Michael’s Musical Musings: A Complete Unknown

 

                 ‘How does it feel? To be without home?

                                               Like a complete unknown? Like a Rolling Stone?’

 

We recently saw the new Bob Dylan documentary, A Complete Unknown, and it felt like we experienced a major event. Some in our party, including myself, started to tear-up about five minutes into the movie. The scene: Dylan singing to a hospitalized Woody Guthrie, with the fatherly Pete Seeger looking on. The story arc of the film leans heavily on time compression, ie. it combined certain happenings or time frames for the sake of fitting everything into a two hour+ show. The Times chimed: ‘Chalamet proves an ideal conduit in A Complete Unknown because the music and its maker have such power. As with any great cover band, it’s the original material that carries you through the night.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One is deluged with deft renderings from Dylan’s growing catalog. Obviously starting with the well-received acoustic songs and ending with his schism with Folk Music, by plugging in an electric guitar. It was a seminal moment, a dividing ‘line in the sand’  that has been studied and written about for decades. The movie shows Seeger eyeing some axes as he pleadingly accosts the sound engineers. Pete later defended himself saying it wasn’t the style of music per se, just how much the volume was distorting the sound. The moment also had a strong effect on Dylan’s career arc and feelings. I remember one account implied he was very emotional after being rejected by the crowd. It was a time when he was letting go of the community and milieu that had embraced him and given him the start of his career. Plus he was embarking on a major tour that found people adamantly rejecting his new direction. It must have been extremely difficult to go through that experience. No wonder he crashed his motorcycle and became a recluse.

 

The Fender Stratocaster became more than a groundbreaking instrument, it not only was an ‘axe’, the slang for a musical instrument, but also a catalyst in developing rock and roll as a culture-changing genre, a symbol of younger values vs older, as well as a divider of the 60s decade, folk vs rock, acoustic vs electric. Now, electric guitars have simply cycled back to be another tool of musical expression…one of many. If Willie Nelson suddenly started playing a Strat, no one would bat an eyelash.