Bob Dylan: 1966-1978 After the Crash (Under
Review series)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: D Main Program: B
The truth was obscure, too
profound and too pure, to live it you have to explode.
- Bob Dylan “Where Are You
Tonight” 1978
It’s just
another Tuesday morning and here we are with yet another documentary all about
Uncle Zimmy. Is it possible that there
is anything new, some revelatory tidbit, a wee chunk of Rosetta herein that
will once and for all provide the master key to the endless corridor of locked
doors that is Bob Dylan?
Short
answer – No.
But that
doesn’t necessarily mean there’s no value to this well made, but ultimately
unsatisfactory film. The period of
Dylan’s career that goes under the microscope is for my money more interesting
than the over analyzed and, if we’re being honest, kind of shallow Genius
Years. What happens after an artist releases a string of albums that includes Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde; albums that not only
irrevocably altered what rock’n’roll was, but completely remade popular culture
in their own image. Add to that the
traveling war zone that was Dylan’s world tour with The Hawks in which was
acted out a nightly ritual that was in nature less Top of the Pops and more Old Testament apocalypse.
Where
could Dylan possibly go along that trajectory? To keep going at the speed he was traveling,
at the same level of creative intensity, with the same fierceness of
performance…he was rocketing toward madness and death. Which brings us to the title of this
documentary, After the Crash; on
July 29, 1966, Dylan was injured while riding his motorcycle near his home in
Woodstock, New York. Much feverish
speculation regarding the exact nature and severity of the accident has gone
the rounds ever since. The very
different Bob Dylan that slowly emerged after the incident confounded public expectation
even more so than the lightning lad who went electric at Newport in 1965.
Who
drained the surrealism out of John Wesley Harding? Who was this soft around the middle family man
crooning tunelessly with Johnny Cash on Nashville
Skyline?
But the
motorcycle accident is a MacGuffin. In
and of itself it holds very little importance, no more relevance than Dylan’s
stubbing his big toe while walking offstage in Manchester. It’s become too much a focal point in his
career, too much a line of division – Before the Crash vs. After the Crash. The accident was both an opportunity and an
excuse. It allowed Dylan to rest and
detox, to reconnect to his family and to the music he loved. It changed the artist, the searcher, not a
lick. If anything Dylan proved himself even
more inquisitive.
After the Crash traces Dylan’s art from The
Basement Tapes to his conversion to Christianity during his 1978 world tour. The depth of the man’s art only increased
during these years. As a reminder of
that fact After the Crash succeeds
admirably. However, it does fall prey to
giving more credit to the crash than the incident actually deserves.
- Kristofer Collins
Kristofer
Collins is an editor at The New Yinzer and owner of Desolation Row CDs in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You can
contact him at:
desolationrowcds@hotmail.com
