David Remnick writes about Bob Dylan’s storied career, his new book of essays, and the time that The New Yorker narrowly missed the opportunity to publish an excerpt of his memoir.
The point is that, if Dylan had died of his injuries in Woodstock, he still would have left behind the richest catalogue of American songs of his era. At twenty-five, he could have declared himself retired, younger in age than Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding were when they died. Yet what makes Dylan so extraordinary is that the end of his early incandescence didn’t mark a sustained falling off.
There are some older performers who are able to pull off a worthy form of compromise with their audiences. Bruce Springsteen knows well that, at least on some level, his fans want him circa 1978, a performer determined to drive himself to the point of abandon, a Jersey guy singing about freeing himself from the grip of the nuns and family misery, finding love, and taking it on the road.
Dylan kept moving, even having fun. In 2009, he put out “Christmas in the Heart.” If you were stuck thinking of Dylan as a pure ironist, you were wrong; he sang Gene Autry’s “Here Comes Santa Claus”––and made it his own––because he loved it. The record was all in the line of tradition: the Christmas albums of Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, and Elvis Presley.
When Dion’s voice bursts through for a solo moment in the bridge, it captures that moment of shimmering persistence of memory in a way the printed word can only hint at. “I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us—you don’t write the songs anyhow,” Cohen said in his last meeting with reporters. “Your own intentions have very little to do with this. You can keep the body as well-oiled and receptive as possible, but whether you’re actually going to be able to go for the long haul is really not your own choice.”
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