The cross-border cooperation between the two industry leaders is very rare in the first place, let alone cooperate twice in succession. But this really happened to rock legend Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan) and film master Martin Scorsese (Martin Scorsese). Fourteen years ago, Scorsese used a "Home Without Direction: Bob Dylan" to see through the mentality of this eccentric rock poet, so that his legendary experience can finally be understood by the public, and even Empathy.
It was out of trust that Dylan gave Scorsese the task of restoring his 1975 "Rolling Thunder Revue" with a documentary, hoping that the latter would be able to reason about this famous but puzzling journey. Get some clues. However, although Scorsese was able to clear the thread when faced with hundreds of hours of video footage of Dylan in the 1960s, it was difficult to sort out the context of the "rolling thunder" that lasted only more than a month. Because the meaning of "rolling thunder" is to create chaos.
Create chaos
How to define "Rolling Thunder Tour"? Whether it is a performer or a spectator, it is difficult to clarify this issue. When Dylan recruited musicians to join the tour, his sales pitch was simply—"I want to do something different...like the circus show." There is even no standard for why the tour is called "Rolling Thunder". Answer: Some people speculate that this is an irony of Operation Rolling Thunder, the first American mission to bomb Vietnam; some people think this is a tribute to Native American culture, because there is an Indian chief called Rolling Thunder. As for Dylan's own explanation of "Rolling Thunder", it is too simple to believe: he was sitting at home thinking about the name of the tour, and suddenly heard thunder rolling from a distance, BOOM! So just go ahead.
Although his intentions are confusing, Dylan’s idea of this tour actually has a big appetite: he wants to broaden the boundaries of rock performances through this large-scale tour. He didn't want the show to stop at selling hormones to young people, nor did he want the show to become as serious as in the auditorium and philharmonic hall. He hopes that the tour can break all barriers and become part of the market culture. For this reason, he draws inspiration from various places: circus performances, carnivals, Italian impromptu comedies (Commedia dell'Arte), Gypsy caravan culture, early America The "medicine show" (medicine show), Japanese Kabuki performances, impromptu readings by Beat poets, and the French film "Les enfants du paradis" (Les enfants du paradis), which was born in 1945...
The above-mentioned content is complex and diverse, but they have something in common: full of bohemian bohemian flavor. As a contemporary bard, Dylan was deeply attracted by this trait. Circus performances are full of comical and chaos, and Dylan creates the most advanced chaos: those who join his wandering troupe are like folk poets Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, the crown jewel Talented artists such as the poet Allen Ginsberg and the theater wizard Sam Shepard. They are like rolling thunder, and wherever they pass, the earth trembles.
"I am another"
But Dylan’s life journey has always been both outward expansion and introspection. The relationship between the two is intricate and inseparable. The most iconic external element of "Rolling Thunder Tour" is Dylan's own outfit-under the hat dotted with flowers, he is painted with thick white oil paint, like a clown makeup. Once again, Dylan’s explanation is concise: “When a person puts on a mask, he will tell the truth to you; when he doesn’t wear a mask, it’s unlikely.”
But other than this reason? Perhaps this is another identity game that Dylan played with us. He used this "mask" to distinguish his stage personality from his original identity. In the semi-documentary and semi-fictional film Renaldo and Clara he shot during the tour, this identity game is even more culminating: in it, he and his wife Sarah play the protagonists named Renaldo and Clara respectively, and his two Two tour companions Ronnie Hawkins and Ronnie Blakely played Dylan and Mrs. Dylan respectively...
For Dylan, identity has always been an immutable thing. One of his favorite poets is Arthur Rimbaud, and his favorite Rimbaud verse is "Je est un autre/I is another"-in the middle of the verse, The person's name has quietly changed. In Dylan's view, life should not be viewed from a single point of view, otherwise you will only get stale and fixed conclusions. Only by breaking out of his own body can he be free.
As a result, Dylan continued to break through his boundaries during the "Rolling Thunder Tour": most of the songs in the performance came from the two albums "Blood on the Tracks" and "Desire", but they were arranging them. And the way of singing is completely different from the studio version. A simple chord change can make an originally melancholic song playful and angry; a slight personal change and lyrics change can make the previously affectionate song alienated, or acrid, or gorgeous, or quiet.
The songs that Dylan sang on the tour have been regarded as classics by the world, but he does not "cherish" them, because every time he sings cannot be repeated, and the artist's mood when singing is compared with when he was creating. It's already right and wrong. As he said in the Scorsese documentary: "The meaning of life is not to find yourself, or to find anything. The meaning of life is to create yourself."
Artistic utopia
However, having said that, the meaning of "Rolling Thunder Tour" is actually far greater than Dylan's self-creation. The time of this tour is just close to the 200th anniversary of the founding of the United States, but the entire country is shrouded in the depression brought about by the Vietnam War and the Watergate Incident. The New England area that the Rolling Thunder passed through is even more economically depressed and the atmosphere is gloomy. Dylan, who had been famous for many years, did not forget the root of his folk songs. He firmly believed that through lively and lively musical performances, the Rolling Thunder Troupe could reinvigorate the depressed masses.
Indeed, the "Rolling Thunder Tour" did not pose a high profile to the audience. Dylan obviously could choose a stadium with more than 10,000 people as performance venues, but ultimately chose a series of daily venues such as small theaters, small auditoriums, Veterans Memorial Stadium and Native Indian Community Center. In some remote cities, the staff even handed out flyers on campus to attract audiences. This kind of people-friendly measures gave the "Rolling Thunder Tour" a bit of market carnival temperament.
And the music of Dylan and his companions really hits people's hearts. The most memorable scene in Scorsese's documentary is that of an audience who is lost and crying after the performance. Scorsese himself was extremely shocked: music can bring such a big emotional impact to people. However, Scorsese at that time was about to shake the hearts of a generation: in 1975, he was busy filming the soon-to-be classic "Taxi Driver" (Taxi Driver).
However, more than forty years later, the situation of art and artists has changed drastically. Dylan is still on tour, but instead of listening to the music seriously, the audience wants to take pictures of him with their mobile phones, which caused him to stun someone on stage for the first time in more than a decade. Scorsese is facing another dilemma: after spending his whole life in theaters, he reluctantly finds that his movie may not be released on a large scale in theaters because he is willing to contribute to his new film "The Irishman." Only Netflix is the big money maker. Art is changing from an experience of physical and mental presence to an act of consumption and a means of isolating the world. Scorsese at this time will undoubtedly miss that era that has passed away. At that time, music and movies are still a community experience that purifies people's hearts like Sunday Mass.
Regardless of whether Dylan and Scorsese’s utopia will come again, at least in "Rolling Thunder Tour: The Legend of Bob Dylan", we have a chance to get a glimpse of that beautiful era: between the tour, Dylan and his friends Roger McGuinn is willing to play a supporting role in a friend's home, playing chords to Jonny Mitchell's gentle and firm singing. The "Rolling Thunder Tour" is a utopia belonging to the artists. Although it made the funders lose money, it allowed each artist participating in it to "create" the most extreme self; such a tour may never appear again.
Originally published in "Southern People Weekly"
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