Essay Sample on Bob Dylan Chronicles

Bob Dylan is a Nobel-Prize award-winning American author, singer, and songwriter born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota. The New York Times is one of the many newspapers and publications that have branded him the greatest songwriter of all time. Dylan could play in various bands as a young boy, and his desire for music deepened with a particular focus on American blues and folk music genres. Dylan began to perform in clubs in 1961 after moving to New York City, and this marked the beginning of his splendid music and writing career. Dylan wrote many popular music albums such as Blood on the Tracks (1975) and Blonde on Blonde (1966). With his creativity, many factors influenced Dylan’s prowess and in his memoir, Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, the author has cited authors such as Woody Guthrie and Carl Von Clausewitz, among others, as writers whose works influenced his choice of words. Thus, the music of Bob Dylan is a creative and influenced outcome of the literature materials that the singer and songwriter used to read.

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Woody Guthrie was a significant influence of Dylan’s songwriting capabilities. In 1960 during his college days, Dylan read an autobiography written by Guthrie entitled “This land is your Land.” In this memoir, Dylan admits of reading the publication “like a hurricane, totally focused on every word, and the book sang out to me like the radio” (Bob, 2004). The words from the book motivated Dylan to travel around the country purposing to not only entertain the people but also provide them with wisdom provided acquired from Guthrie’s autobiography. Dylan once when performing in New York admitted of following the steps of Guthrie and the track Song to Woody from the 1962 album Bob Dylan justifies the massive influence Guthrie’s literature materials had on the songs of Dylan.

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is another publication that had a massive influence on the writing of Bob Dylan. Dylan has expressed great admiration to the Beat Generation authors and describes the book by Kerouac as “breathless, dynamic bop phrases.” Dylan narrates that the book created much influence in his life as it developed in the lives of other people. It made him leave rural Minnesota for Minneapolis where Dylan states that “I suppose what I was looking for was what I read about in On the Road — looking for the great city, looking for the speed, the sound of it, looking for what Allen Ginsberg called the ‘hydrogen jukebox world.” The novel motivated Dylan to travel across the world purposing to find better musical instruments that could enable his voice and write songs to the world.

The ideologies presented by Carl von Clausewitz’s treatise On War helped Dylan in managing his writing. The Prussian general and military theorist have provided a strong stance on the ethical and political aspects of war in his dissertation based on Napoleonic conquests. Dylan calls Clausewitz a “prophet who can help you take your own thoughts a little less seriously” ” (Bob, 2004). The publication enabled Dylan to hold a moral and political stance when writing his songs and poems. Thus, Clausewitz’s works helped Dylan to write songs that had both ethical and socio-political aspects relating to the audiences.

The works of the French poet, Arthur Rimbaud had a massive influence in the life of Dylan as brought out in his chronicle. Dylan describes reading his first poem by the 19th-century French author, “Je est un Autre” which translates to “I is someone else.” Dylan accounts that the publication made perfect sense to him and wished that someone could have mentioned the same to him earlier. In the song, You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go, Dylan gives a personal shout-out to Rimbaud hence revealing the massive influence the works of the French poet had in his writing.

Dylan frames the New Morning chapter as a stiff encounter Archibald MacLeish who is an elderly poet. He wants Dylan to compose some songs for a play he has written. Dylan decides not to communicate with the poet, although he has respect for him. He’s perceived to have lost the ability to engage with him. His life has completely transformed since those varnished sweet days experienced in Greenwich Village. Dylan was wild famous and seen as the generation’s voice in those days, and he disliked it. While in Woodstock, he encounters “moochers who come from California on pilgrimages… rogue radicals searching for a ruler of protests”. Individuals “would gaze at me whenever they met me as they would gaze at an enormous jungle rat or a shrunken head.” However, he’s then shocked by an Esquire cover containing four faces; Castro, JFK, Malcolm X, and himself.

Allen Ginsburg, a beat generation member and a personal friend to Dylan, wrote several pieces of poetry and art that influenced Dylan’s weaving of words. Dylan has accounted in his memoir that, with the aid of Ginsburg, they could finish artistic transitions. Thus, Ginsburg was a sometime mentor of Dylan, and in his chronicles, Dylan tries to write songs that suited the ideologies his friend had presented to him earlier.

The Oh Mercy chapter gives his experiences on his career crisis towards the end of the 1980s. “It contains several pages highlighting his musicological flummery detailing his style of playing that whose founding is on an odd rather than even-numbered system.” Dylan claims that the new system facilitates him to sing unlimitedly with no “emotions” and “fatigue” It, however, makes one notice an old-style Dylan incorporated in it. Chronicles have entirely exposed a fair portion of feints and dodges, and that describes Dylan thoroughly.

Dylan believes genuinely in the religion of folks. He describes it as “exceeds all human understanding, and it called out to you, you could disappear and get sucked into it.” Dylan further narrates that the old songs made him believe there is nothing new on earth. Dylan perceives history as cyclical where societies emerge and then flourish, which later on declines. But he was not so sure which of these stages America was in. in this case, he seems to recall back his youthful attitudes that he struck later in his life. At a glance, the middle chapters seem to talk much about the making of Oh Mercy (1989) and New Morning (1970). One would not understand why not others like Blonde on Blonde, Love, and Theft or even Blood on Tracks. But the answer is simple; there is a unique story hidden in these chapters. They tell stories of unresolved crises other artists avoid telling.

The memoir is full of vivid sketches of the appraising New York’s folk demimonde. Len Chandler, Fred Neil, Paul Clayton, Cisco Houston, Dave Van Ronk. Dylan remembers John Hammond, a veteran leftwinger involved in his first album, with his enthrals: “There were maybe a thousand kings in the world, and he was one of them” (Bob, 2004). Although he can no longer perform his duties as an artist because creativity needs observation, he indeed needed someone to guide him in observing. The half-way tunes he began for MacLeish came to an end one morning, but he remains uncertain about their values. Their songs remained to be the type of songs “where you here an awful roaring in your head ” (Bob, 2004).

To sum it up, Dylan has given an account to various authors and their pieces of work as reasons for his maestro song and songwriting prowess. Some of the authors include Ginsberg, who was also a personal friend who helped him in completing artistic transitions. Rimbaud also helped Dylan to establish himself in the industry through his poems that shed light to him. Dylan’s writings also prioritized socio-politics and morals because of the arguments presented by the works of Carl Von Clausewitz. Thus, the writing and composing of Dylan was a reaction to the triggers pulled by the literature pieces of other prolific writers.

Reference

Bob, D. (2004). Chronicles: Volume One. New York and London: Simon & Schuster.