Dylan shouldn’t stop performing, but calls for him to do so should

Perhaps John Jurgensen is just trying to get a jump on the inevitable 70 birthday-related retrospectives and analysis that will accompany Bob Dylan’s next birthday in May. How else to explain his attempted takedown of Dylan in Friday’s Wall Street Journal. The piece, “When to Leave the Stage,” supposes that Dylan is too old, his voice too far gone, to justify continued performing.

“For people of influence in any walk of life, from corporate leaders to sports stars, the question of when to leave the stage is a crucial one. Do you go out at the top of your game, giving up any shot at further glory? Or do you dig in until the end, at the risk of tarnishing a distinguished career?” he writes. It’s a valid question, and one certainly worth discussing when it comes to Dylan. But his answer is flawed.

Rebuttals to his piece are several, but I’ll focus on one here: the notion that Dylan might somehow tarnish his legacy with subpar shows well past his prime. Jurgensen himself answers the question before it is asked, writing, “After 50 years in music, his place in the pantheon is unassailable.” Yet, he goes on write, “Firing the debate is his status as the ultimate music icon, the caretaker of a body of work that, many would agree, stands in contrast to his current sound,” going on to wonder, “if he plows on indefinitely, could the accumulating career lows undermine the highs?”

Anyone who asks such questions doesn’t understand Dylan or his music, for the artist is perhaps the greatest example of one whose art is never finished. Recordings capture moments in time. And these are truly moments. Any listen to the outtakes from a session reveals that Dylan attempts songs several different ways before deciding on one to release. Listen to the versions of “Mississippi” on the late period odds and sods collection Tell Tale Signs. All are different, all are wonderful. There may be one “official” version of a song, but only in the marketplace; not in Dylan’s mind.

As Greil Marcus wrote in a review of the Japanese-only release, Live 1961-2000 – Thirty-Nine Years of Great Concert Performances, “Then comes ‘Born in Time,’ and you figure it’s time to hit the restroom. There’s a long line, though, and you lose out on ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe.’ It will never be sung and played quite like it is this night in 1975. You missed it. Or would have, if this record didn’t exist.” (Taken from Marcus’ exhaustive, fascinating new book, Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010.)

A live Dylan performance today offers a similar opportunity. He’ll never play the same song the same way again. You may not like this version of that song (or any song, as Jurgensen’s reports of mass walk-outs are to be believed), but someone else might. One fan laments these changes, telling Jurgensen, “What you’re used to feeling from his music just isn’t there.” Another, however, follows one disappointment-fueled show with another, declaring, “Compared to last time? 180 degrees!”

The newish book Advanced Genius Theory by Jason Hartley offers some related food for thought. The book posits that advanced artists — those like Dylan, Lou Reed and Neil Young — who have alienated fans along the way by seemingly betraying what they initially stood for, are actually too far ahead of the rest of us to be understood. The theory is more complex (and convoluted and, ultimately, indefensible) than that, but it sparks interesting debate. In writing about Dylan, Hartley rightly argues that “(Their fans) look to artist to make the sacrifices that they are afraid to make themselves. In Dylan’s case he was expected to be loyal to a style of music so a bunch of white college kids could feel as if they were making a difference.”

Forty years later, that is still happening, to a degree, as people look to Dylan to help them recapture something to which his music contributed. But Dylan has moved on, even as these people seek to remain in place. “Don’t Look Back” wasn’t just a catchy lyric, it was clearly a defining statement of purpose.

Yes, it’s understandable that someone could be disappointed by Dylan’s voice — Jurgensen cleverly calls it “a scatting Cookie Monster,” while I referred to it as a “compromised croak” in a review of an October 2007 show. But there were transcendent moments in the show I saw, and, I’m sure in every show Dylan has performed since. To suggest that he should hang it up is to suggest that fans willing to pay their money down for a ticket should be denied the chance of witnessing their own transcendence. Had Dylan listened to the calls from detractors in the mid-1980s, we wouldn’t have Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind or “Love and Theft,” and if he heeds this new batch of naysaying, who knows what we’ll miss?