The “Dignity” of “John Brown”

For the cult of Bob Dylan fans, myself included, I’m sure there is an untold number of moments that any of us would wish we could be a transparent eyewitness for.

The list would probably start with any of his earliest New York performances shortly after arriving there in the winter of 1961. His now iconic performances at New York’s Gaslight Club, a moment in time which became further solidified as legend following the Coen brothers’ 2014 folk character study Inside Llewyn Davis. His debut at the 1962 Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan, while not a headliner yet, had already had a reputation spread about him, even if several stories within that reputation were found to be no more than products of Bob’s imagination.

The moments are plentiful and infamous enough that one could condense the events into simple bullet points.

· The numerous recording sessions, from 1962’s Bob Dylan onwards, with his trinity of folk-rock classics (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde) meriting special attention.

· The live performances that, over the decades, expanded far beyond his solo acoustic folk gigs in the early days.

· All three of his famous Newport Folk Festival appearances culminated with the memorable 1965 festival that saw Dylan going electric.

· The subsequent 1965–1966 tour with the musicians who would become The Band. The tour drew an equal balance of acoustic love and electric hate.

· Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue of 1975–76 where Dylan served as musical ringmaster for a traveling 19th-century carousel show dropped into 20th-century (and post-Watergate) America.

All of those moments barely scratch the service of a life and career that has remained unpredictable and surprising, as his 16-minute chart-topper, 2020’s “Murder Most Foul” has proven of late.

For clarity’s sake, let’s limit things down to a certain point in Dylan’s life and career, sometime between 1989 and 1997. That period of Dylan was marked by his two late-era triumphs, 1989’s Oh, Mercy, his comeback after a rocky period of lackluster albums and half-hearted performances, and 1997’s Grammy-winning Time Out of Mind, the starting point to a remarkable period that arguably has, like the title of one of his most famous tours, has been truly never-ending.

However, in between those eight years came one disappointing follow-up to Oh, Mercy (1990’s Under The Red Sky), another Traveling Wilburys album (The Roy Orbison-less Vol. 3), two albums of traditional folk standards (1992’s Good as I’ve Been To You and the following year’s World Gone Wrong), an all-star tribute concert at Madison Square Garden to mark his 30th anniversary in music, continuous live touring, and even a near-death experience with a serious heart alignment.

Among all those points in time, Dylan’s November 17, 1994, appearance on MTV Unplugged stands as just one more stop on the road. Among Unplugged guests, Dylan’s appearance is probably not as famous as Eric Clapton’s, Tony Bennett’s, or Nirvana’s showcases. His set list for that evening is mostly the hits, only notable for Dylan’s continuous reinvention and rearrangements of familiar songs.

The story goes that Dylan wanted to fill his Unplugged set with mostly traditional folk material, more in line with Good as I’ve Been to You and World Gone Wrong. Reportedly, MTV executives rejected the plan, insisting that Dylan perform the well-known hits from his catalog. Dylan followed the plan up to a point.

Remember, this was Bob Dylan. In other words, the man who, in concert, seldom did the same song the same way twice (and still doesn’t to this day.)

Dylan challenges the audience to keep up as he provides the latest brand-new versions of his classics. “Like A Rolling Stone”, the six-minute gem forever associated with Dylan going the opposite of “unplugged”, is turned into nine minutes of cool and relaxed country rock here. If the tempo is barely changed on “Desolation Row”, the change comes from Dylan’s vocals, he experiments with a back phrasing style of singing, almost speaking the lyrics, that compliments the steady beat of the band and his guitar playing and empathizes the storyteller aspect of the song. Running through other familiar songs like “With God on Our Side”, “The Times They Are A-Changin”, and a rollicking “All Along the Watchtower”, Dylan alternates providing the familiar and shaking it up, mostly in his singing style. His romantic “Shooting Star”, from Oh, Mercy, is slow and enchanting. Dylan’s sad lament of lost love is made more soulful thanks to a beautiful harmonica solo by Bob. Dylan’s guitar playing is also good throughout the show, as he sneaks a few solos on his trusty acoustic, always delivered without the sense of showboating.

The two stand-out moments of Dylan’s Unplugged are when he drops a pair of tunes that audiences would not likely have heard before. When Dylan launched into “John Brown”, a song that he recorded decades earlier under the alias Blind Boy Grunt (for a 1962 folk compilation album), Bob’s scratchy vocal and straight-forward delivery of the lyrics frames the anti-war ballad as a companion piece to Dalton Trumbo’s anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun, which also featured a disfigured vet at its center. You are left with horror and empathy for both the shattered title character and his war-loving mother who faces the hard truth of war that outweighs any medals of honor.

Dylan must have been anxious for audiences to hear “Dignity”, an originally unreleased song that he had just dropped as a surprise on his Greatest Hits. Vol. 3, released only two days before his Unplugged performance. It’s “Dignity” that centers the entire show, as Dylan attacks the lyrics with verve and command. The instruments are acoustic, but Dylan and the band make it a rock and roll showcase of attitude. In that performance, one realizes that Dylan isn’t singing so much about finding dignity because the truth is Bob already has it. All that’s left is for those around him to catch up to recognizing it.

Three years later, Dylan’s Album of the Year Grammy for Time Out of Mind may have indicated that the powers that be finally got the message. In truth, even before he took the stage to collect his trophies, one could see a prime example of Dylan's dignity from earlier in that 1998 Grammy telecast.

The now infamous “Soy Bomb” performance of “Love Sick” is destined to stand out for the combination of absurdity and the worst faux kind of avant-garde showboating. However, the moment was worth it for the way that Dylan responded to the moment, paying scant attention to the shirtless “Elane Benes” style dancing he was rocking next to. As “Soy Bomb” left the stage, Dylan proceeded to get in some action on his trusty Fender Stratocaster, looking not unlike the same Fender he had used to plug in at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Determined to show the audience the real event to view on stage, Dylan proceeded to drop a remarkable guitar solo. It was not a shredding kind of guitar break, but a machine gun-style attack. If you watch closely, Dylan even held his Fender in the style of a machine gun aimed at the audience.

That’s the power of Dylan. Even moving deep into his 80s, Bob doesn’t perform but attacks.

Whether pounding on the keyboard that has taken over as his main instrument of choice or clutching the microphone stand to perform a pop standard, the attack is still fresh. Whether in recent concerts when he strapped on a guitar again or pulled out the harmonica that defined him as far back as when he played backup for Harry Belafonte, Dylan remains Dylan.

In the end, Bob Dylan’s night on Unplugged in 1994 was a small window to a resurgence and career renewal from one of the greats, who continues to have tricks up his sleeve.

Sincerely: Random Access Moods