Dylan the Evangelical.

This Washington Times article is about a new movie coming out (straight to DVD, it seems) that explores Bob Dylan's "evangelical" years -- 1979-1981. Basically asking: Really? Why?

Money quote:

"Jesus Years" surmises that the inspiration factor was crucial but the conversion was real. Mr. Gilbert unearths broadcast TV footage of Mr. Dylan answering critics befuddled by what appeared, for a time, to be a wholesale abandonment of secular music. "The old songs won't save you," Mr. Dylan said.

Now, I haven't seen the film yet. These are just thoughts off the top of my head. But I rather doubt Dylan meant to imply that his new songs (the evangelical ones) could save people. I expect he was more reacting to other people's confused reactions -- responding, dismissively, to their pleas to keep writing the old songs that had saved and inspired them. But maybe not. Obviously, we need to hear the whole exchange -- though I'll say from the start that even a clear, face-value implication wouldn't convince me of Dylan's sincerity on the point.

Which, I expect, exposes my biases. But I'm inclined to think Dylan was just reinventing himself as completely as he could -- not exactly a concept that has been foreign to his nature during his 4+ decades in the public eye. The Washington Times writer, and presumably the movie-maker, suggests that there is something nefarious in Dylan fans' tendency to puzzle over or ignore or disdain those years and their music. I think he/they might have it backwards -- not that there's something incongruous with paying little attention to those years, but that there's something incongruous about paying special attention to that particular transformation. Why not the transformation from Minnesota fraternity boy to the hillbilly who wrote lines like "That light I never knowed" and "They'll be drownded in the tide"? Knowed? Drownded? Or his recent transformation into a lingerie ad-man and entirely conventional disc jockey on satellite radio?

It seems to me that Dylan's singular magic over almost 50 years now has been his uncanny ability to keep an audience, generally by ignoring what they assume to be their own desires. He was never the voice of a generation. That implies that he spoke the words they wanted to speak. No. When he seemed their voice, it was only by coincidence. He was out in front of them all along, moving on to something new. Not leading them, so much as out-running them. Not a pied piper. Just a song-and-dance man. Puzzlement, ignorance, and disdain are part of the show. To focus on whether Dylan was actually born-again for the 3 years straddling 1980 misses the point. The point was then--as it has always been--reinvention.

(Image: BobDylan.com)