Most music criticism is in the 19th century. It’s so far behind, say, the criticism of painting. It’s still based on 19th century art–cows beside a stream and trees and “I know what I like.” There’s no concession to the fact that Dylan might be a more sophisticated singer than Whitney Houston, that he’s probably the most sophisticated singer we’ve had in a generation. Nobody is identifying our popular singers like a Matisse or Picasso. Dylan’s a Picasso–that exuberance, range, and assimilation of the whole history of music. –Leonard Cohen
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Williams also swims against the assumption that Dylan’s primary genius is as a writer of words: “Had ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ been published as a poem and never sung, it would have attracted little attention, not only because the public is not interested in poetry as such (we weren’t much interested in this sort of folk song, either, until Dylan came along) but because so much of the art, the true poetry and power of the song, is in the combination of words and music, particularly the hook, the pop song/rock and roll building tension and gorgeous release in chorus. . . . Take that away, take away the sound of Dylan’s voice as he sings the verses supported and shadowed and colored and commented on by the insistent strumming of his guitar, take away the melody that gives flesh and substance to the spoken images, take away the cadence of performed language, and you might possibly still have a sketch for a masterpiece . . . but nothing like the real thing. Those who think of song as a simplified form of poetry might find, if they could survey the true history of human literature, that the converse is closer to the truth.”
Dylan’s genius is, Williams contends, as a performer. The act of composing the song is only preparation for the moment of its performance. At that moment, the artist is telling us everything we need to know about his art and his life.
Or this on Dylan’s famous habit of keeping his accompanists in the dark and off guard: “Dylan believes in spontaneity . . . and knows how easy it is to fall into a sleepwalking groove. So he invented a way to create a dynamic between himself and the song he’s singing, one that can change each time depending on the mood or spirit of the moment, but at the same time is structured and familiar enough so it doesn’t have to be thought about.” It is a process Williams describes elsewhere as “a sort of spontaneous combustion.”
Williams contends that definitive performances of many of Dylan’s newer songs do happen; it’s just that these days they’re more likely to happen in Memphis or Montgomery than in Columbia’s studio A. Williams wades through hundreds of hours of tape to discover and pinpoint them, and the critic finds in this the final proof that “the essence is not automatically present in the words and music of a song,” that it requires the right performance to complete the circuit and bring them fully to life.
He’s given me Bob Dylan back.
