Dylan at 60: Low-profile but influential
By David Bauder
Associated Press
Picture this: Joan Baez, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Neil Young and Stevie Wonder gather around a table while a birthday cake bright with candles is placed in front of Bob Dylan.
A chorus of "Happy Birthday" begins — slightly off key after a few drinks — then the gang serenades Bob with a few verses of "Forever Young." Dylan turns to the cameras televising the event live on HBO and beams.
Nah. Not a chance.
Bob Dylan has something much more low-key in mind to mark his 60th birthday on May 24. "Absolutely no public plans," said his spokesman, Elliot Mintz.
The milestone is likely to mean more in other people's homes, anyway. It will be a jolt to the generation that wore its youth so defiantly, who will check the mirror a little more closely for wrinkles.
It's not like Dylan avoids public celebrations of his work. He showed up for the "Bobfest" tribute concert in Madison Square Garden in 1992 and sat for Kennedy Center honors.
He just looks wholly uncomfortable while he's there. Perhaps no artist has remained such a personal mystery to his fans while creating music that makes them feel they know him. His songs are a mirror to the soul — just not his soul.
Dylan is the subject of a new biography that just reached stores, "Down the Highway," notable for revealing a marriage and child during the 1980s that completely escaped public notice.
For a fan of Dylan's music, the book is profoundly depressing.
It paints a picture of a lonely man, imprisoned by the clash between a public existence and an obsessive desire for privacy. People always want to talk to him, including a few nuts. The experiences of John Lennon and George Harrison prove the value of being wary.
In Dylan, those pressures seem to have amplified some personal traits that weren't all that great to begin with. He alienated many people who knew him.
When Dylan was recuperating from a serious heart infection four years ago, "Down the Highway" author Howard Sounes reports, he received a get-well card from Winston Watson, a former drummer in one of the singer's many bands. Dylan later told Watson that of all the musicians he had worked with through the years, no one else had bothered to contact him.
Maybe a gift — and the expectations it brings — extracts a price.
Dylan has been showered with honors as he approaches 60. His album "Time Out of Mind," a spooky rumination about aging and death, won a fistful of Grammy Awards. The only recording Dylan released last year, the sardonic "Things Have Changed," won an Academy Award. This month he appears on a soundtrack to "The Sopranos," covering a Dean Martin song to the accompaniment of an accordion.
His influence is still alive. The singer Lucinda Williams said she had "Time Out of Mind" in mind when she went into the studio to record her new disc, due out next month.
At this juncture of his musical life, Dylan is more a performing than recording artist. He's really made only two quality albums in 20 years. "Time Out of Mind," which proved the spigot wasn't dry, is nearly four years old now. If he has plans to make a new disc, "I have not been advised," Mintz said.
Dylan's on the road for a large part of every year, now in the second decade of his Never Ending Tour.
There's a good chance he's appeared near you. New York, Los Angeles or Chicago weren't on the itinerary this spring. But Kearney, Neb.; Dalton, Ga.; Blacksburg, Va.; and Cape Grandeau, Mo., were. After a six-week break, he's scheduled to return to the stage June 24 in Norway.
Happy birthday.
