Bob Dylan will take to the stage Friday night in front of 75,000 people in dusty Indio, Calif., and probably say nothing. That's what happened last Friday on the same stage at a pricey new two-weekend festival called Desert Trip featuring six pillars of the rock-music pantheon.
Hiding under a white Zorro hat and dim lights, Dylan said not a word but delivered a potent, penetrating performance that neither I nor anyone else there will ever forget.
Dylan likes being put on a pedestal but he doesn't like being treated like he's on it. On Thursday, he received the highest award in a much celebrated career that's warranted a Wikipedia page dedicated just to his accolades:
The Nobel Prize for literature.
His mother, Beatty, would be verklempt if she were alive. Her 75-year-old son will probably say nothing to acknowledge it Friday night in the desert.
If you ever talked to Dylan (and I have), he might tell you that he's a troubadour whose job is to travel from town to town singing his songs. Maybe 100 towns a year, throughout North America and Europe — and sometimes Japan. Those songs are filled with poetry, the kind of poetry set to music that is analyzed in numerous college classes throughout the country, the kind of poetry that has led to a Pulitzer, an Oscar, Grammys and now the Nobel.
Dylan reinvented songwriting for popular music. He even created a new job that became known as singer-songwriter. Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and a few others before Dylan wrote and sang their own songs. But Dylan liberated the art form. He wasn't mooning over Maybelline or Peggy Sue. He was singing about big topics like war and racism, with words that didn't necessarily rhyme or melodies that didn't make you hum.
He said the answer to moral questions was blowin' in the wind. He urged congressmen and everyone else to wake up because the times they are a-changin'. He questioned a woman from a different social class by asking how does it feel to be on your own, with no direction home?
