Customer Reviews

Bob Dylan: 1966-1978 - After the Crash

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This DVD project is disappointing. It claims "rare historic footage," which suggests performance footage. There are only a few clips of concert performances and they are only seconds-long and are available on YouTube. While having only explored Dylan's life and music for less than a year through a few books, some albums and obvious internet searches, I found that "After the Crash" offered little that I didn't already know. Most information seemed to have been taken directly from Dylan's "Chronicles" and one or two biographies.

Nigel Williamson offered nothing of value as a critic of Dylan's work. Certain other critical opinions lacked value and depth.

On the positive side: Clinton Heylin, as critic, offered perspective on ratings of Dylan's albums of this period. The remarks of Al Aronowitz were helpful in adding insight to this prolific songwriting period, as he spoke of Sara Dylan's calming presence on her husband and her "queenly" charisma. This DVD would be nothing at all without the interviews of Rob Stoner and Scarlet Rivera - on the Rolling Thunder Revue and the album, "Desire".

Oh - A. J. Weberman is not as disgusting as I thought he was. Just plain eccentric. His taped conversation with Dylan is priceless because, from it, we hear Dylan as a very nice person, indeed.

Having been innundated with all of the history of Bob Dylan in his 60's era,which many view as a major peak of his impact musically and culturally this documentary helped more obviously fill in some of the gaps. While not a very lavish production without the presense of a great deal of unseen footage and relying on photographs of this era this gathers many critics,writers and musicians who either were familiar or worked with Dylan during this period for not only insights into each one of his late 60's/early 70's albums but bits of inside info on his life and career during the time period. In the beginning Dylan is involved in a motorcyle accident in 1966 just as one of his signiture albums Blonde on Blonde is released and begins a year long period of seclusion and self reflection. Having gone from a culturally relevant folk singer/songwriter to a musically influential folk/rock singer-songwriter in half a decades time Dylan finished off the 60's releasing music that followers of either of his earlier styles found somewhat puzzling. This does an excellent job at illustrating this time as Dylan marries,begins to raise a family and begins to live the closest he came to a jetset life thus far:splitting time between his different homes and touring very consistantly. Not only does he get his first role in a major film during this time but makes one of his own,only to have to totally panned. Also he wound up gaining the undesired attention of an obsessive journelist/fan who went as far as picking through Dylan's garbage to attempt to decode "secret Messages" in Dylan's lyrics. The man himself is interviewed and is apolojectic and humble following a physical confrontation with Dylan in the mid 70's. His mid 70's comeback and the Rolling Thunder tours are chronicled extremely well here as well as the circumstances surround his recording of his two defining 70's releases Blood on the Tracks and Desire. It also helps you understand how his constantly changing persona during this period helped gradually put something of a conclusion to the somewhat obsessive culturally mythology that had been built around him during his first decade of musical output. This doesn't attempt to draw any particular conclusion on Dylan's intent necessarily but present the facts and a lot of the truths on what happened to him during this period and does so with a lot of well researched detail.

This is the second Dylan documentary in the series produced by UK-based Chrome Dreams. This one is far superior to the first ("Tales from a Golden Age" - which covers the same period, but certainly not as well, as "No Direction Home"). It suffers only in comparison to third in the series, "Both Ends of the Rainbow," which was filmed later, had better filming techniques, and had access to additional information that was simply not present at the time that the first two films were made.

The interviews in this second film were obviously done at the time of the first. However, this film benefits from access to additional music performances than "Tales from a Golden Age." Because the producers seemed to have had no access to the album cuts of the songs, the performances are essentially limited to televised live versions, with notations that the "original version" was on this or that album. That said, these alternative versions are fascinating in and of themselves.

The documentary covers, in quite a good depth, a period in Dylan's biography much less known than the period prior to the crash. The film also benefits, greatly, by the involvement of Dylan's "Desire" collaborator, Jacques Levy. His interview was accomplished shortly before Mr. Levy's death and the closing credits acknowledge him. Missing from the documentary are many other people who actually were working with Dylan at the time, with the notable exceptions of Scarlet Rivera and Rob Stoner.

The film offers some fascinating insights into the albums and songs. I would not say that I agree with all of the interviewees about the quality of one or another album. Having come to appreciate Dylan much more recently, I have had the advantage of looking at his work as a whole, all at once, and with access to The Bootleg Series, as well. Thus, I do not have the visceral reaction to some of the albums that others have. Indeed, I have somewhat of soft spot for "Self Portrait." Indeed, if "Self Portrait" were marketed as "The Bootleg Series, vol. ½," which it essentially is, I think that the critical appraisement would be very different.

This documentary features extensive involvement by Clinton Heylin. This film closes with the same statement by Mr. Heylin that opens "Both Ends of the Rainbow," which nicely ties the two films together. Mr. Heylin is, himself, a very controversial figure among Dylan critics. That said, I appreciate Mr. Heylin's own critical contributions and find his lack of worship of Dylan refreshing.

It is important to understand that this is a documentary about the process of the making of Dylan's music, the critical response to it at the time of its release, and a reassessment of it with the passage of time. The film touches on Dylan's biography only to the extent that his biography touches on the songs themselves. If that is what you are looking for, then you will be well pleased with this film. If you are looking for something else, however, then you should look elsewhere.

The first paragraph just below was used in some recent CD reviews of Bob Dylan's later, post-1990's work, like "Love And Theft" but also, generally, apply to this DVD review of what now amounts to his "middle" period from 1966 to 1978, the period from his `disappearance' into the wilds of Woodstock, New York through to his reemergence with, arguably, his master work "Blood On The Tracks" and on through the famous "Rolling Thunder Revue" tour of the mid-1970's:

"Okay, okay I have gone on and one over the past year or so about the influence of Bob Dylan's music (and lyrics) on me, and on my generation, the Generation of '68. But, please, don't blame me. Blame Bob. After all he could very easily have gone into retirement and enjoyed the fallout from his youthful fame and impressed one and all at his local AARP chapter. But, no, he had to go out on the road continuously, seemingly forever, keeping his name and music front and center. Moreover, the son of a gun has done more reinventions of himself than one could shake a stick at (folk troubadour, symbolic poet in the manner of Rimbaud and Verlaine, heavy metal rocker, blues man, etc.) So, WE are left with forty or so years of work to go through to try to sort it out. In short, can I (or anyone else) help it if he is restless and acts, well, .... like a rolling stone?"

Frankly, I have covered so much Bob Dylan material, early, middle and late, over the past year I am beginning to feel like the guy (A.J. Weberman)interviewed in this DVD who made something of a `journalistic' career (if also a nuisance) of going through Dylan's garbage to see if he could find the "Rosetta Stone" to decode the meaning of his lyrics. Whew! At least I am not that bad off. I "merely" write reviews of what, as is the case here, Trans-Atlantic (meaning from the British Isles and their environs) professional music reviewers think Dylan was up to and his place in the folk/rock/pop pantheons.

I will just quickly run through the main points that are presented here as the "talking heads' who dominate this documentary are fully capable of taking you through the highlights and lowlights of this period in Dylan' career. Of course it makes no sense to have made this documentary if one does not recognize that after Dylan`s motorcycle crash in 1966 and subsequent seclusion that this was a watershed event of some proportions in his life and career. This mysterious period, of which I will make a short comment on at the end, is obviously ripe for all kinds of speculation even to this day. What is not up for speculation is that Dylan emerges from this period with a different persona that the early folk troubadour and the subsequent highly poetic folk rock idol of the pre-1966 period.

This, in short, is the period of the various "basement, bootleg and borrowed" tapes of the Woodstock farm time, the seminal American roots/outlaw tribute album, "John Wesley Harding", various minor albums leading up to a shifting back to rock with the "Planet Wave" album (which has "Forever Young" on it, that can now serve as something of an anthem for the "Generation of `68"), the mystical master work "Blood On The Tracks" and the almost equally masterful "Desire" album that served to advertise the "Rolling Thunder Revue" tour. When one puts the whole period together ,as one of the commentators mentioned, this is a remarkable, perhaps unique, amount of work from a guy who was left for dead, musically and culturally, if not physically. And all the time Dylan was `reinventing' himself he was shedding that "folk oracle' role from the early 1960's that he was desperately running away from.

To finish up, I want make a comment on Dylan's place in the music and cultural pantheon of the late 20th century. Much is made in this film, and elsewhere in other commentaries about the shifts in Dylan's work, about his seeming hatred for the role of folk oracle/leader/messiah of what we were trying accomplish in the 1960's. No question the folk troubadour Bob Dylan of the early 1960's, the one who told us "The Times They Are A-Changin'", that the answer was "Blowin' In The Wind" and that we were "Like A Rolling Stone" has something to say , and something that we wanted, in some cases desperately, to hear about. That voice carried us through, rather nicely, the civil rights period and the period of questioning where we wanted to see American power and culture go.

However, when the deal went down and the American government and its various security agencies ratcheted up the heat on us during the anti-Vietnam period of the late 1960's and Dylan was nowhere to found we did not fall apart in dismay or disorder. We heard other, more directly political voices, all the way from Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy to Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and then on to Karx Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky to name a few. Frankly, at least in the circles that I ran in, we did not miss Dylan even if we wondered, off-handedly, where the hell he was. But each man to his calling- "Tangled Up In Blue", Idiot Wind", Shelter From The Storm" and many other songs from this period still stand the test of musical time. In the end that is what he wanted to do, and that will endure.