Name: Robert Allen Zimmerman
Born: May 24, 1941, Hibbing, Minnesota
Nicknames: Zimmy, Lucky Wilbury, Jack Frost
Crimes Against Humanity: "Silvio," Masked and Anonymous, "Christmas in the Heart," all albums released in the 1980's
Let me get one thing straight: I am a Dylan fan. But being a Dylan fan requires the knowledge that you’ve been duped into believing the myth. He is, after all, “the poet laureate of rock and roll.” Sure, because poet laureates always write stuff like “I’m an old boll weevil / looking for a home / and if you don’t like it / you can leave me alone.” Bob-rest assured, we don’t like it. And we certainly left the album that song is on (“Down in the Groove”) alone. Or “Born in Red Hook, Brooklyn in the year of who knows when.” That one is from an eleven-minute epic about gangster Joey Gallo. Almost as good as his epic Catfish Hunter song, aptly titled “Catfish,” and containing the lyric, “Come up where the Yankees are / Dress up in a pinstripe suit / Smoke a custom-made cigar / Wear an alligator boot.” Or “Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle / like a bowl of soup / wiggle, wiggle, wiggle / like a rolling hoop.” Yup, sounds a lot like Robert Frost, only much, much worse. Even in his greatest songs, you can locate some evidence of lyrical douchery. From “Ballad of a Thin Man:” “You have many contacts / Among the lumberjacks.” Whatever, Bob. From “Like a Rolling Stone:” “You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat / Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat.” Well, at least we know he owns a rhyming dictionary. If the Devil’s greatest trick was convincing the world he didn’t exist, then Bob Dylan’s greatest trick was convincing the world that asinine gibberish is high poetry. And, perhaps his greatest sin is that it was contagious. Just look at everything John Lennon wrote after 1965. He went from “I’ll tell you something / I think you’ll understand / Then I’ll say that something / I want to hold your hand” to “Picture yourself in a boat on a river / With tangerine trees and marmalade skies / Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly / A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.” Without Dylan, the Beatles are singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” forever, or at least until they become the Monkees and disappear into the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion. Instead, we have to endure stoned college students dissecting obtuse Beatles lyrics and Rolling Stone magazine sucking Lennon’s you-know-what until the end of time. Thanks a pantload, Bobby.
