Thursday, September 11, 1986
Daily Nebraskan
Page 11
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Boor?
By Charles
The rumor's been on the streets for years.
Don't tell me you haven't heard the whispers.
Robert Christgau may be talking about The
Blasters in print, but when you get him drunk
you can't shut him up on this "Bob Dylan is
dead" thing. And Dave Marsh might be all
ga ga over Springsteen when you see him on
Nightline, but when he and Ted Koppel head
off for Chinese food afterward, it's "Dylan is
dead" rumors until four in the morning.
Of course, the "McCartney is dead" rumors
started the whole thing. After that any
change of habit warranted a death rumor.
Bowie and Lou Reed were excluded from any
rumors because a man can only die and be
reborn so many times. Grace Slick was dead ,
for a while there, probably smothered in her
sleep in some sanitarium, but she's stayed so
dead that now resurrection rumors seem
spurious.
John Cougar Mellancamp's record com
pany attempted to start a reverse rumor, try
ing to sell the press and other carriers of
contagious gossip on a rumor that John Cou
gar Mellancamp was dead before 1982 and
only a real living human being after that.
Funny thing is, most of the press seemed to
buy it.
But for those who were seeking more than
just commercial suicides and eventual re
births, the "Dylan is dead" rumor had it all.
It was the proper blend of zombie movie,
commercial conspiracy, pagan death symbo
lism, aural evidence, lethal circumstance
and staggering coincidence that makes a
rumor get larger and healthier as the years go
by.
(1) Bob Dylan died in a motorcycle acci
dent in 1968. Dylan rolled off a cliff on his
Harley.
It is believed that Arlo Guthrie knew Dylan
was dead and that is why he wrote the
"Pickle Song." Because Arlo Guthrie thought
Dylan's record company and the spirited
multi-nationals (read International Jewish
Banker's conspiracy, who seemed already to
have an inkling that Dylan might go Zionist
sometime in the '80s) that backed the record
company, might pick him to be the next
Dylan, allowing Guthrie's record company to
kill him off by holding a meeting between
Tim Buckley or Donovan (posing as Guthrie)
and mass murderer Juan Corona on the sub
ject of migrant worker's conditions in Cali
fornia. Buckley or Donovan had become such
worthless additions to Warner Records that
their bodies turning up in a pit, chopped to
bits with Corona's machete, wouldn't make
any difference in the great scheme of things.
Something, however, went wrong. Perhaps
it was Buckley and Donovan's reluctance to
sacrifice their lives in the interests of keep
ing Bob Dylan alive. Perhaps it was Juan
Corona's reluctance to chop anyone up on
media instructions. Corona was notably free
spirited. Whichever theory you choose to believe,
the shuffling of folk stars did not occur and
Arlo Guthrie was left with an absurd folk
dittie about surviving a lethal motorcycle
accident by landing on a police car.
Perhaps it was the song itself that turned
off Dylan's record company. Dylan had by
1968 become too spiritual to write anything
so funny. Obviously Guthrie just wasn't tak
ing the whole business seriously enough.
For years Buckley and Donovan tried to tell
their stories to the authorities, about how
they were set-up to talk to a mass murderer in
a secluded area of California, given thou
sands of dollars by four masked men wearing
yamulkas, and then discovered the truth .
Because the authorities could not tell
Buckley from Donovan and in some cases
kept referring to both of them as "Mr. Dylan"
and "Mr. Guthrie," nothing came of the alle
gations. f
(2) There is only wild speculation as to
who actually took Dylan's place after the
accident. Some say it was an unknown folk
singer who had never played in public before
but wrote passable songs. Some say it was
just a gravel-voiced impersonator and that
Dylan's label reassembled the Brill building
pop-song writers to pen future Dylan hits.
Carole King, Neil Sedaka and Neil Diamond
deny this. Don Kirschner refused ; to com
ment. Looking at the output of these stars
since 1968, this rumor seems somewhat
apocryphal.
After Dylan's "Slow Train Coming" was
released, rumors circulated wildly about
Dylan's place actually being taken by Jimmy
Swaggart, the television evangelist. This
seems like exaggeration to me and doesn't
hold much water unless you merely attribute
the songwriting to Swaggart and the actual
vocals to someone else. When asked about
the theory, Swaggart responded without hes
itation that Bob Dylan was a Jew and then
muttered something about the eye of a
needle.
Since then Dylan impersonation became
kind of a fad among young folk stars. Several
married beautiful young women by telling
them they were Dylan. Most of these pre
tenders were discredited because the real
Dylan impersonator could be seen in concert
or, much later, on MTV at the same time they
were getting hitched or renting cars under
Dylan's name. One even managed to buy a
house in Carmel by signing the papers Robert
Zimmerman. The real estate company seemed
to think this secret knowledge was enough
for instant credit.
? (3) Of course, the crux of any Dylan is
dead argument is the song "Lay, Lady Lay" off
Dylan's "Nashville Skyline" LP. The record
was recorded just after the motorcycle acci
dent and this vocal performance is certainly
not Dylan. Only two things could account for
the voal on this song:
(A) Ten rubber tourniquets were wrapped
around Dylan's trachea and a lint filter was
shoved to the back of his throat, or
(B) This is not Dylan at all.
Most people who have spent years study
ing this rumor opt for the latter.
(4) For so long it seemed inevitable that
Dylan and Joan Baez would be paired off for
connubial bliss. After the motorcycle acci
dent Dylan showed little if any interest in
Baez. He became interested in people out
side of the spotlight. Perhaps this is because
only Baez would be able to tell the new Dylan
from the old one. Nothing could hurt the
record company's conspiracy more than Baez
dashing ou of the Dylan honeymoon ranch
caterwauling something about "unreasona
ble facsimiles."
(5) Dylan wore white face make-up for the
Rolling Thunder Review in the early 70s.
Unless Dylan was attempting to play the lead
in Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado," there
seems to be no other explanation for this
than to refer to most pagan cultures. This is a
death-mask. It is a clue to the devoted. Dylan
is dead, long live Dylan. The fact that this
sort ofweirdness saturated the early 70s
should be taken into consideration, of course.
(6) Dylan associates have changed drasti
cally. The Rolling Thunder Review, which
Dylan had apparently planned since before
the accident, saw Dylan surrounded by Sioux
Indians, jugglers, clowns, old hippies and
some Hell's Angels.
Now Dylan is surrounded by Tom Petty and
the Heartbreakers and The Grateful Dead.
One could argue that Petty and his band
represent the jugglers and clowns whereas
The Grateful Dead certainly qualify as old
hippies and therefore, Dylan's associations
have not changed at all.
Dylan's attempting to sing with Michael
Jackson, Lionel Richie, Bruce Springsteen,
Ray Charles and Cyndi Lauper on "We Are the
World" is definite proof that the actual Dylan
is no more. There is even a scene in the video
for this song where several Top 40 pop stars
are seen teaching Dylan how to sing. Dylan
listens patiently. This is not Bob Dylan.
(7) Another clue to the faithful: Dylan is
touring with the Grateful Dead. Not as subtle
as backmasking "Turn Me On Dead Man" but
in the '80s subtlety is rare.
(8) In the same Dylan that used to ramble
about Botticelli's niece and Genghis Khan
the same Dylan who penned '"What's a Swee
theart like You, Doing in a Place Like This,"
or "God Gave Names to All the Animals?" The
switch from cabalistic rantings inspired by
the intense reading of Rimbaud and Verlaine
to Top 40 doggerel seems significant.
(9) One of the most startling recent dis
coveries is that the people of Duluth, Minn.,
Dylan's hometown, also knew the new Dylan
is a phony. The City Council denied permis
sion for a street to be named after Dylan. No
official reason was given for the denial but
rumor has it that the city council voted on
whether or not Dylan was dead. Almost all
conceded. If your hometown doesn't know
you, who does?
The clincher to this story is that Dylan's
father is on the city council.
(10) If Dylan is indeed deceased, one the
ory has it that there have been many Dylans
in an effort to keep up with commercial
needs. The first pretend Dylan was all right
until it was noticed that nobody gave two
' hoots in hell about his guruhood anymore.
Then came the subservient Dylan, serving
somebody the righteous reverent Dylan,
This earned Dylan his first big cover story in a
long while from Rolling Stone magazine and
national attention. "Dylan and the Christian
God," a concert tour in the works?
But the Judeo-Christian God took a big
kick in the pants PR-wise come 1980, and
Dylan hooked up with MTV and Zionism, a
telling contract, indeed.
Proof comes in the form of the live album,
"Real Live." This was a risky venture anyway
on the part of the record executives, but they
needed an album that would link all the
Dylans together to show there was only one
Dlyan. The Dylan on this LP is fine on the
newer stuff, probably because they were his
recordings, not so bad on older tunes, proba
bly because he sang these in grade school,
but real shaky on middle period stuff penned
by one of the pretenders. An excellent exam
ple is "Tangled Up in Blue," where this knew
kid just doesn't remember the lyrics and
starts making them up as he goes along.
The record company immediately had this
new Dylan grant an interview in which he
told the press that the lyrics he used on "Real
Live" were the ones he's preferred in the first
place. Because Dylan had never been a very :
good judge of his own work, the press wan
dered away satisfied.