Only a Flesh Wound: Bob Dylan as Sadistic Boxer :: Blogs :: Andy Whitman on Music

Andrew Ferguson, music critic for The Weekly Standard, throws a haymaker at the fans of Bob Dylan:

If you needed more evidence, the release this month of Bob Dylan's Christmas album, Christmas in the Heart, should close the case. Dylan fans are like Baby Huey dolls, those inflatable figures with the big red nose and the rounded bottom, weighted so that when you punch them--punch hard, punch with all your might--they bounce right back, grinning the same frozen, unchangeable grin.

We can only make a guess how Bob Dylan truly feels about his fans. But it can be a good, strong guess. He's been punching those Baby Hueys for a long time, hard.

It's not too unusual for a performer to lack respect for his most worshipful admirers; he hears himself as they do not, knowing how far short of his hopes his performance invariably falls, despite their wild applause. Sometimes an artist will even hold his audience in contempt, though he's careful, for business reasons, to keep the contempt at least thinly concealed; Abstract Expressionist painters come to mind. But not since Don Rickles at the height of his powers--the second greatest artist of the past 50 years, some believe--has a performer taken delight in actively abusing the people who pay money to enjoy his act. And when Rickles did it, the people were supposed to laugh, and did. When Dylan does it, the fans pull their chins and think hard. Then they pop right back, Baby Huey-like, and start explaining.

Most Dylan fans I know -- even the hard-core supporters -- would admit that Dylan's career has been a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous, that he's made some 5-star albums, some 1-star albums, and a bunch somewhere in between. He is the most maddeningly inconsistent genius in the musical world. And I use that word carefully, because he is a genius. Sure, there are people who think he can do no wrong. Some of them apparently reviewed that Christmas album. But Dylan has been defying expectations and doing whatever he wants to do forever, and long before the Self Portrait debacle of the early '70s that Ferguson sees as a defining moment. You think the people at his mid-'60s electric concerts were booing because they liked what was going on? In any case, he's been written off (yes, even by well-known music critics; a little more research would be helpful) so many times that I'm sure it doesn't faze him.

I know this. He can follow up a stinker of an album with a stone-cold masterpiece. And he's fully capable of chasing "It Must Be Santa Claus" with songs of great profundity and depth. He's done it again and again. I don't think that means we have to be automatons/Baby Hueys and uncritically laud whatever the man does, so in that sense I'm sympathetic with Mr. Ferguson. I do think it means we need to give him space and grace to fail. There have been several absolute nadirs in his career, and they've now spanned close to forty years: Self Portrait, Dylan and the Dead, Knocked Out Loaded, and now Christmas in the Heart. You know what? I wouldn't bet against him next time out.

He is, by the way, contrary to Ferguson's disavowal, the greatest songwriter of the 20th century, and that has nothing to do with a nostalgic yearning for the halcyon days of yore, as the author claims. I was five years old when he made his first album, and I don't particularly relish the memory of learning how to tie my shoes. The author mentions Virgil Thompson and Cole Porter. Nice songwriters. Maybe I missed the film footage of their roles in changing western civilization. I saw what Dylan did.

6 Comments

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By harry on November 3, 2009

Well Andy Whitman.

AT LEAST I AM CAPABLE OF LOVING SOMETHING AS MUCH AS A HUEY LEWIS DOLL.

If you could only love anything as much as I love Bob Dylan (LOTS and LOTS).

Seriously, sure he plays practical christmas themed jokes from time to time. BUT modern times was a fucking good album. love and theft a fucking good album. together through life, a pretty good album. And I happen to think there's some great tracks on self-portrait.

I will take the knock-down, like Huey Lewis, any day.

By Brad on November 3, 2009

Ferguson's review is a perfect example of why Dylan cannot be reviewed by general pop culture critics who lack a deeper understanding of his artistry. You cannot review a Dylan Christmas album with the same ear that one might use to review, say, a Rod Stewart Christmas album. Stewart makes the records to sell records, and Dylan makes records for...well, his own amusement? out of boredom? to answer to a higher calling? Who knows. Dylan is the greatest artist of any medium of the 20th century, and is already looking pretty strong in the 21st. To say he doesn't care about his fans may very well be correct. Doesn't that just mean he's doing it for the right reasons?

By Dave on November 4, 2009

I do not understand what the point of this article is. It is clearly not a review of the Christmas album as no actual merits or detrements of that album are discussed, nor an overview of Dylans career. It seems basically just a huge stereotype of 'fans of Bob Dylan' as if they are all the same. I'm very confused at why this writer has chosen to lump a group of literally millions of people together, then rip into them even while admitting at the time "a little more research may be helpful". He even says flat out "Dylan is the greatest songwriter of the 20th century" yet still makes fun of people who like him???? Whaaaaaaat???! We can discuss the merits of Dylans albums all day, frankly all our life. However Dylan himself as said that an album is just a 'snapshot of what you're doing at that particular moment'. And if we know one thing about Dylan its that, to quote a great song, he's "an artist, he don't look back". So basically all of us, who are just lucky enough to be graced by living in a time where technology can record and preserve snapshots of artistic genius, are only privy to probably 5% at best of all of Bob Dylans musical output. I'm not talking just songwriting,but performing and all the other aspects of 'live art'. Therefore to suggest in some way that the people who are eager and excited to hear anything that this proclaimed "genius" has done are no better than punching dolls, I mean that is just absurd. This article is just downright crap. I'd love a response from the articles writer responding to some of these points. Thanks for your time.

By Andy Whitman on November 4, 2009

Dave, perhaps if you read the text in italics as the quoted article written by Andrew Ferguson, and the non-italicized portions as my response to that article, it might make more sense.

By Tony Joe from baltimore on November 4, 2009

The Ferguson article I see as a right winger's continued assault on the cultural movements of the last half of 20th Century. Note the preferance for Prokoviev over Duke Ellington.
To analyze Dylan's career mostly based on Self Portrait and the Xmas Charity CD is a willfully assine sampling of an amazingly long and productive artistic career-one I think of the most influential artist of 20th Century.

Andy is dead on with Dylan changin western culture. In 1965 I saw Dylan and the Band provoke heated arguments among concertgoers in the false"acoustic/electric/sincere/sellout" dichotomies: thousands of concerts later it is still the greatest concert of my life. Dylan changed our language and our vwpoint of our own country and history. Never saw a greater artistic act of willful creativity like it in my life and it still amazes me. And 44 yrs later Bob Dylan still delivers great art to those w open ears. He
does deserve the Nobel Prize for literature IMHO.

By derrick peyton on November 7, 2009

Like Dylan onced said"Fuck'em if they can't take a joke"...I love Dylan because he is not a fake and he never has trouble with the law.He is his own person and one hell of a artist.His is like the sound of a train braking on the tracks and I love that sound.