Don't Look Back

 

Marianne Faithfull in the corner

manager Albert Grossman

Donovan

Director D. A. Pennebaker

Pennebaker with Dylan

Pennebaker holding the camera

Dylan with Howard Alk on the left

Dylan with Alk

DON’T LOOK BACK           A                                                                                               USA  (96 mi)  1967  d: D.A. Pennebaker

I ain’t lookin’ to compete with you,
Beat or cheat or mistreat you,
Simplify you, classify you,
Deny, defy or crucify you...

—Bob Dylan - All I Really Want To Do (Live in Liverpool - 1965 ... outtake footage filmed by Pennebaker, YouTube (3:40)

Made during Dylan’s 1965 solo tour of England, but released in 1967, this is the definitive portrait of the artist at an early stage of his career, a time when he was still only 23, yet it’s the height of his worldwide success, where the film has become an iconic rock document, an anthem for 60’s youth culture.  Pennebaker and Chicago filmmaker Howard Alk, one of the cinematographers on the film who would later direct The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971), had unprecedented access, and a brief temporal window behind the scenes that allows viewers to just hang out with the artist for a while as he’s on the verge of becoming internationally famous, with Dylan captured onscreen as he never would be again, offering a rare emotional intimacy that no subsequent documentary has achieved.  This is a film about the 60’s as seen through the dizzying life of one of the standard-bearers of that tumultuous decade, where he is to the 60’s what Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were to the 50’s.  His Ginsberg-like stream-of-conscious words are an aggressive assault to the senses, where the meaning remains highly ambiguous, while his style is constantly changing, and his notorious avoidance of publicity borders on the obsessive, yet he remains the influential voice of the era.  One sequence that stands out, as if pulled out of time from a different era, is Ed Emshwiller footage of Dylan singing outdoors to farmhands two years earlier during a voter registration drive in the cotton fields of Greenwood, Mississippi, Dont Look Back (1967) -- (Movie Clip) Only A Pawn In Their ... YouTube (3:20), where he transitions from a younger version of himself to a live performance on this tour, mirroring the shift from folk traditions to a new terrain of rock.  Filmed during a three week concert tour in the spring of 1965, it’s not so much a documentary as it is a window into a private side of one of our more revered artists, a look behind the curtain, where his sneering intellectual arrogance on display and his disdain for others marks his turf as an insufferable egotist, yet there are throngs of admirers waiting to see him perform, where every concert is sold out.  It’s relaxed and informal, with no set format or criteria, perhaps only visualized in the editing room, which happened very quickly in a matter of weeks, displaying a remarkable gift for weaving music into the visuals so that each seemed to become indistinguishable from the other, reflective of the volcanic social and political transformations taking place during the 60’s, creating not only a revolutionary cinéma vérité approach to a road tour, but a new form of social commentary, bringing it to the mainstream, offering one of the most intimate glimpses possible of the perpetually elusive Bob Dylan.  An artist receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama in 2012 and who would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 for his “new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” with literary allusions to a wide swath of notable poets and writers from Homer to Shakespeare to William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, but in the early years no one really knew what to make of him, and this gritty exposé of the good, the bad and the ugly reflects that mysterious confusion, containing a wide variety of mixed emotions.  A frustrating, puzzling, illuminating, and fleeting portrait of the artist as a young man, originally shot in black and white on handheld 16mm, with blurred grainy images of fast monochrome film, where cigarette smoke permeates every frame, much of the film takes place in a cramped hotel room at the Savoy in London, where the tight quarters only accentuate an atmosphere of intimacy, wandering around backstage, conducting interviews, meeting with fans, taking limo rides, creating a feeling of actually being there.  There is no narrative, and there are no talking heads, with no attempts to define or explain who he is, so it’s such an individualized, interior, free-associating experience that may play out differently for each individual viewer, offering an unflinching gaze into the darker corners of Dylan’s persona.  According to Pennebaker, “Dylan is an interesting person to watch because he is constantly creating himself, and then standing back and trying to witness it,” while according to Dylan, “What happened, [in the sixties] happened so fast, that people are still trying to figure it out.”  You may be able to recognize Joan Baez, Marianne Faithfull, Donovan, former Animals organist Alan Price just after he left the group, that’s him on The Animals - House of the Rising Sun (1964) + clip comp. 60 ... YouTube (4:32), Dylan’s relentlessly aggressive, über manager Albert Grossman (the film is actually his idea), and Beat poet Allen Ginsberg by sight, where there is nothing to identify them otherwise, as they simply appear onscreen, part of the mosaic of intermingling personalities that comprise this film.   

This remarkable film was added to the National Film Registry in 1998, while in 2021 Rolling Stone magazine listed this as the #1 music documentary of all time, 70 Greatest Music Documentaries of All Time, described as an “obvious cultural reference point” and a “permanent blueprint for the public’s image of mid-Sixties rock & roll.”  It bears some resemblance to the weirdly scripted comedy of Richard Lester’s A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (1964), shot during the height of Beatlemania and coinciding with a world tour, where fans besieged their hotels, stole various items for souvenirs, and chased them around London.  Here wildly enthusiastic fangirls are waving to Dylan outside his hotel, hopelessly trying to get his attention, screaming with delight at any sign of him.  What distinguishes this film from other musical documentaries is that this is not a concert film, as none of the songs play out in full, which is actually the film’s biggest criticism, but it’s not that kind of film, where it’s more about the intangible moments in between the songs, with Dylan interacting with the press, hotel personnel, or other friends and musicians paying him a visit, occasionally breaking out in song.  One thing that stands out is that he is defiantly contrarian, not willingly agreeing with anyone, continually finding an antagonistic point of view, yet what’s fascinating is how he sees himself during this momentous period of his life, regarding it all suspiciously, where we literally watch him reading articles written about him, and then reacts as only Bob Dylan can, as he obviously gets a kick out of seeing himself in the news.  When Dylan reads an article that describes him as “puffing heavily on his cigarette, he smokes eighty a day,” he hilariously responds, “God, I’m glad I’m not me.”  Not just a songwriter and musician, but Dylan is also a poet, who attracted the interest of other poets, including fellow musician/poet Patti Smith, who has talked about the impact both Dylan and the film had on her as a young, struggling artist in New York, as she “related to everything he did, his magnetism and sexual energy.  He was nobody’s patsy,” something she describes as “the hubris of youth,” Patti Smith on Bob Dylan and DONT LOOK BACK YouTube (14:01).  This would be Dylan’s final acoustic tour, coming just after he released Bringing It All Back Home, as he began to move away from the folk movement from which he’d emerged, where the first side is all electric, while the second side is all acoustic, becoming his first album to incorporate electric instrumentation.  When he returned to England in 1966 it was for the electric tour that caused one outraged fan who felt so betrayed he shouted out “Judas,” a legendary moment of instantaneous frustration that pretty much defines his career evolution, as he continually evolves into new musical forms, never repeating any song the same way twice.  Curiously, according to photographer Daniel Kramer, who was sent to photograph him, finding him completely uncooperative, he rarely even plays the guitar except when performing.  The film hasn’t aged a bit, and feels as modern and timeless today as it was when it was released, offering a compelling critique of an intrusive media that can completely misunderstand its subjects through their own bias, yet still print distortions and inaccuracies anyway.  Pennebaker’s restless camerawork is perfectly suited for Dylan’s chameleon-like persona, never really answering any of the interviewers questions, typically turning the questions back around on them, often seen hiding behind his everpresent dark sunglasses that he strangely wears indoors, where you may not like him, but he’s very human, as openly flawed as the rest of us.  The title comes from Satchel Paige, the ageless Negro League baseball pitcher who famously remarked, “Don’t look back.  Someone might be gaining on you,” with Dylan offering his own retort, “He not busy being born is busy dying,” and since he so thoroughly carries the film, the focal point of every single second, he describes the film as Pennebaker by Dylan.  The opening two-and-a-half minutes is an improvisational music video (with some calling it the first) promotion for Dylan’s first Billboard-landing single and electric rock anthem, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues (Official HD Video) YouTube (2:15), with Dylan fumbling through a series of cue cards that he drops to the ground after the words are sung, a shorthand for his momentous lyrics, which sets the tone for what follows, with an unidentified Allen Ginsberg in the background, where he and Kerouac used to refer to themselves as “subterraneans,” the title of a 1958 book by Kerouac, where there is an audio recording of him reading a passage from the book, Jack Kerouac Reads From 'The Subterraneans' (1958) YouTube (3:14).

Dylan’s snarly and petulant attitude, particularly with clueless reporters, may have simply been a defense mechanism against the overexposure in newspapers and magazines, where his music was as overplayed on the radio as the Beatles, because commercial radio loves repetition, elevating him to a Godlike status, which he shied away from, so his automatic impulses shut down those questions while making fun of just how ridiculous the situation was that he found himself in, literally jousting with reporters, viewing them as comic relief, Dont Look Back (1967) -- (Movie Clip) Lies And Rubbish YouTube (3:45), where people were asking him everything imaginable, no matter how personal or inappropriate, and then writing whatever the hell they pleased, often using broad, encompassing labels to describe him.  So there are moments when he’s being spectacularly obnoxious towards others, a real jerk, as if he couldn’t care less about them, using acerbic sarcasm as a weapon, yet he also has some indescribable endearing quality, where he seems genuinely authentic and quite comfortable just being himself.  Mixed altogether in a musical collage, we’re privy to a constantly changing mindset that offers an exemplary view of all the contradictions he was constantly dealing with, where it’s impressive that a document like this even exists, as we rarely get behind the façade of great artists, but this one really expresses all the adrenaline-laced, sped-up confusion wrapped up in the meticulously documented, jagged edges of the experience, with Dylan acutely aware that a camera is always on him, where every moment is a performance, yet this may also be who he really is, making things up as he goes along, like looking in a mirror at yourself while real life is happening, where you have to wonder at times if that guy you’re looking at is even you.  In a bewildering moment that comes out of nowhere, all hell breaks loose when Dylan throws an angry tantrum after learning someone threw a glass bottle out the window, causing all sorts of pandemonium mixed with an air of late night drunken revelry, Bob Dylan hotel argument about throwing glass in the street YouTube (2:59).  Lost among the barrage of Dylan clips is an extremely raw and revealing moment with Alan Price, coming at a particularly vulnerable time for an extremely talented artist, having left The Animals under questionable circumstances, where alcohol may have played a role, and while he’s barely onscreen except for a few moments, they are tinged with giddiness turning to heartbreak, where the instantly changing mood becomes something of a subplot for the film.  Dylan’s unidentified right hand man and friendly soulmate is his road manager Bob Neuwirth, a partner in crime with a long and influential association with Dylan, who is with him throughout this film, often acting as a sounding board, both cracking up over the enthusiastic press coverage of Donovan, described by the press as “England’s answer to Bob Dylan,” which becomes a running joke in the film, where his press clippings adorn the hotel mirrors and a concert poster appears in the hotel room draped across a couch, but they’re generally on the same wavelength, Bob Dylan and Bobby Neuwirth YouTube (47 seconds).  Joan Baez makes an early appearance and then disappears, something she has described as “the most demoralizing experience of my life,” apparently having enough of this self-obsessed Dylan guy, but she sings a beautiful song, Dont Look Back (1967) -- (Movie Clip) Percy's Song, Etc. YouTube (3:57), while Dylan completely ignores her, back turned, typing away on his reportedly amphetamine-fueled experimental novel Tarantula, released several years later, which baffled his critics and left his fans scratching their heads, while in this same sequence Marianne Faithfull can be seen tucked away in a corner, never saying a word.  Donovan actually appears in the hotel room and sings a nice, conventional folk song, Donovan - To Sing for You, Bob Dylan - It's All Over Now Baby ... YouTube (4:05), with Dylan watching nervously until Donovan asks if he’d give an impromptu performance of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, which is endearing and seems especially personalized, yet the coup de grâce may actually be an unused outtake from one of Dylan’s most sublimely gorgeous love songs, filled with symbolist wordplay, Bob Dylan - Love Minus Zero/No Limit (Live at Savoy Hotel 1965) [HD FOOTAGE] YouTube (3:42), a snippet of which played in concert closes the film.  It’s fair to say Donovan was one-upped here, and was likely overwhelmed by Dylan in a take no prisoners mode, where there was simply no one else like him in the entire universe.  Not an easy man to get along with, yet this film graces the screen with rare moments of down time, when he had time to kill, preparing for the actual moments when he would take the stage, as this entire film is a lead-in to that combustible moment when Dylan set the world on fire.

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

Pete Seeger sitting next to the piano

Dylan with Joan Baez

Allen Ginsberg

Liam Clancy

NO DIRECTION HOME:  BOB DYLAN – made for TV              B+                  

USA  Great Britain  Japan  (359 mi)  2005  d:  Martin Scorsese       

TV mini-series and DVD (208 mi) 

An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he’s at somewhere.  You always have to realize that you’re constantly in a state of becoming.

—Bob Dylan

Initially screened at three and a half hours on the PBS American Masters television series, a longer 6-hour bootlegged version was released immediately afterwards, both tracing the life of Bob Dylan from the Iron Country in Minnesota to his troubadour period in January 1961 playing folk music in Greenwich Village folk clubs, among the first to actually sign a lucrative record contract, becoming a songwriter and the “voice of a generation,” a label that plagued him, initially enjoying the fame it brought him, but he soon grew tired with the mobs of adulating fans and the repeated press questions asking him about the meaning behind his songs, something he had no interest in whatsoever, avoiding political rallies and demonstrations his entire life even though his songs became anthems of the times and were continually used in antiwar and Civil Rights protests.  While the definitive Dylan documentary remains D. A. Pennebaker’s DON’T LOOK BACK (1967), Scorsese brings his own gravitas to the material (unlike other Scorsese documentaries, he is never behind the camera, as all the material is shot by others, Scorsese was brought in to edit existing material), including ongoing comments from a modern day Dylan offering his own perspective, made with his full cooperation (interviewed by his own manager Jeff Rosen) acting in the role of a narrator over the early years of his career, which is invaluable, as you see a side of him rarely shown to the public, where his critical assessment of other musicians is succinctly accurate, joining a chorus of others offering their own commentary on Dylan, like Dave Van Ronk, Liam Clancy, Allen Ginsberg, Tony Glover, Bruce Langhorne, Al Cooper, Izzy Young, Maria Muldaur, Suze Rotolo, and Joan Baez, all sharing significant experiences together, with the film offering startling early footage of folk performers John Jacob Niles and Odetta.  The meeting of Scorsese and Dylan is a potent mix, where America’s greatest living director meets its greatest living songwriter.  Dylan historically “Never Looks Back,” a quality that Scorsese must admire, as both are constantly reinventing themselves, refusing to stay in the same place artistically, continually evolving into something else, where Dylan views his role as an artist as always becoming and never growing complacent.  The title comes from his lyric Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone (Audio) - YouTube (5:59), listed as the greatest song ever written in 2011 according to Rolling Stone magazine, 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, which may be exerting some degree of bias, considering the name of the magazine, yet nonetheless there it is.  While there is little argument that Dylan’s transition to electric produced three magnificent albums that have had a staggering impact, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde, listed at #31, #4, and #9 in 2012 by 500 Greatest Albums of All Time - Rolling Stone, extraordinary artistic achievements that have stood the test of time, yet Dylan obviously felt suffocated by the folk limitations and needed to broaden his reach, where these albums show Dylan attempting to express how to cope with an everchanging world, creating uniquely liberating expressions that transcend the folk idiom.  Yet much of the film documents the public outrage over his transformation from a folk artist to an electric rock musician, touring internationally with Canadian musicians comprising The Band, where they were booed relentlessly wherever they went, denounced as a musical heretic, yet still playing to sold-out concerts, where the public adored the protest singer he used to be, with so much written about him, elevated to poet laureate status, where his words accurately reflected what people were feeling, but no one could express themselves with the surreal poetry of Bob Dylan, where many of his songs are outright prose, miniature existential masterpieces in time capsules, like Bob Dylan - Visions of Johanna (Audio) - YouTube (7:33), where the ambiguity of meaning offers a contemplative take on the subjective experience, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”  One of the odd curiosities is wondering how Dylan remembers a musical repertoire that contains so many words, as unlike jazz musicians who can improvise, his songs are set to often lengthy texts, where just remembering them all throughout his long history of performances requires a unique brain quality that he obviously possesses. 

On par with Scorsese’s The Last Waltz (1978), a live celebratory tribute to The Band returning to the Winterland in San Francisco where they first performed publicly, appearing throughout this film as Dylan’s band where they are mercilessly booed and heckled on tour.  Scorsese never shows full-length songs, only offering snippets, where Dylan’s private life remains private, with no mention of drugs, yet there is a fluidity of movement throughout, beautifully edited, aided by the help of editor David Tedeschi, offering a searingly intense portrait of one of America’s greatest artists, using footage from the 1963-65 Newport Folk Festivals from Murray Lerner’s FESTIVAL (1967), Pennebaker’s DON’T LOOK BACK (1967) and EAT THE DOCUMENT (1972), not afraid to repeat the same songs in different settings, always finding something uniquely relevant about each performance, where it’s clear by the summer of 1966 that Dylan has grown tired of the lengthy tour, where the lines in England are around the block to hear him perform, yet Dylan is fed up with the monotony of the routine and has reached his limit on the road, more than ready to return home, whatever that may be, as television appearances were lined up upon his return.  A motorcycle accident puts a stamp on the end of this period, offering him a chance to escape the pressures around him, withdrawing from the public, where it would be almost 8 years before he’d make another public appearance.  Even the crash itself is surrounded in mystery, as he never sought medical attention, never went to the hospital, so there is no official record of what happened, with rumors swirling that he was on death’s door, yet Dylan claimed he broke several vertebrae in his neck, though many believe his crash was a psychological breakdown, a culmination of having spent nearly 5 years on the road.  According to documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker who accompanied the road tour, he described Dylan as “taking a lot of amphetamine and who-knows-what-else.”  One of the revealing aspects of the film is to place Dylan directly into the heart of the Woody Guthrie folk tradition of singing protest songs, yet unlike Guthrie and Pete Seeger and others, Dylan was never overtly political in espousing his beliefs, preferring to accentuate universal themes even while criticizing social injustice, where Ginsberg in particular was profoundly moved to tears upon hearing Bob Dylan - A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Audio) - YouTube (6:51), realizing the torch had been passed from his generation to the next (seen accompanied by a montage of Kennedy-era footage), describing it as akin to a Biblical prophecy designed “to make your hair stand on end.”  Sadly, neither Ginsberg nor Van Ronk, both so instrumental to this film, would live long enough to see this documentary completed.  Tribute must be paid to so many of the poets and performers who spoke out about a disenchantment with our leaders, a fear of the future, and the need for equality and civil rights, as they had their pulse on a singular moment in history, with their resounding message feeling perhaps even more evocative today, as disillusion remains.  The film actually begins in Dylan’s formative years in Hibbing, Minnesota, a small town reflective of the heartland of America, known for hard work, where the town is surrounded by mounds of iron ore being dug up by the mining industry, home to the largest open-pit iron mine in the world, where Dylan recalls it was too cold to be rebellious, as that cold winter air would knock you on your ass.  Nonetheless, his growing interest in music was from listening to the radio, developing a rabid interest in listening to records, drawing inspiration to become a musician, immersing himself in the music of Woody Guthrie, literally mimicking his unique talents when he made his way to the coffee clubs of New York where, like a sponge, he literally drew upon the wealth of artistic talent surrounding him, where over the course of six months he matured into an original talent, much like the overnight success attributed to blues legend Robert Johnson, making a deal with the devil according to the myth, as no one could literally transform themselves overnight into the greatest talent alive.  John Hammond of Columbia records, normally associated with the cream of the crop of mainstream artists, home to Percy Faith, Johnny Mathis, and Doris Day, took a chance with Dylan, signing him to a record contract, and while the first two didn’t sell well, it gave Dylan the opportunity to learn the business, eventually writing his own songs and transforming his career overnight.  

While there was a certain amount of jealous rivalry among his fellow folk artists, most were surprised that he was “the chosen one,” as just a few months earlier he was somewhere in the middle of the mix, never singing or playing that well, never viewed as particularly talented, with a propensity to make up wild stories about his past, with most associating him as the guy that sang all those Woody Guthrie songs.  What separated him from the rest was his ability to endlessly write songs, like a Mozart child prodigy, where it was relatively easy for him, simply writing all the time, jotting down lyrics on anything that was available, even during conversations with others.  Joan Baez, an early girlfriend, was amazed at how easily words streamed out of his brain, utterly transfixed by his awesome talent.  They were an interesting pair, as she was positively celestial in her singing, with the voice of an angel, while he was this ragamuffin in boots looking more like a hobo, denied entrance to a motel on the road due to his frazzled appearance, which motivated him to write overnight a song with attitude and a sneer, Bob Dylan - Chimes Of freedom - video dailymotion (8:07), described by Crawdaddy! magazine founder and rock music critic Paul Williams as Dylan’s Sermon on the Mount.  Perhaps the culmination of Dylan’s own sense of moral hypocrisy was revealed when at the end of 1963, just weeks after the assassination of President Kennedy, he was awarded the Tom Paine Award by the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, a longstanding group espousing leftist beliefs, with members he felt were “old and balding.”  Manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements, a likely intoxicated 22-year old Dylan questioned the role of the committee itself, considering them thoroughly outdated, finding a little bit of Lee Harvey Oswald in every aspect of American culture, including the committee and even himself, drawing gasps from the crowd, with Scorsese himself reading excerpts from his speech that night.  Dylan wrote about this earlier, singing about the Klu Klux Klansman murderer of Medgar Evers, viewing him as a small piece of a larger puzzle, an insignificant cog in the machine of racism, performing at the March on Washington in August 1963, standing just a few feet from Martin Luther King when he made his “I Have a Dream” speech, Bob Dylan - Only A Pawn In Their Game (March On Washington 1963) [BEST QUALITY] (3:30). Dylan has always shied away from the deeper meanings of his songs, preferring to have no path to follow and no message to send, where he steadfastly refuses all proclamations that he is a generational prophet or even a musical genius, living a secluded life away from all the fuss, yet his singular capacity for longevity is startling, crossing multiple generations by now, remaining something of an enigma, hard to pin point or define, confounding legendary Chicago radio host Studs Terkel by daring to defy commonly held views, “I’m not a topical songwriter. I don’t even like that word,” where the endless press conference questions accompanying road tours grew quite contentious, as did his relationship with his adoring throngs loving the folk music period of Bob Dylan, Mr. Tambourine Man (Live at the Newport Folk Festival. 1964) YouTube (5:56), but refused to entertain this noisy transition to electric, Bob Dylan - Ballad of a thin man "No direction home" (3:33).  Defiantly refusing to bow down under pressure, singleminded in his purpose to perform the music he wanted, he steamrolled his way through the England tour of 1966 despite receiving an onslaught of hostile catcalls from disenchanted fans who felt betrayed, calling him “Judas,” believing he’d sold out and gone commercial, throwing it right back in their faces, No direction home ending scene (4:14), answering their rudeness with greater determination to play it even louder.  Unable to uplift the population with grand utopian visions of hope and optimism forever, a darker vision set in, where the end of the 60’s was met with a hard thud, as doubt, disillusion, and disappointment crept in, with Dylan only expressing what the rest of us felt as well, as the end of an era of social consciousness felt like the end of idealization and hope.  What’s perhaps most remarkable, by the end of the film Dylan was only 25 years of age.   

Note

Independent American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch asked Scorsese to recall the first time he met the subject of his latest documentary, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005).  It was in the 1970’s, and Dylan asked him, “Do you know about this guy, Fassbinder?  You should see his film, Beware of a Holy Whore.”