Hardly Sick of Love: Some Questions About Dylan

By STEPHEN HAZAN ARNOFF

More may have been written about Bob Dylan than any other popular musician—love and hate, praise, condemnation, speculation and interpretation. On Sunday December 5 at the 14^th Street Y in Manhattan, a stellar group of artists, critics, writers, and musician will be asked  “What kind of love is this?” about Bob Dylan and The Band, one of rock's most bewitching collaborations. Three of them offer a preview here. Greil Marcus's most recent book is Bob Dylan By Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010. John Niven and Dana Spiotta are novelists, whose books Music From Big Pink: A Novella and Eat the Document respectively, offer deep reimaginings of the world of Dylan and The Band.

To start, having written and thought about Dylan in your own work, when you think of Dylan, "What kind of love is this?"—this Dylan love?

Dana Spiotta:
I think this ever-lasting Dylan love, for me, stems from his refusal—from 1965 on—to court his audience. He is indifferent to our love, and I believe that is part of his enduring allure. He doesn't need our love, or so it seems. What kind of love is it? Unrequited love. His resistance to the expectations thrust on him has always been a source of inspiration to me. He is the opposite of a hack. And I also read his independence as deep, even foundational—I don't think it is just Dylan being contrary. I think he can't help it.

Greil Marcus:
He's the relative you've heard about but never seen. Everyone tells stories about him and none of them fit together. You fantasize that you'd have a lot to say to each other, but you'll never have to put it to the test. Also, Cher is better dressed than Dylan. Those 70s wing collars were worse than shoulder pads. But there's a 1965 picture of Dylan with Sonny Bono that's really the one. 

John Niven:
Unknowable and yet intimate, a voice I've heard all my life. As comfortable to me as my father's. Now, in the twilight of life, in the winterlude, we see that Dylan's body of work is Shakespearian in depth and range: Fool to King, Joker to Thief, all human archetypes are contained there. We love him for this richness. This abundance. Also—he is funny.

On Sunday December 5 at the 14^th Street Y we will spend a day thinking about Bob Dylan and the Band specifically. Asked about “Dylan love” you shared vocabulary—indifference, never seen, unknowable—and yet so much of Dylan’s time with The Band buzzes with camaraderie, humor, warmth, shared stories. How do you understand the paradox between the cool love of Dylan alone and the warm love of Dylan and The Band together?

Dana Spiotta:
Well, even Bob Dylan must get lonely. Maybe touring without a band was hard after awhile. Maybe being solo on stage every night started to bore him. Maybe hanging out in his hotel room with Albert Grossman every night wasn't much fun. (Or being ambushed by Sonny Bono backstage and having no one to share the pain with). Maybe he saw A Hard Day's Night one night and thought, yeah, I need to get me a band. The Band. So he found the Hawks and they were The Band. Later, when he wanted to retreat from touring, it must have been much easier to be alone with The Band along. It makes sense—you have to have a few of the right people around you to enjoy your solitude.

Greil Marcus:
Rick Danko on making the basement tapes: "It was like a clubhouse. It was wonderful." It was guys getting away from women. Not cleaning up. Getting obscene. Then going home. At the time, Bob Dylan was living in, or anyway writing about, a domestic paradise. Maybe that was just a dream, but maybe the getaway was the real dream life.

John Niven:
The General and his officers will sometimes share a camaraderie that does not extend outside the command tent to the ranks of the enlisted men. Sometimes this camaraderie doesn't glow too warmly even inside the tent; check Chronicles for Dylan's description of riding in the car with Robbie...