Dylan at 70
May. 24th, 2011 08:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWhen I recently read someone complaining Dylan shouldn't tour anymore because he croaks, I thought: when did he ever anything else? The appeal of Bob Dylan was never his voice. Or the personality. It was the songwriting, at which he was stunning, and deserves all the accolades he ever got from critics and peers alike. So, in tribute of his Bobness' 70th birthday, first a few examples of how the man continues to inspire, people from other media even, and then a song not by but about him, by the glorious Joan Baez.
When the first notes of Dylan's All Along the Watchtower made it to the screen near the end of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica, in an arrangement by BSG composer Bear McCreary, a lot of people complained about breaking suspension of disbelief. Now there is a lot you can critisize about BSG, especially about the last two seasons, but the way it introduced and kept using All Along The Watchtower was inspired madness for me. And it has come to the point where I find it impossible to think of BSG and its characters without associating them with this song. If you're not familiar with McCreary's version of the Dylan tune, here it is:
Zack Snyder's film version of Watchmen wasn't a film classic the way Moore's book became a comic book classic, but the credits sequence, solving the problem of how to tell the backstory which Moore conveys via appendixes and interviews and a lot of dialogue, is inspired. And also uses Bob Dylan far better than it uses other songs later in the film. The times, they are indeed changin', though linked rather than embedded, since embedding has been de-activated: Watchmen Does Dylan.
They used Dylan's own version, and it fits the Watchmen dystopia, but generally speaking, I share the popular attitude of preferring the covers by other singers. Johnny Cash, no mean song writer in his own right, could not resist the lure of Dylan, either. Here he is with Don't Think Twice:
The 70s were a decade for songs about your ex. (Earlier examples were given in this very journal.) Leave it to Joan Baez to write one that is far more graceful and mature than certain guys from Liverpool were capable of being about each other at the same time. Diamonds and Rust is one of the most beautiful songs around, and even without the Baez-Dylan context just works as an exploration of past love and acknowledgement what it had meant without denying it is the past. With the context, it's a standout tribute from one musician to another:
When the first notes of Dylan's All Along the Watchtower made it to the screen near the end of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica, in an arrangement by BSG composer Bear McCreary, a lot of people complained about breaking suspension of disbelief. Now there is a lot you can critisize about BSG, especially about the last two seasons, but the way it introduced and kept using All Along The Watchtower was inspired madness for me. And it has come to the point where I find it impossible to think of BSG and its characters without associating them with this song. If you're not familiar with McCreary's version of the Dylan tune, here it is:
Zack Snyder's film version of Watchmen wasn't a film classic the way Moore's book became a comic book classic, but the credits sequence, solving the problem of how to tell the backstory which Moore conveys via appendixes and interviews and a lot of dialogue, is inspired. And also uses Bob Dylan far better than it uses other songs later in the film. The times, they are indeed changin', though linked rather than embedded, since embedding has been de-activated: Watchmen Does Dylan.
They used Dylan's own version, and it fits the Watchmen dystopia, but generally speaking, I share the popular attitude of preferring the covers by other singers. Johnny Cash, no mean song writer in his own right, could not resist the lure of Dylan, either. Here he is with Don't Think Twice:
The 70s were a decade for songs about your ex. (Earlier examples were given in this very journal.) Leave it to Joan Baez to write one that is far more graceful and mature than certain guys from Liverpool were capable of being about each other at the same time. Diamonds and Rust is one of the most beautiful songs around, and even without the Baez-Dylan context just works as an exploration of past love and acknowledgement what it had meant without denying it is the past. With the context, it's a standout tribute from one musician to another:
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Date: 2011-05-24 08:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-24 04:02 pm (UTC)