Chronicles: Volume One

In January 1987, Dylan severely damaged his hand in a freak accident. He thought he might not be able to play music again, especially after years of “exploiting whatever talent [he] had beyond the breaking point” (145). Dylan had already been struggling to capture the “intimacy” of his music in live performances, though he felt that listening to him play was probably “like going through deserted orchards and dead grass” (146), despite finding some new techniques to “call [his songs] up from the grave” (146). Dylan was “whitewashed and wasted out professionally” (147). He felt as if he had sunk into “the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion” (147) and struggled to find inspiration or relevance. On tour with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Dylan felt as if his discography was like “a package of heavy rotting meat” (148); he could no longer relate to or understand most of his songs, so he stuck to playing the same ones over and over. On one of the tour’s breaks, Dylan was set to play some shows with The Grateful Dead. When The Dead wanted to play some of his “seldom seen” songs, Dylan “couldn’t see how [he] could get this stuff off emotionally” (149) and left rehearsal. He wandered until he found a jazz club. The singer was a natural; as Dylan watched him, he suddenly remembered where this kind of power came from and how to summon it: “something internal came unhinged” (151) and Dylan could access all the songs that had been out of reach to him before.

Back on tour with Tom Petty, Dylan now played different songs every single night. Nevertheless, he still felt no connection to the crowds and “had gotten comfortable with” the idea of retirement (152). One night, however, the new techniques Dylan was using failed. He opened his mouth to sing and felt like he “fell into a black hole” (152). On the verge of panic, he “cast [his] own spell to drive out the devil” (153). It worked perfectly: Dylan found a new sense of purpose, having “become a new performer” (153). The end of the tour became the beginning of a new journey. 

Dylan decided to put off retirement. He wanted to “put [him]self in the service of the public” (154), launching a 200-date tour where he’d return to the same cities year after year. This would allow him to cultivate a new audience. Paradoxically, Dylan’s “immense” fame—“some weird diploma that won’t get you into any college” (155)—made it hard for him to fill large venues, so he relied instead on word of mouth. With the anticipation of the tour, life “lost its toxic effect” until the accident ruined his hand and left him “on the threshold of nothing” (156). Dylan had planned to reinvent his guitar into a “style that didn’t exist as of yet” (155), too, but now that was impossible.

Dylan’s accident was “a cosmic kick in the pants” (162). His hand suffered extensive nerve damage and might not make a full recovery. Determined to “stay interested in something” (163) after largely losing interest in songwriting, he considered a future without music. He felt he “had reached [his] goal” as a songwriter “and had no more high ambitions for it” (165). He thought about getting into business and living “the conventional life” (163), but researching a number of entrepreneurial ventures only revealed Dylan’s absence of interest. Then, one night, he sat down at his kitchen table and wrote 20 verses for a song called “Political World.”

Over a period of about a month, Dylan wrote 20 new songs. He muses that “Political World” could have been inspired by the 1988 presidential race, but he “had no interest in politics as an art form” (166) so the song didn’t simply focus on current events. Instead, it painted an “underworld” that Dylan felt had “broken through to something” (166). Later that week, Dylan saw Eugene O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey into Night. On the way home, he stopped at a blues club to see Guitar Shorty. Leaving the club, he saw an unhoused man being displaced by cops while his small dog watched nervously. In response, Dylan wrote the song “What Good Am I?” The next day, Dylan heard on the news that basketball player Pete Maravich had collapsed on the court. That same day, Dylan wrote “Dignity.” He could hear the whole arrangement in his head; in the past, he would have rushed to record it, but now, he had little interest.

Dylan’s hand was healing well. After a good report from the doctor, he went home. While his son and his son’s fiancée prepared a seafood stew, Dylan went into the garage and wrote “Disease of Conceit.” He posits that the song could have been inspired by the defrocking of Baptist televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, but “[i]t’s hard to say” (171). The songs kept coming until Dylan’s hand healed. He could return to his scheduled shows, and “it seemed like [he] was back where [he] began” (174).

One night, Bono—lead singer for the band U2—was over for dinner, and he and Dylan were drinking their way through a case of Guinness. Bono asked if Dylan had any new music, so Dylan showed him the drawer full of new songs. Bono suggested that Dylan record with Daniel Lanois, a producer that U2 had worked with, but Dylan still viewed his upcoming tour as the way “to regain [his] musical freedom” (176).

Dylan met Lanois in New Orleans, Louisiana, the following fall. Over drinks, they discussed what kind of album Dylan had in mind. After the brainstorming session, a chance to feel things out, Dylan left feeling optimistic. By March, he was back in New Orleans. 

Dylan loved the “murky and intoxicating” city (179), which was like “one very long poem,” full of beauty and possibility (182). He moved into a large rental house, and Lanois set up his recording studio in a nearby Victorian-style house with all the necessary equipment and “an eclectic alliance of musicians” (182). It had the makings of “a great place to record” (181).

They began with “Political World,” but the song “didn’t seem to be going anywhere” (183). Dylan knew it would take time for his and Lanois’s ideas to gel. When he came back the next morning, Lanois had worked on the track more, turning it into a funky mix that Dylan thought completely missed the mark. They spent another two or three days on the song, but weren’t communicating well, becoming so frustrated with one another that Lanois smashed a dobro guitar against the floor and a young assistant left in tears. Eventually, they decided to put “Political World” aside and work on “Most of the Time.” Dylan felt like the lyrics weren’t working; the song “was all dammed up and stagnant” (186). Next, they recorded “Dignity,” which went off without a hitch. Walking back to his house, Dylan passed a movie theater showing The Mighty Quinn, starring Denzel Washington. He remembered a song he had written called “The Mighty Quinn” and thought that Denzel Washington could play Woody Guthrie in “[his] dimension of reality” (187).

When Dylan’s tour manager, Elliot Roberts, showed Dylan his upcoming schedule, Dylan was disappointed to see that Roberts hadn’t booked him in the same cities for consecutive years as Dylan had asked. Arguing the point was useless. In the studio, Dylan began recording “Dignity” with Rockin’ Dopsie and His Cajun Band. However, it “was like being cast into sudden hell” (190), though neither Dylan nor Lanois could figure out why. Eventually, they gave up and played country classics for fun. Late into the night, Dylan played “Where Teardrops Fall,” another of his new songs, and they recorded it immediately. It was a song that “made you stand straight up and stay right where you were” (191) and renewed Dylan’s faith in the project.

Although Dylan and Lanois continued to butt heads, they kept working through Dylan’s songs, recording “Series of Dreams,” “What Good Am I?,” and “Ring Them Bells.” Dylan was running out of energy to argue with Lanois, so they were able to put aside their personal differences more and more. Lanois’s musical genius came out and “captured the essence of” tracks, like “Ring Them Bells” (197). Dylan also wrote new songs, like “Shooting Star,” to fill some of the album’s emerging gaps. Still, sometimes Dylan found himself wondering if he and Lanois were still friends.

After a month in New Orleans, Dylan and his wife took a motorcycle ride out of the city. Dylan “was feeling stuffy” (199) and needed to clear his head. They rode southwest to the town of Thibodaux, stopped for lunch near Morgan City, continued south toward Houma until they saw oil rigs, and then turned around and spent the night outside of Napoleonville. The next morning, Dylan woke feeling like he understood why the recording sessions were going poorly. Lanois was pushing him to do something different, but Dylan wasn’t trying “to express [him]self in any kind of new way”—he just wanted “to secure the place where [he] was at” (202). They rode through a light rain until they reached “a gaunt shack called King Tut’s Museum” (202-203). The owner, Sun Pie, invited Dylan to have a look around, but Dylan instead listened to him talk about an impending Chinese takeover, captivated by this “strange character”: Sun Pie was “the kind of guy who would be the center of a procession in a parade” or could “be the nucleus of a mob” (208). Dylan left with a “World’s Greatest Grandpa” bumper sticker and returned to New Orleans with his head clear.

Dylan wrote and finished a number of new songs, including “Dark Eyes,” which “complete[d] the album” (210). Dylan wasn’t sure they’d created “any historical tunes” (216) like Lanois was hoping, but some of the songs were “close.” Lanois had pushed Dylan “to the psychological edge” (217), and they had come up with a record that satisfied both—not “the record either of [them] wanted,” but one on which some “songs held up in a grand way” (218). Dylan had “wholehearted admiration for what Lanois did” (224), as the finished record had “something magical about [it]” (220) because it was the product of “spur of the moment decisions” and working “to make things fit” (220). Dylan and Lanois were kindred spirits despite their differences, and they would work together again in the future.