New Book Biography of a Song:
rolling stone Bob Dylan
By Diego ZUNIGA H.
was elected the best song of all time and now arrives at a book devoted exclusively Chile its history. "Like a Rolling Stone. Bob Dylan at the Crossroads" by Greil Marcus talks about everything from their context, their letter but, above all, of its creator.
is a thud. Strong. A drumstick hitting a drum. Silence. And then it all begins. A story. A flood of words and images. An epic poem. A story written in verse. A Antipoems. The story of a girl. The story of someone who hears that story. A song. The best of all time, according to a survey conducted in 2004 by Rolling Stone, 172 critics and musicians.
"Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan, begins: with a thud. Then silence. Then the rest of the story. That which is told in "Like a rolling stone. Bob Dylan at the Crossroads", the essential cultural critic Greil Marcus (Lipstick Traces). Which speaks of June 16, 1965, when he recorded the song. Which speaks of its lyrics, its context, from the days when Dylan was still simply a folk singer. Which speaks of the days when The Rolling Stones and The Beatles ruled the music and suddenly, when the song appeared, changed everything. Or at least changed to Bob Dylan: "Spring past would stop singing. Was consumed, and as things were going, going it was a stressful situation (...). In any case, played many songs that would not touch. Did not want to sing words that sing. I do not mean words like 'God' and 'mother', 'president', 'suicide' and 'knife'. I say simple words like 'yes', 'hope' and 'you'. But "Like a Rolling Stone 'changed everything," Dylan told in an interview in 1966, almost a year after it was composed. Nearly a year after things had begun to change.
Dylan's story
Greil Marcus's work is comprehensive, precise, almost always enlightening. This is the story of a song, but also the story of Bob Dylan and the Sixties. Marcus provides a detailed context, generating associations, influences and dialogues that seem made by someone who has heard, seen and read all of those years. The book work, sometimes as a short biography of Dylan: his years as a folk singer when she met Joan Baez, when it breaks somehow, with that trend and gets to the stage with a rock band that July 25, 1965 when he played for the first time "Like a Rolling Stone" Live at Newport Folk Festival and was booed, as well as what came later and "Highway 61 Revisited" The album that started with this tune: the new versions, influence and interpretations about what he meant literally. (See box)
However, one of the most lucid of this research is when Marcus is dedicated to unraveling the song from the musical, getting some really inspiring, "Then ( the first drum beat that opens the topic) for an extended time, there is nothing. Every time one hears it, the first sound is so raw and hollow surprising that split second that follows suggests the image of a house falling down a precipice invokes a void. "And later writes:" There are drums, piano , organ, bass, guitar, rhythm guitar, tambourine and a voice. Although any instrument can arouse interest and one can choose to follow and serve only to its history (the body pursues the story of a road that branches off every time you turn your head, the guitar features a story about someone who is looking for something but just turns, the singer puts her ornaments fairy tale about the girl lost in the forest), each instrument draws a path that leads to another (...), until everything is connected and each instrument is a passageway. It is possible that nothing stays still ".
Judas response
The Rolling Stones, Bob Marley, Jimmy Hendrix, Green Day, Robyn Hitchcock made their own versions of the song-even is a key that is hip-hop, performed by Italian Articolo 31, entitled "As a scalciata pietra" - showing, writes Marcus, admiration for Dylan and for this particular song. But his reception was not always so positively.
Despite reaching number 2 on the Billboard charts, the first live experience playing it was not always the best. In addition to the booing remembered the Newport Folk Festival, is that unforgettable night of May 17, 1966, at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, when finished playing "Ballad of a Thin Man" and in that brief pause between that song and the next, which was more or less than "Like a Rolling Stone" - an angry student shouted Judas!. And Dylan said he did not believe him, he was a liar, and then, as Howard has Soun in a biography of the singer, "The Hawks went to (his band) and as he began the song urged them to touch 'fucking high '". It is likely that "Like a Rolling Stone" never sounded so strong as that night. Was the answer I gave the fan and all who felt betrayed its past folk and protest songs, and had gone to the other side. What is not understood, and were slow to understand, is that there began to be born another Bob Dylan, the memorable albums of the late 60's and the one who almost died in a motorcycle accident, the he did "Blood on the tracks", one of the most moving records of indifference, and the one he sang to Pope John Paul II. An almost incomprehensible Dylan, but Marcus gets it by now. When traces the origins of the song singers and groups as diverse as Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, The Animals and the Mississippi blues musicians like Son House and Garfield Akers, or even Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl." Are these connections when Marcus fails to understand Dylan, his lyrics, his music, his life and this song so enigmatic but important. Moments are brief, but accurate, before the U.S. will slip away again, like a rolling stone.
How do you translate "Like a rolling stone?
One of the most controversial and complex "Like a rolling stone" is his letter: What are you talking about Bob Dylan? Greil Marcus raises the question too, and gives voice to others to respond, despite never ditch definitely the issue. "As I would say in 2004 the composer Michael Stepping, 'Like a rolling stone' could be 'a song that had as its background the problems the narrator with his girl 'could be even more, a warning for those who have had everything easy in life and now is about being embarrassed, but I am unable to hear it as just that,' "writes Marcus.
But besides the different interpretations of the lyrics, there is the complex task of translating into English the phrase "Like a rolling stone." Several years ago, the Argentine writer Rodrigo Fresán translated lyrics Bob Dylan, though by different problems was never published. In an interview with Chilean half said the Argentine translated the expression of the form "As a stray bullet," but he denies it: "I never said that. Not that I think about it. Things Internet. Not mine. Mine was 'Like a rolling stone' or 'Like a rolling stone'." Sergio Coddou ("Machina"), Chilean poet and translator agrees with him: "I still can not find the exact term, and that's the beauty of poetry and the translator of this yoke, which is always the mystery brew between words and there are dead ends. But I am inclined to that of strawberries. " Rodrigo Olavarria (Alameda Behind Bars "), who translated" Howl "(Anagram), for Ginsberg, also agrees with them:" What happens is you have to find the meaning in the songs blues. Think it is an expression that speaks of a stone not to walk. It is no house, no place to stop. "Anyway, any of these expressions is more accurate and better-than the one in the book:" As a song that wheel. "
0 comments:
Post a Comment