Was Bob Dylan a Weldon Kees fan? An oh-so- germane question in these days of the ongoing canonization of Bob and general voracious media scrutiny of all things Zimmerman, but probably the most relevant first question to ask here is-- who was Kees?

Go ahead, Google him up-- and then read Anthony Lane's excellent recent New Yorker piece on this mainly unsung proto-Beat poet, novelist, film editor, film critic (mentor to Pauline Kael) and all-around American avant-gardist and dandy perhaps best known for (most likely) flinging himself off the Golden Gate Bridge in the mid-50's. And then check the last line of Kees' poem "June 1940":

'An idiot wind is blowing; the conscience dies'

I first came across a fragment of this poem in a TLS review of a recent biography of Weldon Kees last summer, but the reviewer failed to either see or make the obvious connection ...so...I ran this by Alice Quinn, my neighbor and the poetry editor at The New Yorker who sent thanks for sharing my little discovery with her, and I also ran this by Bob Holman (see my earlier blog on him) of the Bowery Poetry Club and poetry mafia in general, who said after I hipped him, "Dylan MUST have read Kees!"

So anyway, I thought I'd share this little tidbit with you all now that Dylanmania is being fostered and fomented anew by Columbia (The Rock Machine Turns You On!) for what must be oh the 40th time or so since the release of Bob's first album in '63...and thought you might like to know...this particular someone absolutely does not got it in for old Bob...and I am not trying to plant stories in the blogosphere :-)... I really respect and love this guy, he's my avowed alltime favorite artist alongside Miles...

but ever since Dylan let at least some of it "all hang out" in the clothes line saga known as 'Chronicles' last year (which I inhaled in one sitting after a gig in the north of Holland last fall), especially the chapter about his voluminous reading and prodigious trawl through his friends' library in a pad he crashed south of Houston in the early 60's soaking up literature and history and philosophy like a sponge, and how Weill and Brecht influenced Bob's poetics of song after a sit-through of "Threepenny Opera" at what is now the Lucille Lortel Theater on Christopher Street (just around the corner from where I write this)...after all this, and all the other media spew paving the way for Dylan's lock on the Nobel Peace Prize this year (a slam dunk, so sayeth Ed Bradley, in his interview with Bob on CBS last fall. Bradley asks Bob how he would account for his 40-odd year steady march on the Kingdom, and Bob, without batting an eye, fixes Ed with his almost truculent, po-faced stare (not a happy camper here) and says, in essence, "Because of the deal I made...I held up my end of the bargain."

And who, says Bradley, was that deal struck with?

"Why, with the Chief Commander who runs this World..."

Ooeeoo, as Ed (now "Edward") Sanders would say....

...after all this palaver, I thought I'd throw in my own tout sense of all things Dylanological--especially as Christopher Ricks seems to have missed this particular concordance all things Kees-ian. Also Michael Gray (his book "Song and Dance Man" is pretty amazing overall, he really pulls a few rabbits out of hats tracing crazy patterns on his sheets--actually Gray and Paul Williams and Clinton Heylin are my fave professeurs de Dylan). Love and Theft indeed...(A copy of my Gods and Monsters live DVD sent to the first reader who writes me identifying the celebrated icon who said that mediocre artists borrow, but great artists steal?)

Speaking of mad hatters (note Dylan's first use of top hat in rock pre-dating Beefheart, in a photo on the back of 'Bringing It All Back Home"--also the use of "uh" for "a" as a printed lyric sheet trope), here is Don Van Vliet on Dylan: "Trash poet! What is 'the times they are a changing' but a partridge in a pear tree!"

also: "I threw Bob Dylan out of Barney's Beanery in 1966!"

I asked Bobby Neuwirth at the Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1989 whether he could lend any credence to this rank assertion of Don's, he shrugged and answered smiling, "Well, if it makes him feel better..."

I'm off to London (again) tomorrow to start a new tour, in Belgium, Holland, Germany, France and the UK...just getting over the jetlag from my last trip, and here we go again...

xxGary

ps anybody else notice how scarily close (in tonality, overall feel, and dark drone 'o-D) the out-take version of "Desolation Row" that graces the new Sony "No Direction Home" Genuwine Bootleg #7 is to the Velvet Underground's "Heroin"? Did Tom Wilson play a pre-release acetate of this version to Lou and the boys (and grrl) in revenge for being replaced by Bob Johnston?

Also, whose good taste was timeless enough on those "Highway 61" sessions to insist on inserting Charlie McCoy's lilting Spanish guitar throughout the track, which lifts "Desolation Row" to Parnassian heights on the official released version?

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Posted by Gary Lucas to Gary Lucas at 9/05/2005 06:03:00 PM