Carlos Pérez García
Over the course of a couple of decades, I have dedicated three or four of my weekly columns to a musical genius who was born Robert Allen Zimmerman (1941-, Minnesota, USA), a small-town boy of Jewish origin who converted to Christianity. They say he took his stage name from the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who had been among his youthful reading, but he has made it clear that he only liked how it sounded and was not in homage to anyone.
Now I’m doing it again after seeing the excellent film ‘A Complete Unknown’, which is up for 8 Oscars and moved me with great memories.
Bob Dylan is one of the singers and composers who has had the most significant impact on the world in the last century. He even won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 “for creating new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. That was one of the occasions when I wrote about him and the inspired lyrics of his songs; the second time was when I dissected his generational anthem ‘The answer is in the wind’: Blowin’ in the Wind.
Although this story covers only the first five years of his successful artistic career, between 1961 and 1965, it carefully shows his roots and the characters who were essential to him. Then, in 1966, he suffered a serious motorcycle accident, which set him back two years in his career.
The title comes from the lyrics of his famous song Like a Rolling Stone: How does it feel? How does it feel? How does it feel? To be on your own With no direction home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone
With an all-star cast, this musical biopic has been highly praised; it focuses, above all, on the people that Dylan (Tymothée Chalamet) associated with in his early days, such as Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and his girlfriend, played by Elle Fanning, as well as the exceptional American singer-songwriter of Mexican origin, Joan Baez, his sentimental and artistic partner during that period.
We see that at the age of 19, his talent was already evident, and thus, driven by his peculiar personality, success has accompanied him for decades; before the age of 25, he struggled to move away from his origins in folk music and delve into rock with electronic instruments, which initially generated conflicts with his followers. However, it finally opened up broader horizons. In 1991 and 2012, I attended two of his concerts in Mexico, and it is clear that his influence has lasted for generations.
There would be much more to say, but suffice it to emphasize here that the United States not only creates Trumps and his ignorant, jingoistic followers but also giants of politics and culture such as Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt or Martin Luther King, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman or William Faulkner; George Gershwin, Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein; Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep or Jack Nicholson.
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