John Mensinger on Bob Dylan

Rough and Rowdy Ways, Bob Dylan
Release date June 19, 2020

British GQ recently published an article where a dozen writers finished the sentence “I never realized how much I loved Bob Dylan until... “ On the eve of the release of his new (39th, over six decades) album, I thought I’d give it my own take.

I was something of a folk music fan in high school... as much as I loved rock ’n’ roll (and I did love it), I also liked kicking around the fringe, and the folkies had connections to the Beats, to the 50’s underground, to the civil rights movement, berets, long hair, cigarettes, coffeehouses and smoky dive bars. It was a “counter culture” that long preceded the Summer of Love, and it afforded me an identity that was somewhere on the edge. There was an integrity to the music, its players, and its history that appealed to me. It was genuine.

But - somehow - Dylan slipped by me. I read about him in the folk bible Sing Out, but his records weren’t on the shelves - he didn’t make the singles charts. I didn’t buy many records anyway; I listened to the top-40 hits on the NY stations - WABC (Big Dan Ingraham was my fave DJ; I was a card-carrying member of his fan club) and WMCA - and Bob wasn’t to be found there. But by the Fall of ’64 I couldn’t ignore the buzz; I had never even heard him, this almost two years after his first record. So I bought “Another Side of Bob Dylan”, his fourth album, and the last acoustic record he would ever make. I had a pair of big over-the-ear headphones that I would plug into the back of the Magnavox console stereo - equal parts furniture and sound system - in the living room of my parents’ house (why do I say that? - I lived there too) so I could listen to my stuff really loud. Plus, in the case of this new record, there was an outlaw quality - a sense of the unexpected... I wasn’t sure if the room would explode if I piped it through that suburban ranch house, maybe kill the neighbors.

So I laid down on the floor next to the Magnavox (the length of the headphone cord required that), retreated into my private Idaho, and cued the disc:

"I ain’t lookin’ to compete with you, beat or cheat or mistreat you
Simplify you, classify you, deny, defy or crucify you
All I really wanna to do, is baby be friends with you."

I was stunned. Damn, a force! His nasal voice was piercing, vibrant, and expressive; I felt a direct connection to a deep place, and goosebumps rose on my arms. I was almost instantly transported into a charged and exhilarating domain, where poetry, imagination, humor, candor, sarcasm and fancy all came together... with confidence, and no regrets. It was so intimate that I thought I was in the studio with him. There were clearly no boundaries for this boy, he couldn’t be contained. Simple rhythmic guitar lines, but played with an understated exuberance that drew me in. And that wheezing harmonica - I was hooked. I had never heard anything like it. The whole experience had taken less than a minute.

I played the album several times that first night (I recall that the lyrics were printed on the jacket, or maybe on the inside sleeve?), and I was captivated. “Black Crow Blues” with its pounding piano, “Chimes of Freedom”, “My Back Pages” (“I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now”), “It Ain’t Me Babe”.... it wasn’t folk music, and it wasn’t rock ’n’ roll.... It was Dylan, with one foot still planted in his troubadour roots, and the other aggressively striding into places where no one - nobody - had ever been.... When “Bringing it All Back Home” was released just six months later, with a full band, I wasn’t surprised - I had known where he was headed. The first track (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”) on that album sent the folkies into convulsions:

“Johnny’s in the basement, mixin’ up the medicine, I’m on the pavement, thinkin’ about the government... look out kid, it’s somethin’ you did.....God knows when but you’re doin’ it again... you better jump down the alley way, lookin’ for a new friend, the man in a coonskin cap in a pig pen wants eleven dollar bills, you only got ten...”

Sing Out disowned him. Me? - I never looked back.Like Dylan, I was on the verge of a grand transformation (“I’m eighteen, and I don’t know what I want”).... life exploded for me, and the Magnavox and the ‘burbs were destined to remain in the rear-view. Bob has hung around with me for fifty-six years.

-John Mensinger