Customer Reviews

Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Music is a hard thing to write about. You can go clipped and dry in your appoach, with dates and names and other history, which can be pretty dull. Or you can, if you live and believe it like Greil Marcus obviously does, do the stream-of-consciousness thing. Despite its unevenness I think I prefer the Marcus approach. This book is not going to appeal to everyone. The actual Basement Tapes of the title really don't take up but a small portion of the book. Instead, Marcus uses the Tapes like a touchstone for everything authentic - and vanishing, in American culture. "Old Weird America," Marcus calls it. Indeed. Dylan is of course important, since he's the last musical genius (according to Marcus) to understand this. When Marcus does discuss a song on the Basement Tapes, he often, to my mind, overstates his case with pretty wild hyperbole that has me thinking whatever he's smoking, it must be good. But I'm willing to go with that. The payoff comes when he discusses, for example, Dock Boggs (an important figure for Dylan) and the often violent Southwest Virginia music and gun scene in the 1920s. Knowing something about the area, this was indeed a treat, and a high point for me in the book. Also good, is the discussion of folk music compiler Henry Smith, whose efforts would later prove to be so important to Dylan and the folk movement. Smith is an important figure, with a personal history that is both compelling and weird. Another standout is Marcus's discussion of the Bobbie Gentry classic, "Ode to Billie Joe" and its counterpart or answer on the Basement Tapes, "Clothesline Saga." "Clothesline"is a strange, and funny song, but it shares, as Marcus points out, similar Americana turf with Gentry's Ode: deadpan, even lethal, and as traditional as Twain, Poe, Hawthorne, or Melville. The kind of understandings you can't download from today's music world.

Greil Marcus's book isn't so much about Bob Dylan's album "The Basement Tapes" as it is "inspired by" the Basement Tapes. One reviewer here describes it as "fan fiction". I see the point, and to a degree agree with it, but I think there is a bit more meat to the book than that description encompasses.

The strange thing is that I didn't even think that much of Bob Dylan's "The Basement Tapes". I always thought of it as some jams by a great band with some half-finished lyrics slurred and snarled and mush-mouthed bluffed over it. The album made me wish Dylan could have stayed on amphetamines a little longer. His central nervous system and heart probably enjoyed the break, but the Basement Tapes ain't no Blonde on Blonde. With that said, I still love this book, maddening though it is.

Like in his earlier book, "Lipstick Traces", Marcus is interested in making cultural/historical connections. Showing how music from the recent past ties into much older traditions. Some of these connections are brilliant, some are completely mad (but he gets points for audaciousness nonethless) and some I remain dubious about.

What the Basement Tapes have to do with the West Virginia coal war of the 1920's I still don't have a clue, but what I learned of the coal war in this book made me interested enough to order a book Marcus recommended.
Even if the connections aren't really there this book does stimulate your curiosity.

And I can see where the divisiveness comes into it. It's the old argument that "folk music is about social protest" versus the "folk music is about flowers growing from the skulls of murdered lovers in their graves".
Woody Guthrie versus Harry Smith. Marcus comes down on the Harry Smith side and perhaps disparges the Guthrie side more than is warranted. After all there is a bit of both in Dylan himself. From Masters of War to Hurricane to Jokerman. From Boots of Spanish Leather to Mr. Tambourine Man to Desolation Row.

If you're looking for a straightforward biography of Dylan or a historical record of the Basement Tapes sessions, this isn't it. This is as much about union wars of the 1920's and songs about men murdering their pregnant girlfriends and old coal-mining, bootlegging banjo players who sang a few songs back in the 1920's that still get played today and how they might all be connected (or maybe not). Its the kind of book that makes you want to read even more books, or listen to even more music with this book as a starting point.

Perhaps I began this book with too high a set of expectations; like, for example, it would actually focus on Bob Dylan's (and The Band's) Basement Tapes. The set piece that opens the book--a brilliant recapturing of the infamous 1966 Albert Hall concert--plays to Marcus' strength as an evoker of places and atmospheres, and includes some incredible quotes from the protagonists. And even though this chapter is too brief to be thorough, it's the best thing in the book, because in setting up the context for The Basement Tapes, it delivers something close to the advertised product.

But it's all down hill from there, because Dylan, The Band, the tapes all dissappear into the shadows. They end up becoming just another facet, rather than the focus of the book. There's a lengthy chapter on Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music" and Marcus' woefully insubstantial literary analysis of a handful of "Tapes" songs that tell us more about the workings(?) of Marcus' mind than of the music. After all, how much can lyrics like "Ooh baby/ooh wee/it's that million dollar bash" really be explicated? The answer found in this book is: far too much.

If this had indeed been a book about Dylan, about the months he and The Band spent in Woodstock NY, about the process of making music--specificaly the music the book claims it will be about (and The Basement Tapes, as eventually distributed by Columbia are important enough to enough people to merit such consideration)--about the atmosphere and events surrounding the music, this would have been a much more enlightening read. I wanted to see Marcus do for the making of the tapes what he does so well for the Albert Hall concert--make me feel like I'm there. But Marcus' context overwhelms his alleged focus to the point that the title and the jacket are essentially false advertisements. Dylan fans: caveat emptor.

Greil Marcus has a few very interesting things to say, but his writing style is unrelievedly GRANDIOSE. I love most of Dylan's work and read this book because of that, but found myself skipping over large chunks of it. It's like eating nothing but marzipan, all day every day!

OK, I love The Basement Tapes. They always sound like a collection of folk and pop songs found under a rock... some of them with intense personal meaning for anyone (Wheel's on Fire, Tears of Rage) and just plain fun and silliness (Apple Sucklin' Tree and Please Mrs. Henry). But, can rock music's most noted historian really justify Lo and Behold to the problems of ethomusicology, race relations, and the individulity of the American psyche? He can, and does; it just doesn't hold enough water. The book would have been better with more stories about how the album was made as an anology of for something greater.

But, I still love this album!

When Bob Dylan retreated from stardom and virtual deification in 1966 and settled down in Woodstock, NY with his musician cronies (the Hawks, later the Band) he recorded perhaps the most enigmatic, strange, and timeless music ever laid down by a major star, or anyone. The fact that it was done by the man who had just released the kalaidoscopic masterpiece "Blonde on Blonde" Ð not to mention "Like A Rolling Stone," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Blowin' in the Wind," etc. Ð all by the age of 25! Ð is astonishing. Invisible Republic does a fine job of recreating the circumstances and history that made Dylan's embrace of this odd music for release seem inevitiable. The author also draws some very interesting connections between the Basement Tapes music and the strange traditional folk music created in the Appalachians and elsewhere decades earlier. However, Mr. Marcus's writing occasionally veers into pretention and self-indulgence. I wish he had spent more time telling me what actually happened during these fabled sessions and less time creating a fictional village (the "invisible republic") inhibited with mysterious, eerie characters from the fabric of American Folk Song. And while it is not the author's fault, about 90% of the music he writes about is currently unavailable or out-of-print, making his lengthy descriptions of songs and textures as frustrating as they are illuminating. For example, Mr. Marcus notes that many people believe an unissued Dylan song from these sessions called "I'm Not There (1956)" to be not just one of Dylan's best songs, but one of the greatest songs ever recorded (same difference, I guess). Knowing it's "out there" and I can't hear it (yet) is sheer torture! But if Mr. Marcus's book, as pretentious as it is at times, causes Bob Dylan to issue his Basement Tapes (about a hundred songs in all) in full, then my rating for Invisible Republic will go up 3 points. At least.

Greil Marcus gets a lot of flack, which is understandable since truly good writing never gets greeted with apathy. I personally would rather be flayed alive however than spend time with the sort of people who whine about how supposedly prententious and wrong-headed he is. Marcus is a myth-maker, and to comprehend the book you simply can't just walk in unprepared and then complain afterward. It's assumed that you'll have heard at least the official Basement Tapes release, (And the full 5-cd set is easier to come by than most people think--I even got mine off of ebay.)and have knowledge of the lodestones of American roots music. As the title suggests, Marcus is discussing more than just Dylan. Those who complain that the basement tapes don't deserve Marcus' analysis and are too slight miss the point entirely. Popular music tells a huge amount from our culture--a song like "Blue Suede Shoes" and the background behind it may tell you more about 195o's America than a history book. Marcus analyzes the music Dylan made in 1967 by delving into what shaped it and how what shaped it shaped our culture. He follows the strand of thoughts that criss-crossed Dylan's mind when the Basement tapes were created--thoughts on the country's present state and its past, the remembered bits of old folk numbers belonging to a vanished America,etc. He shoots back and forth through time and across topics following these strands and by the end he has revealed that the basement tapes reflect and show us--in all their mystery, silliness(especially that), simplicity,and complexity--a rich picture of America, both past and present. Now if you can't handle the unconventionality or daring of Marcus' approach--how his way of writing about the music reflects the sprawling, limitless potential of teh music and its influences--then please stop your bitching and find something simpler. A 100 years from now, when historians wish to document and experience our culture, one of the most powerful tools they have will be the music of the day. You haven't understood all of the old, weird America if you haven't listened to singers like Dock Boggs, and those in the future studying our time will gain immeasurable insight from simply listening to the basement tapes. Greil Marcus' book is joined at the hip to those tapes --it both explains and adds to their mystery, and those wise enough to see how the tapes reflect the times will see the same about this book.

I think the people who are complaining that they are not getting a conventional song by song disection of the tapes here are missing out on the much richer and insightful text that we do have. The greatest understanding of the Basement Tapes comes i think comes out of an explanation of their context. In this fashion, rather than providing a staid run-of-the-mill anaylsis of this collection of songs, Marcus aims, and is able to push them gently into the light. This also leaves room for the reader to make up his or her own mind about the music to a degree. By the way there are some great interpretations of some of the songs; i enjoyed the segements which discussed 'Tears Of Rage', and 'Lo and Behold!'.

Not just music, not just history, Invisible Republic, like Mr. Marcus' classic Mystery Train,explores the secret history of America. It's not the history of facts, or even Dylan and the Band's Basement Tapes, but the history of America's spirit. He writes of characters real and fictional whose lives embody the American journey. Hope, desperation, dreams, doom -- he makes these abstractions concrete through the lives of these people. Even Bob Dylan the man is not as important as what Dylan and the Band created the songs they wrote and the songs they chose -- an "Invisible Republic" that is home to the individuals of history we never hear about, the everymen and women. In addition, Marcus "rediscovers" the true folk artists who inspired everyone from Dylan to Judy Collins and Pete Seeger. These original artists carried on the last oral tradition in America, focusing on the not-so-pretty elements of rural American life -- violence, coupled with a damn good time. Greil Marcus has an insight into what makes America really function (and dysfuction), that the great artists have. He writes with the voice and passion of a fiction writer, funny, sad, and true

If for no other reason, this book is worth reading for Marcus's brilliant dissection of the '60s folk revival and Dylan's troubled tour of 1966 with the Hawks. No other writer has ever put his finger precisely on the reason for the hostility that greeted Dylan's decision to "go electric."

Although the discussion of the "Anthology of American Folk Music" is useful and provides a nice context for Dylan's work in The Basement Tapes, Marcus tends to stretch the analogy beyond any useful point. And the lengthy digression on the career of Dock Boggs seems to serve no purpose whatsoever and sheds no light on the subject at hand. Also, some of Marcus's pet phrases (such as "second mind") seem clever at first, but become tiresome after the umpteenth reprise (after a while, you can almost see them coming).

More discussion of the actual Basement Tapes songs would have made this book the definitive treatment of the subject. Nevertheless, what we have is excellent. Easily one of the best books ever written on a single aspect of Dylan's work.