A Complete Unknown

The Hired Hand having made the original call to watch the Marty Scorsese rendering of a vast pile of Bob Dylan related film, stills, recordings and the like, I will leave it to him to post a definitive review. Hired Hand is, after all, the student of such things, having come to Dylan, I strongly suspect, via the Beatles. For him, therefore, watching was much like studying a historical documentary.

For me, however, the experience was much more like watching a very good movie that was made from a book well-known to me, if not to everyone. I cannot help but wonder what it looked like to someone who has not read the book. And I cannot help but note that Hired Hand selected the cover art from Nashville Skyline for his post.

Mostly I was reminded. I was reminded that 35 years ago, on my all-night radio program, I used Dave Van Ronk’s "Random Canyon" as a theme song.

I was reminded that (whatever the Beatles or the Hired Hand think) it is a fact that Dylan was a folk singer, and was always a folk singer. Sometimes his folk music was country, sometimes it was rock, sometimes it was western, sometimes it was southern, sometimes it was amplified, sometimes it was synthesized, but it was ALWAYS American folk.

I was reminded what a babe Joan Baez was. I was reminded that Johnny Cash sang “I Walk the Line,” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963.

Last night’s first installment ends in something like 1963, and Scorsese, being Scorsese, waits until the last 10 minutes of this first half before he permits even a glimpse of Dylan and a motorcycle, a device which succeeds in producing a shudder (at least in those of us who have read the book).

Tune in again tonight.