I caught the new Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown during Christmas break and thought it was quite good. Chalamet brought a strong lead performance and the movie nicely recreated the backdrop of Dylan’s 1960s career. A guy like me can only hope there's twelve sequels, each documenting another five year period of his life.
While reviews for the movie were generally positive, a frequent criticism of the movie centered around fictionalized scenes and historical liberties. These mostly didn't bother me. For a biopic about an artist who is perfectly comfortable telling straight-faced lies about himself for no discernible gain, it’s not exactly out of place either. Plus, as much I have been an obsessive listener of his music for several years now, I'm not someone who ever cared all that deeply about Dylan's (or any other musician's) personal life if it wasn't directly consequential to his music. That is to say, I didn't always know for sure whether certain scenes were fictionalized. Importantly, however, the majority of scenes made sense with the chronology of events I knew and generally felt like they could have happened.
The Movie's Accuracy:
The times when the movie completely cut around pivotal events and well-known elements of the Dylan story irked me more than any of the historical fabrications. One of my biggest gripes with the film is that it didn't show Dylan using any drugs during the movie. Dylan's 1965 personality shift had a lot to do with his recent amphetamine usage, which may help some listeners and movie viewers understand some of his more strung-out moments as well as his move to surreal lyrics. It would have been an easy thing to add and wouldn't have dampened the movie's effect if done correctly.
Another thing I wish was emphasized was that, even surrounded by his audience's hostility to his new direction, Dylan's sense of humor remained intact. My brother noted after the movie finished that he didn't like that Dylan was presented as an asshole for the whole movie. I kind of agreed and admitted that he's not a very sympathetic character unless you already believe that Dylan was making incredible music and the folk revival scene was getting in the way of that. A Complete Unknown takes it for granted that the audience will find this easy to get behind. What’s one easy fix to make him more likable and sympathetic? Dylan not being such a hard ass. Dozens of videos still exist from this time period that shows that Dylan actually had a sense of humor! See a clip of Dylan having fun while reading a sign here. Even with the press, whom he is famously icy towards, Dylan was usually not antagonist but playfully evasive during this time. Here's a famous excerpt from a 1965 press conference: "Do you think of yourself primarily as a singer or as a poet?" asks one journalist. Dylan smiles, "I think of myself more as a song and dance man." Not only is Dylan's lack of humor and lack of self-awareness a detriment to the movie's message, it's historically inaccurate too.
One of the movie's more baffling moments was another splice around the real events: when Al Kooper takes up the organ for the recording of "Like a Rolling Stone." The movie scene ends right as he sits down at the instrument, but in real life, the scene continued to unfold into one of the most hilarious moments of recording music history. While the song is being mixed, Dylan asks producer Tom Wilson to increase the volume of the organ in the song. Wilson laughs in response, telling Dylan that Kooper isn’t even an organ player. Dylan snaps back: "I don’t need you to tell me who is and who isn’t an organ player. I just need you to turn the organ up." Riddle me this: if you're not going to let that scene go for another minute to capture the full story, what's the point of introducing Kooper as a character in the first place?
But back to the movie’s historical liberties. While I could usually decipher which scenes were more fiction than fact, almost every scene struck me as emotionally true even if it didn't happen exactly that way: whether that was someone calling Dylan "Judas" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (that was famously occurred a year later at a Manchester show, but it was certainly in line with how some of the Newport audience must have felt), his relationship with Pete Seeger (though they weren't frequently shoulder to shoulder, it made sense to emphasize Seeger above anyone else as representing the old guard of the folk scene), and Dylan walking out of a show with Joan Baez (it was an easy and quick way to show their relationship ending). I also liked that the fictionalized event of Dylan inviting Suze Rotolo to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival highlighted more than anything that Dylan wasn't stringing along his love interests for selfish reasons. This is further emphasized by the hilarious revelation that when Suze leaves Newport early, Dylan wakes up the next morning sharing his bed with manager Albert Grossman.
My favorite scene happens to be almost completely fictional: when Dylan joins Delta blues guitarist Jesse Moffette on Pete Seeger's television series Rainbow Quest. Rainbow Quest was a real program hosted by Seeger but Dylan never made an appearance on it nor did Jesse Moffette, who is one of the few fully fictionalized characters in the movie. In fact, he's not even clearly based on someone. In the movie, Dylan is scheduled as the guest on Seeger's show but his Highway 61 Revisited studio sessions make him late. Moffette becomes the last minute stand in and things go quickly awry as the cameras capture Moffette drinking and cursing next to an uncomfortable Seeger. Seeger navigates the situation as best he can but is clearly taken aback by Moffette's rough and unfiltered personality. When Dylan finally arrives, he immediately hits it off with Moffette and they build a friendly rapport, while Seeger is left completely sidelined on his own show. Although this scene is great for a laugh, for those who aren't as schooled in all the musical worlds that the scene collides, its underlying commentary may be missed.
The Historical Context at Play during the Rainbow Quest Scene:
Jesse Moffette--played by Big Bill Morganfield, son of famed Chicago bluesman Muddy Waters and a musician in his own right--is not a real blues musician but he is reminiscent of a lot of real life Delta bluesmen. And yes, like many other Delta performers, Moffette’s gruff demeanor would have taken aback many folk singers and folk audiences of the time.
Mississippi John Hurt was the first Delta blues musician to be "rediscovered" and put in front of 1960s folk revival audiences. His beautiful guitar picking, his soft singing, and his gentle personality led him to be beloved by every audience he performed for. But while the folk revival was initially spoiled by his unfailing charm, Hurt was not a typical Delta performer and Skip James would soon highlight why. James was a short-tempered and cocky Delta great who was rediscovered in Mississippi while he was being treated for cancer. Difficult and uncooperative even at the hospital, he distrusted doctors who were trying to help him and he instead believed his cancerous tumor could be cured by a root doctor. When he was discharged and traveled up north to join Hurt on the folk circuit, he was predictably far less friendly towards audiences. James didn’t banter with them between songs. As Eddie Dean retrospectively wrote for The Washington City Paper in 1994, he simply "sang of death and betrayal to a crowd weaned on Cub Scout campfire stories" and left the stage when he was done. Crowds, who thought they knew a great deal about folk music, were stunned.
Like Jesse Moffette, Skip James and other Delta bluesmen could have been potentially difficult to work with on a family friendly television show. They probably wouldn't have gotten along with Seeger or most of the other folk revival musicians. Even as folk revival performers built up self-imposed guidelines with which to authentically replicate the heartbeat of this powerful music tradition, they didn't really have many similarities with the people they were so inspired by. Their music wasn't all that similar either to be frank. Indeed, many of the folk revival musicians were northern white people who came from comfortable backgrounds that made the ramshackle nature of the Delta blues and easy authenticity of early country music quite difficult to replicate.
It's something I've been all too eager to comment on when reviewing folk revival music. Of Joan Baez, I reflected: "Baez's powerful and decidedly untraditional style of singing traditional folk music isn't really the right vehicle for these rural songs." Of Odetta, the black female folk singer, I similarly criticized her voice: "Question: What would it be like if a someone with classical training sang the music of the people? Answer: It would be unbearable and entirely miss the point of folk music. Here's exhibit A." Of Pete Seeger's own Weavers, who turned blues guitarist Lead Belly's "Goodnight Irene" into a smash hit in 1950, I also criticized their interpretations of folk music: "A mix of standards and originals, the group's material is certainly folk music, but they favor an eclectic variety of world music and children's songs, which they gleefully sing with four-part harmonies and play with big bands. In the end, it's quite far removed from the gruff music Lead Belly recorded when he was behind bars for murder."
Even when reviewing blues music from the 1960s, I often find it necessary to point out the box that audiences painted the performers into. Of Lightnin' Hopkins self-titled album from 1959, I noted: "While Hopkins could competently play nearly any style of blues, the burgeoning folk revival meant that Hopkins was given an acoustic guitar for these recordings and billed as a 'folk blues' guitarist for the next several years." While discussing Brownie McGhee's recordings for New York's foremost folk label Folkways, I also stressed: "[Embracing the folk scene] was a commercial choice. White people, who made up much of the folk revival audience, indiscriminately expected blues guitarists to play acoustic instruments, even if that didn't totally agree with the artists' skill set."
Bringing It All Back Home:
Of course, the cherry on top of the remarkably good Rainbow Quest scene is that Dylan doesn't even have to try to find common ground with Moffette. They crack jokes, Dylan takes a swig of Moffette's liquor, and they improvise a song together on the spot. It’s possible this unlikely friendship was inspired by Dylan’s warm relationship with Delta bluesman Big Joe Williams. At this moment in history, Dylan is doing everything he can to shed the folk revival scene, but the movie emphasizes that that doesn't mean he's leaving folk music or his fundamental influences behind. In fact in this scene, the movie suggests Dylan is even closer to authentic folk music, which is embodied by Moffette, than the folk revival, which is represented by Seeger, is. I'd have to agree. On Highway 61 Revisited, there are several songs in the 12-bar blues format. There's even an acoustic song--the eleven minute epic "Desolation Row"--albeit it included a second acoustic guitar and an upright bass, which apparently lessened its impact in the eyes of Dylan's old friends. And it would only be two albums later in 1967 that he briefly retired his electric guitar for the acoustic folk rock album John Wesley Harding. Dylan certainly never left folk music behind and the folk revival scene were too stubborn to see that.
Folk revivalists, and especially the always sincere Pete Seeger, didn't have bad intentions when they lamented Dylan's shift to electric music, but their objections didn't hold any water either. Dylan continued to shine on new performances and remained a powerful figure in music history, bringing his lyrical magic to a greater audience. Joan Baez and Pete Seeger stayed in their lane, doing good work as Civil Rights activists, but not exactly releasing any new essential music of their own.
