A Bob Dylan Primer

Michael Hacker has given us a beautiful piece of work on Bob Dylan. It is insightful and enhanced by how deeply personal it is. If you know a lot about Dylan it’s great but would also be a great starting point for someone with only a little knowledge.

What is Bob Dylan? If you are a Dylan nut like me or just just interested in Bob Dylan for what ever reason. This Podcast is a must listen. Michael has a very different look at the career of Dylan than anything I have come across in years. Like Michael, I stumbled onto Dylan in the early 70’s. Although I actually had heard more Dylan than I thought at the time. Yes I missed the very early Dylan but my than Girlfriend’s Uncle who was just a little older than I was at the time took me onto a very deep dive into Dylan’s work. I was hooked to say the least. This Series of Podcast cast takes you into a History if I may into Dylan. I have been listening for days and hopefully there is more to come. Great work Michael!

2020 was shaped up to be my “Year of Dylan.” Even before the zeitgeist defined itself by the events of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter Movement, I found myself pulled towards Dylan. Clairvoyance or coincidence, it turned out to be a saving grace. It is no exaggeration to say that my yearlong obsession with Dylan was one of the few crutches that allowed me to limp across the 2020 finish line. This is not a new found obsession. Rather, in the spirit of Kierkegaard, I find myself returning to Dylan in an act of “repetition”. As a boy, I was obsessed with the protest songs and the 60’s albums where Dylan first “plugged in.” In my 20’s, I gravitated to some of Dylan’s more exotic material—such as “Desire.” Now in my 30’s, I’m immersed in everything he’s done since the return to the profane marked by “Infidels”. The World of Dylan is really a universe. I had my five albums, my Hohner Marine Band Harmonica, my houndstooth scarf and my fussed up hair and I thought the heaven’s spun around me. But now that I’ve taken a mature effort to understand the man, I realize I am staring into a blackhole. I’m not a fan. I’m an extraterrestrial who picked up Subterranean Homesick Blues on a radio station a million light years away. There are a lot of great Dylan podcasts out there, but Michael Hacker’s is the best I’ve heard. Hacker’s podcast places Dylan’s career in the larger context of musical and cultural history it is both a part of and has helped to shape. The unity of narrative and sequence of episodes raises the podcast to the heights of an “audio documentary”. Hacker manages to present his material in a way that is both objective and deeply personal by placing himself as a listener in the same larger historical and cultural context that he places Dylan. Hacker is profoundly aware of the influence of history and technology on our lives. Some of my favorite passages from the podcast come when he steps back to meditate on the implications our technology has on our ability to appreciate our cultural heritage and properly remember the events and artifacts that comprise our past. Probably the most endearing aspect of Hacker’s podcast is the charity he offers in his interpretation of Dylan’s work. A survey of Dylan podcasts shows that some of Dylan’s biggest fans are also some of his biggest critics. Hacker is never sycophantic or fawning in his treatment of Dylan. Rather, he seeks to break through the “screen memory”— hackneyed, boilerplate— interpretations of Dylan’s catalogue. He listens to every album with new ears as though he had never heard another person’s opinion. He provides wonderfully original interpretations of Dylan albums that have traditionally been dismissed by others. Hacker convincingly establishes a continuity to A career that is most often summarized as “disjointed” and referred to in phases and periods. Hacker is “revealing” where others interpret. He is interested in understanding Dylan’s music as personal and historical acts, not words or notes to be compared or analyzed. He allows Dylan’s work to speak for itself while simultaneously expressing his appreciation for how Dylan has influenced his own life in significant ways. Hacker opens each episode by asking: What is Bob Dylan? When the distinction between the artist and culture dissolves, the beauty of art reveals the truth of history. And perhaps, in some sense, this is what “Bob Dylan” is.

I came to this podcast with a great appreciation for Dylan’s iconic works, and I hoped to leave with more appreciation for his lesser known and under appreciated works. I was not let down. A truly terrific exploration of Dylan’s life and art, this podcast has me listening to Tempest, Street Legal, and Empire Burlesque for the first time. Can’t wait to keep going. Thank you!