Tangled up in the myth of Dylan
IT WASN’T MEANT TO BE LIKE THIS. Rock stars don’t get old and grey. Yet on 24 May, Bob Dylan turns 80. If this birthday comes as a shock to Dylan’s fans, there is good reason to think the man himself will be only slyly amused by it. Like Orson Welles, whose rococo visuals are echoed in the fractured nonsense of Dylan’s best lyrics, Dylan has always enjoyed playing older than he is. He’s wrinkly by disposition, not default. Even at 20, when he was just starting out as a phoney folkie, he sounded grizzled and raddled. Age hasn’t withered him because he was always running towards it, arms open wide.
There’s no gainsaying, though, that custom has staled his less than infinite variety. Dylan’s albums of the past twenty years have all sounded worryingly samey — gently buzzing dirges spiced with rogue guitar twangs. Not that
