A Complete Unknown (2024)
An Origin Story Without a Hero
“Where do I even start with Bob Dylan?”
I’ve been asked this question a few times over the thirty years that I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan. Thirty years sounds like a lot, but it’s only half of the time since Robert Zimmerman died and was reborn on a New York sidewalk in the cold winter of 1961. And that was only the first time he died; there are so many now that it’s nearly impossible to count. But Bob Dylan never suffered because that was only for the people who loved the shell of the last person he was when he died the time before last.
Great art requires a great sacrifice of human emotion, which is like fueling an engine of culture. If artists want to escape the gravity of their times, they need a lot of emotional fuel, so much more than only a person can produce by themselves. Bob Dylan burned the whole world to the ground around him in 1965. This movie is only the beginning of a very long story, but it’s a place you can start with Bob Dylan, and I’m happy it’s out in the world.
Like a superhero, every Bob Dylan fan has an origin story, so here is mine. In November 1994, I was laid up with double pneumonia, and two things happened of significance to me besides the illness. First, I was feverish and watched Gone With the Wind for the first time. I fell deeply under that movie’s spell. It still holds magic for me. It may have even saved my life. I’m still not sure. It put me in a terminally reflective mood, which brings me to the second thing that happened during that cold Winter of convalescence.
I got suckered in by a masterful infomercial. I spontaneously purchased a seven-CD set produced by Time Life Music and Rolling Stone magazine featuring the greatest rock 'n' roll music of the past 25 years as chosen by Rolling Stone’s editors. I was hunkering down, scared I was going to die from that wicked cough; that’s how sick I felt. And as often happens to people in such a sorry state, I turned inward and reflected on the little past I had by then. When that boxed set of great music arrived, I was healed and back to school and work. But the first song on the first disc put me in a different kind of fever and changed me forever. That song was "Like a Rolling Stone." Of those seven discs, Bob Dylan was one of the few artists with more than one song, including "Lay Lady Lay" and "A Simple Twist of Fate." I loved them all, but they didn’t send me to the record store looking for more. Rather, I appreciated them for their place in this compilation of 25 years of great music.
What sent me to the record store looking for a Bob Dylan record wouldn’t happen for another four years, and by that time, Tupac and Biggie were both shot and dead, my interest in Rap music waning, while my interest in guitar music was building. By then, I was in writing school, going for my BFA, home on summer break, and hustling nachos and 24-ounce beers at a local sports bar near my parents' home. A few months earlier, Columbia House Record Club had aggressively sent me a bunch of CDs I hadn’t ordered, but they expected me to pay for them, which I begrudgingly did. One of those CDs was Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, which wrecked me sideways. I thought, “Wait a minute. Is this the same guy from that Time-Life box set? And this is a new record? He’s still putting out new shit?!” I was blown away by the idea that there were so many songs and records between the relics on that set and this incredible music I heard on Time Out of Mind, which was like a dead man crawled up out of the grave to sing about his travels through the underworld. I couldn’t stop listening to that record for months. I became obsessed with it in the best way. The truth is, I’m still obsessed with it.
Now, fast-forward a few months to when I worked in that sports bar. We were sitting around, bullshitting in between the lunch rush and dinner service, eating our discount meals in the back room. We talked about Bob Dylan because it was my favorite subject, although I knew little about him, only that I loved everything I had heard. The guy I was talking to was a burned-out hippie who had been resurrected a few times in his own life. After singing praises about Time Out of Mind for a few minutes, this old hippy answered my question at the beginning of this essay.
He told me, “Man if you love new Dylan, you’ve got to hear the first real album he made: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” He made a point of telling me that it wasn’t his first album, but that record was mostly bullshit the suits at Columbia made him sing, “Except for one song,” he said. “But save that one for later.” He made me promise that I’d buy Freewheelin’ and give it the same chance I’d given Time Out of Mind. I did, and I’ve never looked back. I kept on going and have been ever since. I don’t know everything about Bob Dylan, but I know enough that I’ll never know anything more about the man who made the music. I can only learn about myself as a reflection of what this music has been doing inside me for three decades and counting.
To journey through Bob Dylan’s art is to move through the deepest recesses of the human heart, and it’s a journey you start from wherever the fuck you’re standing, listening to whatever you’re hearing. This is the only lesson you need to learn from Bob Dylan, and it’s a lesson for your life. Whatever reactionary forces are out there standing in the way of our future, whether Pete Seeger is looking at the axe and thinking of chopping the electric cables to stop the sounds he hears as hideous noise or it’s the forces of some immoral billionaire and a bunch of other crusty old fuckers who can’t wait to tell us all how to live our lives, the lesson remains same—Fuck Maggie’s farm, her pa, and all of their rules. They don’t mean a goddamned thing in the end, so long as you keep the purity of this moment in your heart. Be alive while you listen!
If the film A Complete Unknown is your first journey into Bob Dylan’s art, let it be an origin story for a lifetime of self-exploration and wondrous discovery. You’ll learn what Suze Rotolo (“Sylvie” in the movie) and Joan Baez learned about Bob Dylan: nobody is there, only a vessel for art that consumes the life of others standing around waiting for the man, swallowing people whole with all their love, always hungry and on the move.
May your journey with Bob Dylan be as blessed as mine, and may the music never stop while the stone rolls on.
PS: The first time Chalamet sings in this movie is the song that old hippy told me to save for later—Song For Woody.
