It’s a perennial, never to be resolved debate. Although I don’t think it has to be a debate! I don’t think you have to choose sides! You can choose both. Although I do believe that you have to recognize there are, I’m not sure how to put it precisely, different levels of imaginative incandesence.
Here’s my friend Elizabeth Wurtzel writing in The Guardian about why some of us can love some Bruce, without diminishing the stature of Bob.
It’s mostly about Bruce but here’s her conclusion which turns upon the distinction between Bruce and Bob:
“Never quite the genius of language that Bob Dylan is – no one is nor will anyone ever be – what Springsteen lacks in lyricism, he makes up for in communication: he is among us in a way that Dylan is forever separate. Bruce is always hoping his audience will get it; he’s going for comprehensibility in all the places where Dylan might be looking for his own laughable obfuscation. That’s the richness in all Springsteen lyrics: the narrator feels for everybody – the good and the bad, the ugly and the gorgeous – and most especially for the person out there who happens to be listening to, or reading, the words. Bruce Springsteen is, above all, a songwriter of the people, for the people, by the people”
There’s a lot about that I’d agree with, although I tend to think that Dylan’s love songs are among the most oure comprehenible, almost primal even written. Think of “I’ll Keep It With Mine”, “If You See Her Say Hello”.
What I suggested to Elizabeth was another possible way of distinguishing them, one that overlaps in a way with hers. Earnestness and irony. I’d say that Bruce is always earnest. Bruce gives earnestness a good name, an urgency; he understand sthe true imortance of being earnest. . Dylan is sometimes earnest (in the love songs and some of the protest songs0 but never far from irony.
In fact the one time Bruice went for irony “Born inthe U.S.A.”, a lot of people misunderstood, calling it a patriotic anthem. Ron Kovic wrote a book that became an Oliver Stone movie, both withthat titlem nobody understood them as
“patriotic anthems”, but Bruce had the ability to invest the grandiosity he meat as ironic with an inerradicable earnest sincerity that made the irony easier to mishear. (Dylan is capable of misleading you with his beguiling melodies:It took me a while to realize that “Positively Fourth Street was a bitter insult revenge song because it’s melody was so (ironically I now realize) cheery and catchy.
I think another way they part profoudnly is the way they write about loneliness. Bruce makes it seem like all loneliness is alike (like all happy familes). for Dylan almost all loneliness is different. (”The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”)
I wonder if readers can suggest other distinctions–or convergences– in the comments.
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11 Comments
1. paul kramer:if i could say it simply?
Jun 30, 2008 - 12:23 pm 2. Nina Goss:springsteen is the preacher.
dylan is the prophet.
I’m a Dylan fan and Springsteen enjoyer and I feel like a newcomer to the Bruce-Bob debate–it doesn’t seem a debate to me. Tunnel of Love v Blood on the Tracks? Bruce does what he must do and he does it well. He maintains a consistent relationship with his fans by always being the Bruce they want, and he has enough integrity to do this without demeaning himself. His songs are strong and shallow outlines of a middle class america and his listeners feel their worlds and lives enlarged and ennobled by this charismatic music and charismatic performer. Bruce never makes you look into an abyss, he wouldn’t know an abyss. He is never on the razor’s edge of despair or disintegration because he is honest in having no experience of these conditions. There is never lust, never self-loathing or subtle states of egoism and self-effacement, never nightmares of doubt and isolation in Bruce, because he is honest about not being able to write and sing about these conditions. In Tunnel of Love, he offers himself as a decent man struggling with a marriage failing in the way decent people’s marriages fail: just not enough to hold it together. It’s all sad and sorry, but there is no madness, no obsession,, no Dirge and no You’re a Big Girl Now, and none of the excruciating glimpses of passion and understanding that show you the cost of the failed relationship that we get from Dylan. The thought of Bruce Springsteen writing Idiot Wind is preposterous and unjust–he couldn’t and he wouldn’t want to. Bruce is trapped by a charisma and and energy that must be consistent to maintain his relationship with his audience, his songs serve the charisma, and we must admire him deeply for knowing this and wearing his chains with dignity, willingly and generously. Bob Dylan’s talent is a mysterium tremendum because his art is unprecedentedly human and mortal–infinite, terrifying, darkness and light, and his own charisma is never consistent or quantifiable and often terribly difficult, never simply satisfying. I think Bruce’s peculiar generosity and dignity are actually ill-served by theories pitting him against Bob Dylan.
Jun 30, 2008 - 6:33 pm 3. Ace:For a convergence of Bruce and Bob I suggest Tweeter and the Monkey Man from the Traveling Wilburys.
I recently saw Bob Dylan in Canada. You may be pleased to hear that Positively Fourth Street in its present arrangement and vocal delivery, sounds, while not cheery,positively
Jul 1, 2008 - 8:36 am 4. charlie finch:…wistful.
At Bruce’s concerts, we sing all the lyrics with him; at Dylan’s, we only do it during “Like a Rolling Stone”, “It’s All Right, Ma”,… and “Silvio”!
Jul 1, 2008 - 8:57 am 5. JMSeaver:I like Nina Goss’s comment here very much, though I would quarrel with her statement “Bruce is trapped by a charisma and and energy that must be consistent”. I feel the quality she aptly identifies in Bruce is there because his personality is simply more whole, more integrated. Dylan’s ‘depths’ are revealed because he lacks something in his character that would cover it up. He is raw and exposed to himself in a way that Bruce is not.
In the same vein, Bruce’s songs are populated by friends, groups of peers, a social milieu that is, more or less, nurturing. Dylan’s songs are peopled by the relentlessly isolated or the bitterly individual.
Jul 1, 2008 - 11:56 am 6. Martin Grossman:I liked Bruce for about two years back in the 70s. The first LP was derivative of Dylan, but not with the punch or expansiveness. “Born to run” had some good moments but I found myself tired of it after about the third play. Dylan makes us think. Bruce tells us what he thinks and wants us to think the same way. Dylan is an original. Bruce is less interesting because his vision is more narrow and predictable. Dylan higher highs and perhaps lower lows. Bruce puts on a good show. Dylan isn’t about the show, but the art. Think Norman Rockwell vs. Picasso.
Jul 1, 2008 - 5:04 pm 7. roy frowick:If you play the vinyl album “Darkness on the Edge of Town” at 45rpm as I did by accident one day a long time ago, you will find yourself listening to a big chunk of Phil Spector’s catalog, mostly the Crystals.
If you play Blonde on Blonde at 45rpm, you will essentially be listening to a preview of Slow Train Coming.
I don’t know what that means in the larger scope of things. However I do love and need both these artists in my life for different reasons at different times.
Jul 2, 2008 - 11:54 am 8. Bill Altreuter:Funny, I was just thinking about this the other day, in the context of “Chronicles”. One of the reasons that memoir is so much better than anything else written about that Greenwich Village at that time is that it is written by a guy who was doing something quite different from what everyone else was doing. Even though Dylan was mining many of the same sources, the processing that the raw material went through was a unique genius. Everybody was listening to folk songs, everybody was ready poetry, but Dylan was inventing something new, and everybody else was working within existing forms. The difference between Dylan and Springsteen is the same as the difference between Dylan and Phil Ochs, and I say that as an admirer of all four, and with all due respect.
If there’d been no Bob Dylan, there would have been no Bruce Springsteen. The artists that depend on Springsteen as a fountainhead are a pretty derivative group: Melissa Etheridge, Thin Lizzy, Meatloaf. I’d venture to say that after Chuck Berry no other rock’n'roll artist has been as great an influence. American music sounds different today because of Bob Dylan.
Jul 11, 2008 - 11:40 am 9. Jack Garvey:My brother liked Dylan and Springsteen. Iliked Springsteen and Dylan’s Hurricane.
Sep 1, 2008 - 2:12 pm 10. stephen thomas:in my opinion dylan should and im sure will always be remembered as the most important songwriter, musician, call it what you like, of the 20th century,he is without doubt unique,i will on occasions listen to springsteen but to compare them,i think is ridiculous,dylan is simply in another sphere(on his own)
Dec 22, 2008 - 6:38 am 11. Dave:good reads. I am a fan of both. I have never been tired of Dylan. Always inovative and original. I can never invision a day when I do not look forward to listening to Dylan.
Jan 11, 2009 - 10:23 amI was a huge Springsteen fan. In the beginning he seemed to be everything I wanted in a songwriter, but he has become stale to me. That is not to say he is stale. I have become more demanding as a listener, and Springsteen doesn’t fulfill that musical need I have as an older music lover. I’m sure to new Springsteen fans he is everything he was to me to them. It is almost as if I “went through” Springsteen. As I’ve grown older, Springsteen appears calculated, contrived, and somewhat phony. I almost feel juvenile listening to him. I don’t want to feel that way. I just do. He is obvious in his intentions as a songwriter. It was kinda cool being kicked in the ass as young adult by Springsteen…That “Oh, I get it Bruce!” feeling…”Play that one again!” Now, his songs are “yes, yes I get it already. I get it.”
It would be as if Dylan never got out of folk and kept writing “protest songs”. It would be predictable and tireing.