The answer, my friend, is a fairly simple one
Shady character: Bob Dylan in 1966
"I've been listening to Billy Joe Shaver / and I'm reading James Joyce / Some people, they tell me / I've got the blood of the land in my voice."
Bob Dylan's intriguing verse from his new album Together Through Life is part blog entry, part self-mythology. We get a glimpse as to what's on his iPod (Shaver is one of country music's unsung stars, and has played Whelans in the not too distant past) as well as his bedside reading -- following Mr Bloom's ramble around our capital perhaps?
The self-mythologising of the final line is something he's a past master at, although it's sung in a wry, amused tone, as though he's aware of the absurdity of making such claims for himself. Of course, the punchline is that his voice really does have this mercurial quality to it. Technically, a broken sandpaper rasp, it reaches back through the ages to the source of the blues, and connects with an America that predates rock'n'roll itself.
Of course, this being Dylan, the above lines have already been the subject of fierce debate on t'interweb, with one esteemed rock critic mishearing 'land' as 'lamb', and provoking a flood of angry Dylan fans to right this grievous wrong on his paper's forum.
This is the problem with writing about Dylan -- there are so many highly strung, near-hysterical devotees who demand the same level of Dylan hero-worship from critics and casual music fans alike. So instead of Together Through Life being enjoyed for what it is -- a laidback and fairly straightforward electric folk-blues album with some highly enjoyable if hardly groundbreaking r'n'b grooves under some very thoughtful lyrics -- the album comes coated in a suffocating reverence, as though it were a lost tablet handed down to Moses from the mountain. (See No Line On The Horizon).
But there have been murmurs of discontent. The Guardian last week poured scorn on the ritualistic hype surrounding each new Dylan release, taking Uncut magazine to task for its blind faith in one of popular culture's untouchables. "If you come to it (Together Through Life) expecting a life-changing artistic statement performed by people playing like their hair's on fire, you're apt to feel short-changed," wrote Alexis Petridis, quoting the Uncut review, before giving his own opinion that it was "neither masterpiece nor disaster".
Like most albums, then. The problem with Dylan is that because he re-invented the wheel of popular music in the Sixties, some people still expect him to continue doing so, even though he's reached the age where he qualifies for a free bus pass.
The man himself, though, seems to take it all in his stride. He's happy just to continue on his merry way with his long-standing band, taking the Neverending Tour to the next town -- which happens to be Dublin this Tuesday and Wednesday night.
Previous concerts at the Point have been decidedly mixed -- a few years ago he played a show where he stood facing sideways for the whole gig, and if he'd stood any further over to the side of the stage he'd have ended up in the Liffey. A colleague tells of another time back in the Eighties -- a bad decade for Dylan, all told -- when he took to the stage in the RDS with his face hidden in a hoodie, so that no once could even tell if it was really him or his roadie on stage.
And his habit of mangling the best-loved tunes from his blue-chip repertoire, as if dressing them up in a clownish Groucho mask to piss off the purists, can really grate. So you end up having conversations like: 'Is that one off his new album?' 'No, it's 'It's All Over Now Baby Blue' ...
That said, there have been flitting moments when it all comes together and you realise you're in the presence of one of the greats. The seminal show in the old Vicar Street was one such occasion, with the band feeding off the energy and intimacy of the crowd.
However, this will be the first time he has played the refurbished O2 Arena, now a state-of-the-art concert hall rather than a barn with a stage. Also, Dylan himself seems newly energised -- the new album was written in a fertile creative flurry after French film director Olivier Dahan asked him to write some songs for his new romantic road movie, starring Renee Zellweger and Forest Whitaker (due in the autumn).
One of the stand-out songs from the new album, Beyond Here Lies Nothin, can be viewed on YouTube with the official video containing extraordinary black-and-white still photography by Bruce Davidson of ultra-cool young men and women from a decade long past hanging out under the boardwalk by the beach, by the jukebox in the diner, lounging in their flats ...
It's one of these photos -- of two lovers entwined in a car, oblivious to the road stretched out behind them -- that graces the cover, and seems like a perfect fit for Dahan's cinematic roadtrip. Maybe Dylan saw in it a portrait of the artist as a young man?
Bob Dylan plays the O2 on Tuesday, May 5, and Wednesday, May 6 nkelly@independent.ie
