Watching the early Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown has altered the perspective on a singer songwriter I never really understood or resonated with. I still don’t. It seems incongruous the reaction from audiences as Zimmerman announces his presence across New York and then the globe. A voice of a generation emerging from the shooting of Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. A voice of the people who couldn’t really connect with anyone personally, relationships destroyed by his desire to create, the importance of voicing the creative product over spending time with partners. A complete blinkered drive heading one way down the highway straight to the creative space, casualties splattered on the pavement around him joining those static and rolling stones. The film doesn’t dive into his backstory, provide some sort of connectivity with family, upbringing, education or socialisation but just places Bob in Greenwich Village, with the fellow cats, shades on, cigarettes smoked. That’s how he got such a gravelly voice, alongside the passive smoke from everyone else who was lighting up. It’s what’s missing from our popular culture nowadays. No one smokes, all pop artists are generally squeaky clean, autotuned to robotic AI perfection. Dylan was anti AI although just as anti-social. In modern day New York he could open up his computer rather than searching for key changes on his guitar, speak into it, say “create a song in the style of Bob Dylan talking about how the world is heading for yet another disaster, this time with captains Trump and Musk at the controls rather than Khruschev or Nixon. A hard drives train is going to fall in place. Why are so many revered artists such c**t* in the real world. George Michael or Prince, lovely geezers. Laurie Anderson, brilliantly creative artist who still lives on her main hit O Superman, Uh uh uh uh, oh mum and dad. In a wonderful Desert Island Discs, Anderson talks about her amazing family, starring at school, the creative process and spirituality. Dylan smokes, looks moody and mumbles alongside his guitar. A great songwriter who appears to have come from outer space, inventing his own backstory, a carnival of smoke and mirrors. Someone no one will ever know.
