— Tim de Lisle
Bob Dylan has spent the bulk of his sixty years as a recording artist being praised as a genius spokesperson of his generation while also being trashed for changes in style, unexpected creative u-turns and the odd time he misspoke. Some of his fiercest critics also happen to be some of his biggest fans. Part of getting into the man involves dealing with some ghastly compositions, poor production work and an acceptance of the fact that there's no way to like all of it.
So, Tim de Lisle's observation about Dylan's evangelical Christianity being the main source of people's derision to his Bobness is missing something. Had he not found the Lord some three years earlier, fans would've surely found something else to howl with protest over. Had he not subjected secular audiences to nothing but devotional material then the press would've found other avenues with which to crap all over him. Dylan couldn't win except for the fact that he was Dylan and had been winning all along.
It may not have been apparent at the time but Dylan was moving away from Christianity by 1982. Shot of Love was the third of his religious trilogy but it was the first to include material with no connection to Jesus. I previously wrote in this space that it was his evangelical material that was much more convincing — with, as I have said before, "Every Grain of Sand" the stand-out — and I stand by this but with a minor caveat: in "Lenny Bruce" he expresses a sacredness hitherto unheard since his conversion.
I'm still not a big fan of this song. I hated its inane lyrics like "never did get any Golden Globe awards, never made it to Synanon" then and time and maturity haven't warmed me to them in the last four years. I observed that the "whole thing reads like random jottings" and I suppose I wasn't wrong considering he admitted to having written it in five minutes. It's safe to say that the Bard didn't put his usual amount of care into this piece.
Still, the gospel influence makes it one of the more devotional works of the era. If Dylan did achieve peace and contentment after joining the Vineyard Movement he didn't express it through the medium of his songs. His passion had returned but he seemed angrier than ever. It was only when paying tribute to a foul-mouthed, drug-addicted Jewish comedian that he could demonstrate a loving, charitable side that, notably, he seemed incapable of giving even to Christ.
Which just goes to show that while Christianity was able to rescue him from the depths of despair and self-loathing, it wasn't destined to be a long-term priority in his life. It was at around the time of Shot of Love that Dylan began to re-introduce old favourites of the non-devotional variety to his live shows. "Lenny Bruce" represents him trying to reclaim that same territory in his freshly recorded work. To make it about a figure who was at his peak while the young "Song and Dance Man" was on the rise is of no small significance.
But who is he alluding to with the line "more of an outlaw than you ever were"? Is he attacking himself for being a middle-class boy who dressed up, affected an accent and fooled the patrons of every New York City cafe by pretending to be a rebel from the old west? Even if he had once been an outlaw in his youth, he was now over forty, a millionaire and had been cramming Jesus down the throats of everyone who paid good money to see him: hardly the kind of behaviour befitting a fugitive from the law.
And this is where we begin to see a return to the Dylan of old. He had always run away from the 'voice of a generation' tag with songs such as "All I Really Want to Do", "Mr Tambourine Man" and "My Back Pages" (it's a cliche I know but my interest in Dylan is intrinsically linked to The Byrds) address his desire to be regarded as an artist rather than as a spokesperson. With "Lenny Bruce" he informs his audience — a good twenty years too late if should be noted — that the real deal had been there all along while they had been following a false idol. Bruce better represented all those things that they had seen in Dylan. "It Ain't Me Babe" was something he tried explaining to his fans all the way back in the sixties; and now in the eighties he was gently reminding them that it still wasn't him.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Depche Mode: "Just Can't Get Enough"
A supposed classic of the eighties but I'm not sure what it has done to deserve this status beyond the annoyingly memorable chorus. Then again, de Lisle doesn't consider it to be as memorable as predecessor hit "New Life" (how does that one go again?). Vince Clarke's final single with the group (he must not have had his imminent departure in mind when he composed it), the Basildonians were getting the remnants of pure pop out of their systems so they were able to move towards darker material in the years ahead, which would be a welcome change. Leaving their old sound behind to those with a better grasp of it was for the best since repeating the words 'just can't get enough' ad nauseam does not a great pop song make. As Patrick Humphries famously summed it up in his review in the Melody Maker, "I can, you will".
(Click here to read the original review)
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