Bob Dylan’s Last Dream

Bob Dylan has been through as many transmogrifications, regressions, pasteurizations, depravations, incubations, deceptions, interruptions, inclusions, delusions, stupefactions, and bastardizations as any ten men.  He basked in Joan Baez’s praise, invited her to his first London concert, and then grossly ignored her. He idolized Ramblin’ Jack, modeled his early life on him, and then walked out the door. He almost died (or so some say) in a motorcycle accident in 1966, and holed up in Woodstock and wasn’t heard from for two years. At the Newport Folk Festival he defiantly plugged in his guitar and gave conniptions to the faithful, or did they boo and walk out because it was late and had begun to rain? He crooned, squeaked, warbled, scratched, and slid his way through more styles, attitudes, and translations than a raft of singers, folk and otherwise. He’s been a Christian and a Jew and somewhere in there he was black and white, Indian (American and Asian) and he was a red and a green, a poetizing jester and a political huckster and a cowboy. He asked an audience once if anyone had any new ideas ‘cuz he could really use one. It was reported that the copper roof on his California hilltop house was the largest of its type ever put on a private dwelling in the western hemisphere. If a hard rain was gonna fall, it probably wouldn’t be on Bob Dylan’s head. Once, so no one would know he was in the audience, he wore a purple turban and an ankle length robe to a Vegas review at Caesar’s Palace. Just recently, he became an underpants salesman when he made a TV commercial for Victoria’s Secrets. He spooked around in the Italian shadows while long-legged babes in lingerie wisped up and down the wet cobblestones of Venice.

Once an old pal asked me, “Why is it that people always expect a guy to forgive and forget?”  “Hell,”  he added, “ I can forgive!” Go home and dig out your old vinyl copy of The Freewheeling Bob Dylan, take a gander at those boots he’s wearing, and then sit down and think hard about those secrets of Victorias.