Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young

Subject: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Peter T.
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 08:01 AM

This is a sweet, strange, piece on Bob Dylan in Winnipeg, taking a tour of Neil Young's childhood home. There's something very revealing about it.

http://www.winnipegsun.com/News/Winnipeg/2008/11/12/7381596-sun.html

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: meself
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 08:15 AM

Curious. http://www.winnipegsun.com/News/Winnipeg/2008/11/12/7381596-sun.html


According to Randy Bachman (Guess Who, BTO), Dylan would visit Winnipeg from time to time in his childhood, as he had relatives there. Bachman met him there when they were teenagers.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: GUEST,Johnmc
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 08:16 AM

Thanks for the link. This is indeed a surprising side of Dylan, as far as I'm concerned.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 11:13 AM

That's really cool. ;-) I guess Bob is nostalgic after all (as Joan Baez once suggested).

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Amos
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 11:59 AM

HE has the kind of mind that always revisits the details of existence, rechecking his bearings andseeing if they might fit a different frame. The character revealed in the story is closer to what I imagine him as really being like.


A

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: pdq
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 12:04 PM

BTW, this is November 12, Neil Young's birthday. He is now 63.

Although folkies think Bob Dylan is a superhero, the general public does not.

Neil Young is far more popular than The Bob. In fact, I might suggest the Young is the premier Rock star in North America.

Neil, however is anything but an intellectual. In an average year, he reads the following number of books: 0.

George W. Bush, who chose his librarian wife Laura partly because of their common love of literature, reads about 130 books per year.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 12:14 PM

Neil Young may not be a reader (where do you get that average, pdq?) but he's certainly a thinker. I'd be personally more inclined to regard thinkers as intellectuals than readers - not that one precludes the other, of course.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: pdq
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 12:18 PM

In support of Bob Dylan, he is both an intellectual and an avid reader. He just can't sing anymore.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 01:41 PM

Well, pdq, it is plain that Neil Young thinks Bob Dylan is a hero, and it is plain that Bob Dylan admires Neil Young's contributions to music too. Watcha gonna do with that? ;-) Dylan's most solid base of high regard has always been found among his fellow musicians, probably because they have some understanding of what he's doing and what he has had to deal with, and to a far better extent than the general public does. The general public has an attention span that can be charitably described as ephemeral. Ditto for the press, only even moreso. They're like predatory birds of the less agreeable sort...they search around for carrion and devour it in haste.

Popularity, in the general sense, is the measure of nothing other than itself. It is quite often not indicative of true value, but of successful marketing ploys. It is also extremely ephemeral.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Peter T.
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 02:32 PM

Actually, Joan didn't say he was nostalgic, she challenged him saying he wasn't.

I think it is absurd to say that the general public is supposed to think of Dylan as a superhero, but I would have thought that someone who has documentaries written about him, consistently sells thousands of records, and is an unchallenged 60's icon (probably the 60's icon) has a pretty good public -- not just folkies.

the idea that George Bush went for Laura because of their mutual love of reading is hilarious.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: M.Ted
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 03:26 PM

PDQ likes to say things that start trouble. Sometimes, he goes so far over the edge that you can't help but laugh. Just to ease your minds, nobody has to choose between Bob and Neil.

As luck would have it, this very day, I've been listening to a bunch of covers of "I Shall Be Released"--wish I had the somewhat legendary Neil Young and Pearl Jam version--that would bring it all back home.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: pdq
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 03:57 PM

For what it's worth, I was a bigtime Dylan fan through "Blood On The Tracks" (with the exception of "Self-Parody") when I gave up. He still writes a few good songs. Trouble is, he write lots of songs. And his singing will bubble paint.

Also a huge Lightfoot fan through "Summertime Dream". A fine piece of work but also a good one to leave by.

Neil Young? He is still as interseting a performer as Rock has and he has several groups of fans. People seldom give his Country-rock stuff credit, but "Hawks And Doves", "Comes A Time" and "Old Ways" make a nice statement and are more where I live now.

Jerry Garcia is another man who is always great. He is so kind, honest and giving that he is good even on bad night or doing materal you may not normally like. Get his recently released set recorded live a Kean College 2/28/80. It is a must for those who want to hear how well he could play, sing and carry a show without the Dead.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 05:19 PM

delighted to learn that the rumors of Garcia's death are greatly exaggerated ...

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: John O'L
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 06:00 PM

Neil Young reads no books and George Bush reads 130 a year? That totally defies the basis on which my parents educated me and on which I have educated my children. Clearly I have been mislead. The will and ability to read are obviously not necesary to nurture intelligence and can indeed be a hinderance.

Please excuse me. I have to go and re-think my entire life.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: pdq
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 06:39 PM

Bush's reading list: heavy on bios and baseball

By Kenneth T. Walsh
Posted 8/17/06
George W. Bush a bookworm? White House aides say it's so. The born-again president's literary interests start with the predictable, such as his daily readings from the Bible. But he also enjoys books about Abraham Lincoln, his political hero, and, of course, yarns about baseball-in a past life, he was, after all, the managing partner of the Texas Rangers. Staffers say the president is actually engaged in an informal contest with White House senior adviser Karl Rove to see who can read more books this year. The latest score card has Bush ahead 60 to 50 {at mid-year}. A sampling of the president's reading list so far this year, according to White House aides:

Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky
American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin (a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, an inventor of the atomic bomb)
Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss (about the late all-star Pittsburgh Pirates right fielder)
Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power by Richard Carwardine
Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural by Ronald C. White Jr.
Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks
Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky (discussing how polio affected the United States in the mid-20th century)
The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth by Leigh Montville
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
The Stranger by Albert Camus

{again, mid-year 2006}

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: bankley
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 07:23 PM

"So whadya mean Neil moved out?"

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 07:23 PM

Peter,

"Now you're telling me you're not nostalgic...
Then give me another word for it,
You who're so good with words,
And at keeping things vague"

(that's Baez addressing Dylan in the song Diamonds & Rust)

****

Why should anyone be all that surprised that George Bush is an avid reader? Why wouldn't he be? It isn't necessarily just "liberals" and "intellectuals" who like reading, including more serious reading.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: bankley
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 07:36 PM

yeah, and who can forget "My Pet Goat" on 9/11/01 ?

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 12:52 AM

I really doubt the "Bush as reader" stories for this reason...nucular, and all of his other mispronunciations and tangled phrases. People who read a lot are familiar with the structure of words, and his language patterns indicate an individual with only passing facility with words, phrases, and sentence structure.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Peter T.
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 02:38 AM

Hmm, interesting -- I always vaguely thought "it" meant "what other kind of thing are you feeling" if it's not nostalgia, but really a straightforward reading is that you're right, and I'm wrong. How can this be??? (Crushed).

There is a fascinating interview this month in UNCUT magazine with producers and engineers of Bob's later albums, about how weird Dylan is in the studio. The most interesting thing to me is someone saying that he looked over at Dylan's lyric sheet and he found the whole thing covered in thousands of words up, down, sideways. That he is a complete obsessive, like those guys in libraries always writing. And here I thought his problem was that he was completely careless and needed an editor-- it turns out that the problem is that his lyrics are nothing more (and nothing less) than a snapshot of one moment in an endless string of words.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: GUEST,Big Tim
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 06:22 AM

Ironic that Dylan should visit Young's childhood home when he scoffs at people who go to see his old home in Hibbing.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 06:05 PM

Yeah, that is ironic, Big Tim. ;-) But after all, Bob knows himself far too well to have any illusions about the present day importance of his own boyhood home. In the case of Neil Young, though, there's some distance between him and Bob, and that distance allows Bob to have the same speculative flights of imagination about Neil's youth that you or I might have about Bob's youth, right?


Peter, I think that Bob's better lyrical works are a result of simply surrendering to the process and letting it happen. You don't write that kind of stuff in a calculated way with any conscious purpose, you do it by sheer instinct and without deliberate thought. This does not mean you end up with something devoid of meaning. Quite the contrary. You can end up with something absolutely marvelous, precisely because you surrendered to the process. (there's no guarantee you will...but you can)

I say this because it is how my own better material has usually been written...and the best songs happen very quickly when you write in that fashion. They usually involve a bit of editing and fine tuning afterward, but about 90% of the work is done in a very short time...like a half hour or so.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 11:28 PM

George W. Bush, who chose his librarian wife Laura partly because of their common love of literature, reads about 130 books per year.

Comic books don't count. :)

Or maybe the list should come with the disclaimer that goes on some email messages that "the mail has been opened, but this does not imply that it was read or that it was understood."

It's interesting that he went to the house, looking for a spark or suggestion. How often do any of us drive by buildings that are important to us and wonder what is going on there now, or wonder how come people left?

SRS

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Peter T.
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 01:25 AM

A I have said somewhere before, that surrendering to the unconscious stuff works best when you are young for some reason -- the genius of the young unconscious gives it form -- Dylan's later work (I excempt Blood on the Tracks) is both meandering and derivative in a lesser way from borrowed forms. .

yours ever,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan searches out Neil Young
From: Zhenya
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 02:27 AM

Apropos of GWB's reading habits, someone sent me this a few years ago:


GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY DESTROYED BY FLOOD

Crawford, Texas (AP) -- A tragic flood this morning destroyed the
personal library of President George W. Bush.

The flood began in the presidential bathroom where both of the books
were kept. Both were destroyed.

A presidential spokesman said the president was devastated, as he   had almost finished coloring the second one.

The White House tried to call FEMA but there was no answer.


Thanks for the link to the Dylan/Neil Young article. I enjoyed reading that. I listened to quite a bit of rock in my high school days, but have all but stopped listening now. But Neil Young is one of the few rock musicians whose music I still dip into from time to time, both the old and current albums. I could see why Dylan would be intrigued.