Frederick Engles once wrote, "When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains."[2]

While Apps doesn't entirely agree with the concept of social murder, his book is well worth the read and would seem to have sold widely and deservedly so.

 

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[1] UK: Grenfell Tower fire inquiry hearings end with guilty evading justice

8 August 2022-wsws.org

[2] The Conditions of the working class in Britain-Frederick Engels

Some Thoughts on Art and Identity

One of the more reactionary and harmful dictums that seem prevalent in today's society is that artists should only write about their own skin colour or gender and not choose a subject, show a world or create a character that differs from the artist in skin colour or gender.

According to James McDonald in his excellent article Where is our Zola? "This position, taken up by selfish elements of the upper-middle class, ultimately boils down to a scramble for the limited number of dollars spent on Art, literature and music. "Stay in your lane" is the popularised refrain for this self-serving prescription, which is cravenly obeyed by a disturbing proportion of otherwise reputable artists.

Art is always an approximation, never fully successful, but when done well, one that embraces the otherness and the sameness of writer, reader and subject in the act of inquiry and compassion. To rope off subjects from artists is to deny the nature of Art itself and to deny activity that is fundamental to being human. A new form of censorship in publishing has accompanied the rise of identity politics. The new censors are called "sensitivity readers." Briefly, sensitivity readers function as the "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" inquisitors of the publishing industry, reading manuscripts and hunting for potentially "offensive" or "inaccurate" material. The imposition of upper-middle-class identity politics upon culture is censorious and philistine. But it is also reactionary. The ultimate targets of identity politics and the language of "offence" and "sensitivity" are the working class and its democratic rights. Concepts like "offence" and "sensitivity" are nebulous abstractions and subject to broad, not to say nefarious, interpretation. While today it may be deemed offensive to call someone "fat," in future we may be told that matters of class, class struggle and socialism are upsetting and offensive."

It is rare nowadays for any artist, let alone a writer, to go against the stream on this matter. To her eternal credit, the writer Rebecca F Kuang has opposed the idea that authors should not write about other races or gender. At the recent Hay Festival, Kuang spoke of the 'weird kind of identity politics in American publishing. It really does not make sense to categorise books this way. Kazuo Ishiguro: you'd never find his books in the sci-fi fantasy section, but The Buried Giant is.” Also at the Hay Festival was the world-renowned author Pat Barker[1] who said she distrusts publishers'' 'fashionable' efforts to boost diversity.

Kuang is a well-respected and best-selling author of books such as Babel and The Poppy War. Her most recent publication YellowFace" is a biting satire on the publishing industry. Saying of Yellolwface that "If I were a debut writer, I wouldn't have dared to write this book.

Kuang said she found the idea that writers should only write about characters of their own race "deeply frustrating and pretty illogical".  Kuang believes that that problem is not just confined to the publishing industry but has become a political issue saying that the situation has "spiralled into this really strict and reductive understanding of race".

As the Marxist writer Niles Niemuth wrote, "The American ruling class (alongside its European counterparts) is promoting racialist politics and racial division to undermine the class unity of the working class amidst the rise of social inequality to ever greater heights, the eruption of mass protests over police violence and the growth of the class struggle in the US and internationally. The push to present every social problem in the United States as a racial issue is a reflection of the deepening crisis of world capitalism and an effort by the Democrats, the trade unions and the pseudo-left to stave off a united, independent working-class offensive against the capitalist system."[2]

Kuang recently wrote that "You have to imagine outside of your lived experience – to write truthfully, with compassion". While it is doubtful that Kuang has read much Marxist material on Art, her comments are perceptive. They should open up a debate about the nature of Art in a capitalist society.

She would do well to take on board the thoughts of one of the most important Marxist writers, A.K. Voronsky, when he asked, "When does the artistic image appear convincing? When we experience a special psychic state of joy, satisfaction, elevated repose, love or sympathy for the author. This psychic state is the aesthetic evaluation of a work of Art. Aesthetic feeling lacks a narrowly utilitarian character; it is disinterested, and in this regard, it is when he writes organically bound up with our general conceptions of the beautiful (although, of course, it is narrower than these concepts). The aesthetic evaluation of a work is the criterion of its truthfulness or falseness. Artistic truth is determined and established precisely through such an evaluation."[3]

He continues, "There is no need to confuse the artist's special gift of insight with the desire to strike the reader by producing a beautiful turn of phrase, a special style, or a totally new work of Art. Such a desire usually leads to pretentiousness, deliberate overrefinement, excessive floweriness and artificiality. The work becomes incomprehensible, and the reader, like Turgenev's deacon, says to himself: "Dark is the water in the clouds," and "Thus be it beyond our ken." Many contemporary poets and prose-writers commit this sin, and they confuse the ability of the artist to see what no one else has seen with a desire to astound the reader."

Kuang does not hold out much hope that the publishing industry will change. If anything, she believes it will get worse. Noises made in 2021 to support change went out the window. She says there was “a lot of chatter, but no substantive support for those authors, no real commitment to diversify lists or the faces of people working on the other side of publishing."

When the staff at HarperCollins, her publisher, went on strike for better pay and working conditions while her novel was in production – Kuang co-hosted strike rallies for the union. When I asked her about her hopes for the publishing industry and her writing going forward, she answered, "I hope everyone unionises."It is hoped this militancy is reflected in her future work. I highly recommend Yellowface and all her previous novels.

 

 

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Barker

[2]Race, class and social conflict in the United States- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/06/race-s06.html

[3] — A. Voronsky, Art as the Cognition of Life