The Dylan Cinematic Universe and a Tribute to Garth Hudson
Heroics found in communities of creativity
I’m going to give you a bit of behind the scenes, writing process, peek behind the curtain insight. I wasn’t planning on writing this post. I had another one that I accidentally deleted. It was about Garth Hudson and The Basement Tapes. And my therapist says it’s okay to tell you that I was really proud of it and thought it was really good1. So there you have it. It was really good and I was proud of it. Accidents happen, but it’s a bummer.
Garth Hudson was the hero of that story. If you hadn’t heard, he passed away recently, and now there are no more living members of The Band around, which is incredibly sad, but incredibly true to how this life works.
And he still is the hero of it, but I think the ideas of heroes and villains got me thinking about film universes like Marvel and Star Wars. And then it came to me…imagine the possibilities if A Complete Unknown was actually the first in a Dylan trilogy!
Come on, there’s enough material on Dylan that you could have a whole DCU, complete with prequels, side stories, multiple trilogies, and tv spinoffs. Dylan has an epic story and if sci-fi and comic book nerds can have their movies and tv shows to look forward to, why can’t music nerds too! Dylan is the perfect subject!
So let’s start with A Complete Unknown and a la the original Star Wars, let’s call it Episode 4.
Episode 4: Bob Dylan: A New Hope
A scrappy young musician from the faraway land of Hibbing, MN journeys to NYC to learn the ways of the Folk from Folkie Masters Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. It is quickly realized by council elders that the boy has powers far beyond his years and training and must be guided on the path lest he be tempted by the dark powers of rock and roll.
This is where the direct Star Wars comparison falls apart I guess? Dylan betrays his masters and turns to rock and roll! I guess he sort of becomes Darth Vader? Cut me some slack here. It’s hard to devise the rules of a cinematic universe! Vader, though? Nah, that seems too harsh. Maybe the folkies were the dark side all along! Ooh, plot twist!
Episode 5: Bob Dylan: The Bob Strikes Back
Fully empowered by his rock and roll powers, we find our hero battling hostile crowds throughout Europe shortly after the release of Blonde on Blonde, backed by a rag tag bunch of fellow rebels known as The Hawks. Through boos and jeers and accusations of, “Judas!” Dylan and The Hawks not only conquer the haters that they meet on the rock and roll landscape, they change it forever. But everyone knows that the second act of a three act saga cannot end well and Dylan disappears from the public eye after a mysterious motorcycle accident. Our hero is in peril! Will he return? Will he ever be the same? Will rock and roll ever be the same?
I fully acknowledge this is getting sillier by the moment, but stick with me.
Episode 6: Bob Dylan: Return of the Bob
Followers of Dylan have received little to no information concerning his condition and whereabouts. Little do they know, that Dylan and The Hawks have regrouped and are working in secret in a new rebel base known as, “Big Pink”. The music they are creating in secret harkens back to ages gone by and draws from multiple American music influences. It is raw, energetic, a little weird, a little unnerving, filled with wit and humor, and it is electrifying. A record of these events exists due to the audio recording know-how, and preservation efforts of one of The Hawks, Garth Hudson. The tapes will find their way to the public through leaks and bootlegs, and will officially be released in 1975, well after Dylan’s sound changes with music influenced by his time in Big Pink, with the albums John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. It is also well after The Hawks become The Band and effectively invent the genres of country rock and Americana. In the process, they defeat the latest threat to good music everywhere—psychedelic rock! Ooooh, scary!
Ok, time to rein it in with this nonsense! Folk music and psychedelic rock were never ACTUALLY the enemy. No offense to either genre. I have many favorites within both.
Dylan and The Band did help usher in new sounds, though, and caused many to rethink how and why they made music. In many ways it truly was a revolutionary time for popular music.
But let’s pause on The Basement Tapes for a moment. The thing to me that makes it important isn’t necessarily that these are the best songs that Dylan and The Band ever wrote and recorded. It’s the authentic, unbridled spirit of creation that just happened to be caught on tape. Yes, many enduring favorites emerged, but it’s the way they emerged that sticks with me. It was just a group of musicians working together and bonding together in what was effectively a clubhouse in a mountainous, bohemian, artist-friendly community. They made music that they really didn’t expect would be of interest to many, but the earnestness and the authenticity of it all is what made it remarkable. As it turned out, many were interested and though a select few of the “hits” were included on the 1975 Basement Tapes release, it wouldn’t be until 2014 that the full document of what was on those long preserved tapes would reveal. And it’s joyful. It’s spontaneous. It’s playful. It’s the best of what happens when music is made amongst groups of people. They weren’t trying to make a masterpiece. They were just fully and unselfconsciously engaging with their craft.
And it was Garth Hudson who set up the reel-to-reel because the musicians trusted his audio engineering knowledge. And I’m so glad they did because these recordings, raw that they are, capture the spirit of that room. Much like Steve Albini a generation later knew how to capture the spirit of a room, Garth’s simple recording puts us right there in the basement with the musicians.
And Garth is the hero here because he was also one of the musicians and also the one who made detailed notes and kept the box of tapes safe for decades until they were given their proper box set unveiling. The tapes weren’t all in pristine condition, so kudos to those who worked on restoration as well. Garth’s mixes were the inspiration for the project, though. There is a fantastic short documentary about The Basement Tapes that was released in conjunction with The Basement Tapes Complete box set if you want a fuller story.
Garth was a man of few words and very humble about his place in music history. Right around the release of the box set, Rolling Stone drove him past some of the sites where The Band and Dylan made music. When they stopped by Big Pink, they commented to him that these days tourists will come to the house to take pictures with it. He replied simply, “Ain’t that something.”2
And it really is something. It’s something what The Band accomplished on their own and with Bob Dylan. It’s something to listen to the wholly unique sound that Garth brought with his wild improvisational skills, classical training, and idiosyncratic nature. It’s something that he not only set up the reel-to-reel just right to capture those pure moments of creation, but also that he knew to care for them until they could be turned over and given their proper due.
We need stories like that of The Basement Tapes now more than ever. In our era of making music that one hopes will go viral on social media or lead to some endorsement deal, we need people who just want to make music because they love it, not necessarily for what they expect they can sell from it.
And we need communities of people to come together to make music together for the joy of it. Community makes us feel less alone. It staves off the darkness. The act of making art and especially the communal act of making and sharing art is not only an act of pure love, but it is a show of resistance towards the forces that would rather tear us down than lift us up. The creative spirit embraces the very essence of what is possible at the best corners of humanity—curiosity, care, empathy, joy, and the embracing of mystery and awe.
I can’t know for sure, but I’m guessing Garth Hudson intuitively knew this about music too. It’s probably this sense that led him to know how vital those tapes were. It’s speculation, but he must have felt the magic to an extent.
Either way, I’m grateful for his role in not only bringing us The Basement Tapes, but for all of the music he helped create. Heroic? Yeah, I think so. In fact if you want to talk about the type of superheroes that I personally would wish to emulate, I don’t need Superman or Iron Man or any of the big names. What Dylan and the Band created was the stuff of superheroes. Truly remarkable. Truly inspiring. Truly human.
But maybe another mysterious being from another galaxy who went by the name of David Bowie was right when he said that WE can be heroes. It’s time to get together and make some art. Let me know if you want to jam sometime. The revolution starts now. We may not change the world entirely, but at the very least, making music with your friends is good for the soul and might just help those in our circles. And lifting each other up and embracing our creativity and love for beautiful things is how we make it through the tough days ahead.
May Garth Hudson rest in peace. And may Robbie, Rick, Levon, and Richard rest in peace as well. Thank you for all that you left behind that will hopefully endure for all time.
And I hope that Dylan has more music up his sleeve. We gotta have more material for the franchise reboots!
My midwestern sensibilities tell me I’m not supposed to openly say these things. I love you, Midwest, but sometimes your sensibilities aren’t very sensible. Plus, I trust my therapist implicitly, so sensibilities be damned.
Here’s the full article where I found the quote as well as much of the research I used to write this post: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/the-untold-story-of-bob-dylans-basement-tapes-inside-the-new-issue-44611/#:~:text=Dylan%20himself%2C%20true%20to%20form,.%E2%80%9D%20The%20sessions%20were%20loose.