Inside Bob Dylan’s head

Bob Dylan doesn’t say much.

The man who generally goes to great lengths to stay out of the spotlight and avoids answering many questions about himself and his music is the subject of a new documentary by Martin Scorsese.

The four-hour film, “No Direction Home,” will air in two parts at 9 tonight and 9 p.m. Tuesday on KCTS, Channel 9.

Dylan sat down for an extended interview for the film, and shared seemingly tons of information about his upbringing and musical inspiration.

But, amazingly, after watching, you’ll know more about him, but you won’t know much more about him.

Dylan fans will enjoy the insight into their musical hero’s life, times and tribulations. Others will get a chance to see what all the fuss is about and gain a sense of the man with the distinctive, nasally voice and the huge position of influence he unwittingly held in the early 1960s.

And while you don’t come away with much of an understanding of the motivations behind Dylan’s lyrical brilliance, you’ll get a glimpse – or a reminder – of another time when virtually everything a pop music artist did or said mattered to many people.

It’s clear that Dylan wanted to be famous before that wish came true, and he has spent the rest of his life shunning that celebrity.

Influenced early on by the music of Woody Guthrie, some people will be surprised to learn that Dylan didn’t write his own music, and didn’t consider himself a songwriter, until he was 20 years old.

So it’s shocking, in retrospect, when we see a clip of Steve Allen interviewing Dylan on his TV show just two years later and reading passages from Billboard magazine calling the then-22-year-old Dylan a genius.

It was apparently statements such as those and the expectations that came with them that jaded Dylan very quickly and soured him on the exposure that his music brought.

His lyrics and music touched people in such a profound way that his career catapulted and nearly crashed in just a few years.

Beat poet Allen Ginsberg recalled hearing Dylan’s music for the first time when a friend played a record for him.

“I heard ‘Hard Rain,’ I think,” Ginsberg said, “and wept, because it seemed that the torch had been passed to another generation.”

The film foreshadows occasionally to a 1966 performance in Newcastle, England, where many fans were turned off by Dylan’s new electric sound, calling him a sellout and leaving the performance early.

But it was Dylan’s three performances at the Newport Folk Festival that seemed to best illustrate the period.

He played the festival for the first time in 1963, saying in the film that two years earlier he wouldn’t have been invited to perform there. Two years later, he was the headlining act in what proved to be a significant turning point and one of the more famous incidents of his career.

Many folk music fans didn’t take kindly to his electric guitar-driven set in 1965 and booed him incessantly. The band left the stage after just 15 minutes. Dylan was coaxed into returning to the stage alone, with an acoustic guitar in hand, and played a couple of songs to quell the anxiety.

It was the clearest sign that time were, indeed, a-changin’.

But Dylan was pretty much the opposite of a sellout. He never bent to the expectations of others, musically or personally. And while the film doesn’t make him out to be a likeable person, you feel a little bit sorry for him.

The press asks him to pose with the earpiece of his glasses in his mouth for a photo, and asks him how many protest songwriters he thinks there are. Another interviewer asks him if he cares about the music he writes, only to admit that he’s never listened to Dylan’s music.

You get a feel for the random shots that get aimed your way when you’ve been labeled the voice of a generation.

Victor Balta’s column runs Mondays and Thursdays on the A&E page. Reach him at 425-339-3455 or vbalta@heraldnet.com.

PBS photo

A young Bob Dylan in the early 1960s is the focus of “No Direction Home,” a new Martin Scorcese documentary airing on PBS tonight and Tuesday.