Research Updates: ____________________________________________________________
September 2012: Excerpts from IASPMUK conference paper presentation on conference theme of the relationship between music and place--highlighting Dylan fan narratives on the subject.
Bob Dylan’s song catalogue is littered with references and examples of music and place. There are several descriptive ways Dylan’s songs and performances identify time and place sources. For instance, there are the…
a) Factual—actual places, times & events—in such songs as “Oxford Town”, “Highway 51”, “1913 Massacre”, “Dusty Old Fairgrounds”, where the music and lyrics are describing and assigned to a particular place and time, often describing or including a particular event that was, or is still happening, or a particular person that the song appears to be sung to/about—e.g. a former girl-friend and the fond memories of a place Dylan live/grew up in, as in the song, “Girl from the North Country”. This particular song obviously spoke to Paul, a Dylan fan from Birmingham, who wrote,
The song spoke of a world away from my life on a council estate in Birmingham. The standout track for me then and now was “Girl from the North Country”-- it had a wistful romantic quality that fed my adolescent dreams, and still does. – Peter, UK
Dylan’s catalogue also includes many…
b) Allegorical songs, which use a lot of imagery and references to people and places that are not necessarily physically located or tangible in a geographical place or form, but those that can, nevertheless, certainly be ‘imagined’, experienced and seen clearly by fans, ‘through the smokescreens of the mind” (to use a Dylan song-phrase). Here, songs such as “Desolation Row”, “Gates of Eden”, and the places, characters and symbolisms heavily used in “Highway 61” or “Visions of Johanna”. Relating to these type of songs, Stu, in the US, shared,
Hearing [that song-VOJ] after all those years, I was instantly back to my bedroom at 17, seeing the way the afternoon light poured in, feeling the fabric of the shirt I always used to wear against my arms, the fabric on my hands, the stress on my chest. It wasn’t just the place that it took me back to, but the moment in time. Dylan’s music will ALWAYS do that to me, I suspect. It was/is just too big a part of my life at too important a time for the visceral memories to ever go away. – Karl, USA
c) Many of Dylan’s best-loved songs are those that tell a story where, again, geography and locale are sung ‘narratively’ and where specific people, experiences or events are placed. Here songs such as, “Positively 4th Street”, “Shelter from the Storm”, “Like A Rolling Stone”, “Tangled Up In Blue”, “Romance in Durango”, come to mind. These songs are usually identified and appropriated by the fans themselves as very ‘personal’ and ‘relatable’ songs. In other words, a Dylan fan can relate ‘Positively 4th Street’ to the time they were in such a place, or when they were treated ‘badly’ as the lyrics ‘indignantly’ describe in that particular song.
These song identifiers and signifiers, together with the feelings and emotions in Dylan’s voice, as experienced by the fans, make the places, characters and events in Dylan’s songs to be very real, tangible and identifiable. The songs ‘speak’ to the fans in an emotionally-charged and highly personal way and are often appropriated directly into each fan’s own everyday life-context and personal life-experiences, even fantasies, wishes, desires, etc., --which, again makes Bob’s words and songs very meaningful on an individual level.
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The transcendent relationship between music and place is nothing new. The meanings and experiences people accredit to music and sound are deeply rooted in place. The world over, humanity is a truly “musical species” and, by all accounts, we’re hard-wired to sound wherever we go (Levitin, 2007). Thus, music not only fills time and space but, in many ways, shapes space and time. The musical aura of a place seems to even affect/change our own human perspectives. As one Dylan fan recalls,
A key memory I have: that same day, Christmas, riding across the freeway en route to my grandmother's house in Wilmington, California, watching the high-tension towers and long fields of high grass alongside the road streaming by while taking in Bob Dylan's Dream, and Hard Rain etc. for the first time. That whole area of land to the side of the freeway is particularly removed from specific significations of modern civilization, and so there was a sort of ‘enrapturing’ sense of timelessness at work -- hearing the songs and seeing that same world outside the window. – Charlie, USA
The musical experience is not only an inner, cognitive phenomenon it is also a social and cultural one. Music has been researched as a key cultural practice in the building of collective identities and a genre offering a very particular experience of belonging (Stokes 1994). Engendering both personal and collective emotions, music can thus enable us to identify ourselves and relate to one another, as this Spanish fan conveys his experience as a member of Dylan’s online community;
The Dylanistas I have met all around the world in front of the venues have become dear friends of mine. I like the feeling of community Dylan fans - it is a little like a family with all the associated ups and downs! When you are with a fellow Dylan fan, communication flows. We understand each other. Connected via the world-wide-web, we meet in places like "Expecting Rain", "The Never-ending Pool", "Bob Links", "Facebook" and "Bob Dylan.com" — And, meeting means always discussions, sharing emotions and much more! - Carlos, Madrid
Many of the fan stories and responses I have received describe how, when & where they first heard, or ’met’ Bob—and that ‘special’ musical experience, in time and place, is deeply embedded and appropriated in their amygdalas. The same neurotransmitters fire for fans attending live-concerts and/or when experiencing significant, emotional, personal life-experiences or changes. Bob’s music has often inspired, illuminated and meant something very special and personal to the individual fan, often being a 'special moment' in their life at that time and place. (Again, showing a powerful relationship and affect of music and place.) As Danielle from Denmark shares her story, quoting a verse from Dylan’s song, “Shelter from the Storm”;
“I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give ya’, shelter from the storm”
Well--This was my life and feeling after my divorce!—It was truly “Blood on the Tracks” for me. If it hadn’t been for Bob’s music and the support of a few true friends, I don’t think I would actually be here today—I was so down and depressed…Bob’s music gave me the strength to ‘keep on keepin on’…
...Music is very much related to as the soundtrack of a personal life-experience, profoundly affecting how one feels about and/or relates to a person or a place. This is certainly true of Dylan’s music and the testimony of many of his fans the world over. —So, yes, from the Dylan fans I’ve heard from in my research, venue and setting are musically significant, meaningful and influential. (BW)
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a) Factual—actual places, times & events—in such songs as “Oxford Town”, “Highway 51”, “1913 Massacre”, “Dusty Old Fairgrounds”, where the music and lyrics are describing and assigned to a particular place and time, often describing or including a particular event that was, or is still happening, or a particular person that the song appears to be sung to/about—e.g. a former girl-friend and the fond memories of a place Dylan live/grew up in, as in the song, “Girl from the North Country”. This particular song obviously spoke to Paul, a Dylan fan from Birmingham, who wrote,
The song spoke of a world away from my life on a council estate in Birmingham. The standout track for me then and now was “Girl from the North Country”-- it had a wistful romantic quality that fed my adolescent dreams, and still does. – Peter, UK
Dylan’s catalogue also includes many…
b) Allegorical songs, which use a lot of imagery and references to people and places that are not necessarily physically located or tangible in a geographical place or form, but those that can, nevertheless, certainly be ‘imagined’, experienced and seen clearly by fans, ‘through the smokescreens of the mind” (to use a Dylan song-phrase). Here, songs such as “Desolation Row”, “Gates of Eden”, and the places, characters and symbolisms heavily used in “Highway 61” or “Visions of Johanna”. Relating to these type of songs, Stu, in the US, shared,
Hearing [that song-VOJ] after all those years, I was instantly back to my bedroom at 17, seeing the way the afternoon light poured in, feeling the fabric of the shirt I always used to wear against my arms, the fabric on my hands, the stress on my chest. It wasn’t just the place that it took me back to, but the moment in time. Dylan’s music will ALWAYS do that to me, I suspect. It was/is just too big a part of my life at too important a time for the visceral memories to ever go away. – Karl, USA
c) Many of Dylan’s best-loved songs are those that tell a story where, again, geography and locale are sung ‘narratively’ and where specific people, experiences or events are placed. Here songs such as, “Positively 4th Street”, “Shelter from the Storm”, “Like A Rolling Stone”, “Tangled Up In Blue”, “Romance in Durango”, come to mind. These songs are usually identified and appropriated by the fans themselves as very ‘personal’ and ‘relatable’ songs. In other words, a Dylan fan can relate ‘Positively 4th Street’ to the time they were in such a place, or when they were treated ‘badly’ as the lyrics ‘indignantly’ describe in that particular song.
These song identifiers and signifiers, together with the feelings and emotions in Dylan’s voice, as experienced by the fans, make the places, characters and events in Dylan’s songs to be very real, tangible and identifiable. The songs ‘speak’ to the fans in an emotionally-charged and highly personal way and are often appropriated directly into each fan’s own everyday life-context and personal life-experiences, even fantasies, wishes, desires, etc., --which, again makes Bob’s words and songs very meaningful on an individual level.
+++
The transcendent relationship between music and place is nothing new. The meanings and experiences people accredit to music and sound are deeply rooted in place. The world over, humanity is a truly “musical species” and, by all accounts, we’re hard-wired to sound wherever we go (Levitin, 2007). Thus, music not only fills time and space but, in many ways, shapes space and time. The musical aura of a place seems to even affect/change our own human perspectives. As one Dylan fan recalls,
A key memory I have: that same day, Christmas, riding across the freeway en route to my grandmother's house in Wilmington, California, watching the high-tension towers and long fields of high grass alongside the road streaming by while taking in Bob Dylan's Dream, and Hard Rain etc. for the first time. That whole area of land to the side of the freeway is particularly removed from specific significations of modern civilization, and so there was a sort of ‘enrapturing’ sense of timelessness at work -- hearing the songs and seeing that same world outside the window. – Charlie, USA
The musical experience is not only an inner, cognitive phenomenon it is also a social and cultural one. Music has been researched as a key cultural practice in the building of collective identities and a genre offering a very particular experience of belonging (Stokes 1994). Engendering both personal and collective emotions, music can thus enable us to identify ourselves and relate to one another, as this Spanish fan conveys his experience as a member of Dylan’s online community;
The Dylanistas I have met all around the world in front of the venues have become dear friends of mine. I like the feeling of community Dylan fans - it is a little like a family with all the associated ups and downs! When you are with a fellow Dylan fan, communication flows. We understand each other. Connected via the world-wide-web, we meet in places like "Expecting Rain", "The Never-ending Pool", "Bob Links", "Facebook" and "Bob Dylan.com" — And, meeting means always discussions, sharing emotions and much more! - Carlos, Madrid
Many of the fan stories and responses I have received describe how, when & where they first heard, or ’met’ Bob—and that ‘special’ musical experience, in time and place, is deeply embedded and appropriated in their amygdalas. The same neurotransmitters fire for fans attending live-concerts and/or when experiencing significant, emotional, personal life-experiences or changes. Bob’s music has often inspired, illuminated and meant something very special and personal to the individual fan, often being a 'special moment' in their life at that time and place. (Again, showing a powerful relationship and affect of music and place.) As Danielle from Denmark shares her story, quoting a verse from Dylan’s song, “Shelter from the Storm”;
“I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give ya’, shelter from the storm”
Well--This was my life and feeling after my divorce!—It was truly “Blood on the Tracks” for me. If it hadn’t been for Bob’s music and the support of a few true friends, I don’t think I would actually be here today—I was so down and depressed…Bob’s music gave me the strength to ‘keep on keepin on’…
...Music is very much related to as the soundtrack of a personal life-experience, profoundly affecting how one feels about and/or relates to a person or a place. This is certainly true of Dylan’s music and the testimony of many of his fans the world over. —So, yes, from the Dylan fans I’ve heard from in my research, venue and setting are musically significant, meaningful and influential. (BW)
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July 2012: Online fans & followers - the emotional attachment and connection.
As is also well-known by Bob Dylan fans and followers around the world, there are literally scores of dedicated website pages, blogs and forums chronicling Bob and his musical journey/ history. These Dylan fan sites are dynamic hubs of fan-activity with literally thousands and thousands of members who participate in and contribute to the content of these sites, through sharing their fandom via the online forums, discussion groups, music downloads, even trivia games, all related to their favourite topic—their ‘idol’, ‘friend’, ‘lover’ ‘legendary singer/song-writer’—"Bob". (Dylan may not fit the usual mainstream popular culture 'celebrity' profile but he certainly is a ‘luminary’ to his many online fans. The Expecting Rain (www.expectingrain.com) fan-site alone has logged more than a million posts related to Dylan on its online forum!) These fan narratives are, indeed, valuable cultural artefacts, textually ‘rich’, plus available and archived research resources—and these portals of fandom allow access to an articulation of Dylan through the perceptions of his fans, many of whom have been fans for more than fifty years!
I personally valued and respected these active online fans and networks and so, in order to contact and communicate with as many active and participatory online Dylan fans as possible, I launched this research website in April, 2011. In the first six months of online presence I had received over 5,000 unique web visitors to the website, from 65 countries (1,200 cities/towns) and 54 different language areas around the world—all impassioned Bob Dylan fans! This was more than I had expected. Five hundred fan respondents sent me 1,500 pages of scripts (approx. 250,000 written words) on what Bob Dylan and his music personally means to them. -- I'd say Dylan fans are certainly enthusiastic and passionate about Bob and his music! My very first research response was from a fan in Australia who is writing his own personal life-story, chapter-by-chapter, aligning and reflecting his life as a fan together with Bob’s life and musical journey over the past 42 years—that’s 42 chapters of writing! This project is just one robust example of how much Dylan and his music mean to his fans. I have also received many personal emails from Dylan fans around the world, which encouraged me that, perhaps, the sharing of perspectives from the fans was indeed of interest to the fans themselves. Ivy, a long-term fan from the USA wrote:
Great idea, man! It’s really all about the heart, yours and his! And you can't leave the heart out of life or it all becomes pointless cardboard. It’s difficult for the academic status quo to accept non-quantifying data as totally valid. I am glad to see someone approach the study of Dylan fandom. As you probably already know, Bobcats are different than the fans of others…Bob makes us think, way more than a lot of people want to. I first heard him in '63 and that was it, I never looked back. He's been my lifeline in the midst of personal crises, and he brings me happiness. Wishing you great success with this project! I would really like to read it when you get it finished. Yours in Bob, Ivy.
Like Ivy, many fans told me how Dylan’s music has been an inspiration and a personal life-line and touchstone for them in many of life’s more difficult circumstances—from relationship problems and personal struggles they had, to the inspiration and inward strength they experienced through Bob’s lyrics, vocal delivery and performance of his songs. The following sections of fan extracts offer succinct samples of some of the fan narratives I have received over the past year and a half, highlighting several prevalent and recurrent topics and themes that have emerged from my research:
Bob’s music, lyrics, vocal delivery, the much-valued ‘bootlegs’ and his live-concert performances are always lively and core, primary topics of discussion and opinion amongst online and offline fans who feel very strongly about Dylan’s music. For them, Dylan’s music and artistic creativity is a supreme and distinct ‘existential experience’ and holds an empowered, even ‘hallowed’ place in their hearts and minds, which they communicate clearly in their narratives.
Singing really is about communicating - delivering feeling to words via melody and phrasing. This is why people all over the world who don't even speak English as a first language "get" Bob - he is still delivering the song feeling to their hearts, touching souls - regardless of the words. He's intense and burning. At his best its like he is channelling something beyond him! --Magic stuff! – Gerry, USA
Bob Dylan has a most beautiful voice! In the oral tradition of story telling, he effectively utilizes the multiplicitous, semi-autobiographical masking of reality in role-playing and reinvention. Dylan crosses genres with ease and his voice, for me, is the key. When he is at the top of his game, there is a fire and power in the way Dylan sings that is electrifying and moving beyond words. I think the connectivity of his voice could be why people sometimes feel like they know him. – Tina, Canada
I first came to be aware of Bob Dylan around 1968, when I was just 16 or 17 and my cousin introduced me to “The Freewheelin` Bob Dylan” album and especially the song “Blowin` in the wind.” Now, when I heard that for the first time it really ‘blew me away’. I felt I never heard anything like that before! Bob`s acoustic guitar playing, his wailing harmonica and especially his expressive voice gave me the shivers! Right from the beginning I felt a strong attachment to him and that attachment has remained with me until today. His lyrics, his music, his voice, his songs always meant a lot for me throughout my whole life. It`s like “soul speaking to soul.” – Edward, Austria
From a month after I turned 18 to a month before I turned 21 (formative years, at least according to American popular culture), I followed the Bob Dylan (NET) tour around the country. Not every show, of course, I’m not rich, but a sizeable chunk of shows in nearly every state, certainly every time zone. I met nearly every type of fan, from some of the absolute nicest people on Earth who’d give you their last penny, straight through to some people I’d rather not mention. I personally put over 100,000 miles on my (new-ish) car. – John, USA
Many Dylan fans also describe how they have been ‘transformed’ and ‘transported’ in some way by their particular musical experience with Bob’s songs and the ‘connections’ made with the music through attending one of his live-concerts and/or listening to his recorded songs (often over and over again). In their own highly personal way, the fans identify strongly with the songs and this emotional musical experience ‘moves’ and affects them. Their perception of who Dylan is and what he represents to them also affects their own sense of self and identity (Kotarba , 2009). As illustrated in the next fan story excerpts, individual behaviour, appropriation, attitude, and a sense of the world around them have often been channelled through this personally experienced, close emotional bond with Bob, his music, ‘style’ and perceived persona (Wohlfeil, 2011). This next excerpt from Chris is a classic example of ‘identification’ with Dylan:
I discovered Dylan in a local drugstore hangout where myself and the gang used to go after school to down fifty-cent cheeseburgers and twenty-five cent malts at the store's soda fountain. There amongst the cover shots of the Beach Boys, all of them holding onto a surfboard, there between the covers of the Coasters and Frank Sinatra was a simple album cover of a youthful looking fellow holding onto the neck of an acoustic guitar. The album was quite simply titled "Bob Dylan"… I'm now in my fifties, bald on the top and grey on the sides, but still when no one's looking, when I'm all alone, I sit in front of the bathroom mirror, corduroy cap perched high atop my head, a brown fur-lined jacket (unbuttoned at the top like his) over a yellow T-shirt, a smirk on my face and fingers wrapped tightly around the neck of my Martin as I imitate and pretend that I'm the one who "has his own special gift". --Yesssssss!—Memories of that first album cover, ‘Dylan’, in that silly looking corduroy cap and me with a smirk on my face in front of the mirror. – Chris, USA
Dylan is transformative for me. He takes me places, to other cities, to other minds. I love Blonde on Blonde because each song takes me to a new place, inside a new character. The transitions between Visions of Johanna to One of Us Must Know to I Want You to Memphis Blues Again to Just Like a Woman to – you get the picture. Dylan takes me into the minds of the characters of his songs, and as much as I love the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, the Velvet Underground, or even Robert Johnson, no one that I have ever heard can do this as well as Bob Dylan…Thanks, this was an interesting question to answer. – Scott, New Zealand
…After all these years, Dylan is still the only one I identify with, the one who makes me feel part of something, who expresses what I cannot. It’s like you’re allowed to visit his world for a while. You may live in the most pedestrian town, associate with the most non-descript people, have a dull job and no love life to speak of, but when you’re driving down the road and listening to his work you’re 'cool', you’re 'empowered' and 'energized'! – Grazia, Italy
There are, of course, numerous ways, reflections and refractions linked to the appropriations of Dylan by his many fans and followers. Apart from the recognisable musical influences and imitators of Bob and his music/art/style, for instance by other musicians, there are also other artistic refractions such as those from poets, painters, writers, etc., and these influences, inspirations and affects are often translated into everyday-life appropriations, attitudes and practises, such as music listening, reading, collecting, (online) social networking, fashion, style, spirituality and personal beliefs. — Some of these influences and refractions are apparent and recognisable in the following fan scripts.
…I think that being a Dylan fan is great because there is always so much more there to find. What I love is being able to discuss his myriad of influences with other Dylan fans who have had their worlds expanded by getting into Bob. Of course he's turned a lot of us onto artists in the genres of blues, country and gospel that we wouldn't have otherwise known but music is really just the start of it! I first became interested in Rimbaud because of Tangled Up in Blue. The first time I really delved into Picasso was because Dylan said that he was his favourite painter at some point. La Dolce Vita? I watched that because of Motorpsycho Nightmare in my mid-teens. It goes on an on. I think that Dylan fans are special - not because of who we are - but because of the dimensions of opportunity that have been opened up to us by Bob Dylan. – Juan, Brazil, South America
I bought Blond on Blond just on a whim and it changed my life. Bob became the person who understood what I was going through and who told me I wasn't alone. His lyrics challenged me to think, and the sheer power and expressiveness of his voice gave voice to my own feelings and frustrations. Since that first semester at college I have read close to 30 books about him, collected all of his records (yes even the christian trilogy), put thousands of miles on the car going to his concerts (only 6 concerts so far), and I even spent one spring break driving up to Hibbing, Minnesota so that I could see his house and tour his high school. Bob is a role model for doing things in life to please yourself, not to ‘kiss ass’. He taught me that it was okay to dance beneath a diamond sky with ‘one hand waving free’. He taught me what confidence is. He taught me to live my life the way I wanted. I admire his refusal to "play the game" all these years and I am so proud to be a Minnesotan like him. – Sweet Marie, USA
…I felt as if Dylan’s recent renaissance coincided with my deep involvement with him. I also began relating Dylan themes into situations in my own life. I started to use them as my life’s road map—or, perhaps they started to ‘guide’ me? … On September 10th 2001, I was anticipating Dylan’s next album, Love and Theft. We know what happened the next day. The sound of this album serves as the soundtrack of those sad times and the lyrics seemed to describe the day’s events. This was profound to me. In 2004, I moved to a small rural town, Dylan answered this by playing in the town I drove to get my groceries, on my birthday. In 2006, the very week Modern Times was released I took a risk and ventured into business ownership. That album became the soundtrack to my own Modern Times as I kicked the Workingman’s Blues. Soon, a fellow Dylan fan, and I, decided to get married. Surprisingly, the week before we embarked on a life of marriage together, Dylan released an album titled Together through Life. How did he know we wondered? Dylan continued playing to me on my Halloween birthdays throughout the course of the decade. The night our first child was born Bob played Happy Birthday in his encore set…Now, 19 years after my first Dylan show. I have amassed hundreds of tapes and Cd’s, attended 80 shows in 12 states, eight on my birthday and 26 with my wife. I have met two of my best friends at Dylan shows and seen a lot of the American Middle West because of him. You name the album I will tell you the time of my life that it represents. But most of all, it's like Bob has been alongside me every step of the way during my adult life. So what does Bob Dylan mean to me, well, it’s personal. – Corrina, USA
To be continued:
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"The Phenomenon of Bob Dylan Fans and Followers: Chronicles of Fandom, Musicality, Identity and Everyday Life"
My research on Dylan fans and followers explores and highlights the subjective perspectives, emotional affects and lived-experiences of the fans themselves. I am interested in the fan’s unique ‘life-world’ and narrative and his/her personal practice of fandom, not only as an explicit area of research but also as essential components to the methodology of my fan research.
Drawing from online fan narratives, interviews, life-stories and interdisciplinary perspectives, this insider’s view of fan culture highlights and illuminates the practice of Dylan fans through their own biographical voices. My paper describes fandom in terms of what is important to the fans themselves—“illuminating the experiences of others in their own terms” (Jensen, 1992), and exemplifies fans, “not as problems, theories or data but as real people trying to make sense of their lives in the early 21st-century…” (Cavicchi, 1997).
The passion, emotional attachment and personal investment made by many Dylan fans in Dylan’s music, art and perceived persona are often further appropriated again by the fans into their own particular ways of thinking, feeling and believing, as well as making sense of relationships, place, identity, values, and even life-events. By elaborating and giving recognition to the expressions and lived fan-experiences of the Dylan fans themselves, which are, for them, “the core, ‘real-life’ frameworks and … positions through which their lived-realities are spoken“ (McRobbie, 1994), I also argue that the fan narratives not only intimately display a clear and critical account of the ‘real-life’ experience of being a Dylan fan but also stress the emotional and ‘affective intensity’ (Grossberg, 1992) that lies at the heart of what it actually means to be a fan, opening up discussion to the areas of the subject and the subjectivity as well as heightening the sensibilities of identity, affect, relationship, belonging, meaning, values and knowledge as related to the fan experience.
To be continued....
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Note: I am indebted to the active members of the 'Expecting Rain' Dylan Fan site and online forum. The discussions, dialogue, music reviews, and even online ‘banter’ have all been part of the experience of being an ER member. I have learned a lot about Dylan, his fans and followers through reading literally hundreds of online forum postings and communicating with many online fans via personal emails. The identities/names of the fan participants have been changed for confidentiality reasons. (BW)
I personally valued and respected these active online fans and networks and so, in order to contact and communicate with as many active and participatory online Dylan fans as possible, I launched this research website in April, 2011. In the first six months of online presence I had received over 5,000 unique web visitors to the website, from 65 countries (1,200 cities/towns) and 54 different language areas around the world—all impassioned Bob Dylan fans! This was more than I had expected. Five hundred fan respondents sent me 1,500 pages of scripts (approx. 250,000 written words) on what Bob Dylan and his music personally means to them. -- I'd say Dylan fans are certainly enthusiastic and passionate about Bob and his music! My very first research response was from a fan in Australia who is writing his own personal life-story, chapter-by-chapter, aligning and reflecting his life as a fan together with Bob’s life and musical journey over the past 42 years—that’s 42 chapters of writing! This project is just one robust example of how much Dylan and his music mean to his fans. I have also received many personal emails from Dylan fans around the world, which encouraged me that, perhaps, the sharing of perspectives from the fans was indeed of interest to the fans themselves. Ivy, a long-term fan from the USA wrote:
Great idea, man! It’s really all about the heart, yours and his! And you can't leave the heart out of life or it all becomes pointless cardboard. It’s difficult for the academic status quo to accept non-quantifying data as totally valid. I am glad to see someone approach the study of Dylan fandom. As you probably already know, Bobcats are different than the fans of others…Bob makes us think, way more than a lot of people want to. I first heard him in '63 and that was it, I never looked back. He's been my lifeline in the midst of personal crises, and he brings me happiness. Wishing you great success with this project! I would really like to read it when you get it finished. Yours in Bob, Ivy.
Like Ivy, many fans told me how Dylan’s music has been an inspiration and a personal life-line and touchstone for them in many of life’s more difficult circumstances—from relationship problems and personal struggles they had, to the inspiration and inward strength they experienced through Bob’s lyrics, vocal delivery and performance of his songs. The following sections of fan extracts offer succinct samples of some of the fan narratives I have received over the past year and a half, highlighting several prevalent and recurrent topics and themes that have emerged from my research:
Bob’s music, lyrics, vocal delivery, the much-valued ‘bootlegs’ and his live-concert performances are always lively and core, primary topics of discussion and opinion amongst online and offline fans who feel very strongly about Dylan’s music. For them, Dylan’s music and artistic creativity is a supreme and distinct ‘existential experience’ and holds an empowered, even ‘hallowed’ place in their hearts and minds, which they communicate clearly in their narratives.
Singing really is about communicating - delivering feeling to words via melody and phrasing. This is why people all over the world who don't even speak English as a first language "get" Bob - he is still delivering the song feeling to their hearts, touching souls - regardless of the words. He's intense and burning. At his best its like he is channelling something beyond him! --Magic stuff! – Gerry, USA
Bob Dylan has a most beautiful voice! In the oral tradition of story telling, he effectively utilizes the multiplicitous, semi-autobiographical masking of reality in role-playing and reinvention. Dylan crosses genres with ease and his voice, for me, is the key. When he is at the top of his game, there is a fire and power in the way Dylan sings that is electrifying and moving beyond words. I think the connectivity of his voice could be why people sometimes feel like they know him. – Tina, Canada
I first came to be aware of Bob Dylan around 1968, when I was just 16 or 17 and my cousin introduced me to “The Freewheelin` Bob Dylan” album and especially the song “Blowin` in the wind.” Now, when I heard that for the first time it really ‘blew me away’. I felt I never heard anything like that before! Bob`s acoustic guitar playing, his wailing harmonica and especially his expressive voice gave me the shivers! Right from the beginning I felt a strong attachment to him and that attachment has remained with me until today. His lyrics, his music, his voice, his songs always meant a lot for me throughout my whole life. It`s like “soul speaking to soul.” – Edward, Austria
From a month after I turned 18 to a month before I turned 21 (formative years, at least according to American popular culture), I followed the Bob Dylan (NET) tour around the country. Not every show, of course, I’m not rich, but a sizeable chunk of shows in nearly every state, certainly every time zone. I met nearly every type of fan, from some of the absolute nicest people on Earth who’d give you their last penny, straight through to some people I’d rather not mention. I personally put over 100,000 miles on my (new-ish) car. – John, USA
Many Dylan fans also describe how they have been ‘transformed’ and ‘transported’ in some way by their particular musical experience with Bob’s songs and the ‘connections’ made with the music through attending one of his live-concerts and/or listening to his recorded songs (often over and over again). In their own highly personal way, the fans identify strongly with the songs and this emotional musical experience ‘moves’ and affects them. Their perception of who Dylan is and what he represents to them also affects their own sense of self and identity (Kotarba , 2009). As illustrated in the next fan story excerpts, individual behaviour, appropriation, attitude, and a sense of the world around them have often been channelled through this personally experienced, close emotional bond with Bob, his music, ‘style’ and perceived persona (Wohlfeil, 2011). This next excerpt from Chris is a classic example of ‘identification’ with Dylan:
I discovered Dylan in a local drugstore hangout where myself and the gang used to go after school to down fifty-cent cheeseburgers and twenty-five cent malts at the store's soda fountain. There amongst the cover shots of the Beach Boys, all of them holding onto a surfboard, there between the covers of the Coasters and Frank Sinatra was a simple album cover of a youthful looking fellow holding onto the neck of an acoustic guitar. The album was quite simply titled "Bob Dylan"… I'm now in my fifties, bald on the top and grey on the sides, but still when no one's looking, when I'm all alone, I sit in front of the bathroom mirror, corduroy cap perched high atop my head, a brown fur-lined jacket (unbuttoned at the top like his) over a yellow T-shirt, a smirk on my face and fingers wrapped tightly around the neck of my Martin as I imitate and pretend that I'm the one who "has his own special gift". --Yesssssss!—Memories of that first album cover, ‘Dylan’, in that silly looking corduroy cap and me with a smirk on my face in front of the mirror. – Chris, USA
Dylan is transformative for me. He takes me places, to other cities, to other minds. I love Blonde on Blonde because each song takes me to a new place, inside a new character. The transitions between Visions of Johanna to One of Us Must Know to I Want You to Memphis Blues Again to Just Like a Woman to – you get the picture. Dylan takes me into the minds of the characters of his songs, and as much as I love the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, the Velvet Underground, or even Robert Johnson, no one that I have ever heard can do this as well as Bob Dylan…Thanks, this was an interesting question to answer. – Scott, New Zealand
…After all these years, Dylan is still the only one I identify with, the one who makes me feel part of something, who expresses what I cannot. It’s like you’re allowed to visit his world for a while. You may live in the most pedestrian town, associate with the most non-descript people, have a dull job and no love life to speak of, but when you’re driving down the road and listening to his work you’re 'cool', you’re 'empowered' and 'energized'! – Grazia, Italy
There are, of course, numerous ways, reflections and refractions linked to the appropriations of Dylan by his many fans and followers. Apart from the recognisable musical influences and imitators of Bob and his music/art/style, for instance by other musicians, there are also other artistic refractions such as those from poets, painters, writers, etc., and these influences, inspirations and affects are often translated into everyday-life appropriations, attitudes and practises, such as music listening, reading, collecting, (online) social networking, fashion, style, spirituality and personal beliefs. — Some of these influences and refractions are apparent and recognisable in the following fan scripts.
…I think that being a Dylan fan is great because there is always so much more there to find. What I love is being able to discuss his myriad of influences with other Dylan fans who have had their worlds expanded by getting into Bob. Of course he's turned a lot of us onto artists in the genres of blues, country and gospel that we wouldn't have otherwise known but music is really just the start of it! I first became interested in Rimbaud because of Tangled Up in Blue. The first time I really delved into Picasso was because Dylan said that he was his favourite painter at some point. La Dolce Vita? I watched that because of Motorpsycho Nightmare in my mid-teens. It goes on an on. I think that Dylan fans are special - not because of who we are - but because of the dimensions of opportunity that have been opened up to us by Bob Dylan. – Juan, Brazil, South America
I bought Blond on Blond just on a whim and it changed my life. Bob became the person who understood what I was going through and who told me I wasn't alone. His lyrics challenged me to think, and the sheer power and expressiveness of his voice gave voice to my own feelings and frustrations. Since that first semester at college I have read close to 30 books about him, collected all of his records (yes even the christian trilogy), put thousands of miles on the car going to his concerts (only 6 concerts so far), and I even spent one spring break driving up to Hibbing, Minnesota so that I could see his house and tour his high school. Bob is a role model for doing things in life to please yourself, not to ‘kiss ass’. He taught me that it was okay to dance beneath a diamond sky with ‘one hand waving free’. He taught me what confidence is. He taught me to live my life the way I wanted. I admire his refusal to "play the game" all these years and I am so proud to be a Minnesotan like him. – Sweet Marie, USA
…I felt as if Dylan’s recent renaissance coincided with my deep involvement with him. I also began relating Dylan themes into situations in my own life. I started to use them as my life’s road map—or, perhaps they started to ‘guide’ me? … On September 10th 2001, I was anticipating Dylan’s next album, Love and Theft. We know what happened the next day. The sound of this album serves as the soundtrack of those sad times and the lyrics seemed to describe the day’s events. This was profound to me. In 2004, I moved to a small rural town, Dylan answered this by playing in the town I drove to get my groceries, on my birthday. In 2006, the very week Modern Times was released I took a risk and ventured into business ownership. That album became the soundtrack to my own Modern Times as I kicked the Workingman’s Blues. Soon, a fellow Dylan fan, and I, decided to get married. Surprisingly, the week before we embarked on a life of marriage together, Dylan released an album titled Together through Life. How did he know we wondered? Dylan continued playing to me on my Halloween birthdays throughout the course of the decade. The night our first child was born Bob played Happy Birthday in his encore set…Now, 19 years after my first Dylan show. I have amassed hundreds of tapes and Cd’s, attended 80 shows in 12 states, eight on my birthday and 26 with my wife. I have met two of my best friends at Dylan shows and seen a lot of the American Middle West because of him. You name the album I will tell you the time of my life that it represents. But most of all, it's like Bob has been alongside me every step of the way during my adult life. So what does Bob Dylan mean to me, well, it’s personal. – Corrina, USA
To be continued:
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"The Phenomenon of Bob Dylan Fans and Followers: Chronicles of Fandom, Musicality, Identity and Everyday Life"
My research on Dylan fans and followers explores and highlights the subjective perspectives, emotional affects and lived-experiences of the fans themselves. I am interested in the fan’s unique ‘life-world’ and narrative and his/her personal practice of fandom, not only as an explicit area of research but also as essential components to the methodology of my fan research.
Drawing from online fan narratives, interviews, life-stories and interdisciplinary perspectives, this insider’s view of fan culture highlights and illuminates the practice of Dylan fans through their own biographical voices. My paper describes fandom in terms of what is important to the fans themselves—“illuminating the experiences of others in their own terms” (Jensen, 1992), and exemplifies fans, “not as problems, theories or data but as real people trying to make sense of their lives in the early 21st-century…” (Cavicchi, 1997).
The passion, emotional attachment and personal investment made by many Dylan fans in Dylan’s music, art and perceived persona are often further appropriated again by the fans into their own particular ways of thinking, feeling and believing, as well as making sense of relationships, place, identity, values, and even life-events. By elaborating and giving recognition to the expressions and lived fan-experiences of the Dylan fans themselves, which are, for them, “the core, ‘real-life’ frameworks and … positions through which their lived-realities are spoken“ (McRobbie, 1994), I also argue that the fan narratives not only intimately display a clear and critical account of the ‘real-life’ experience of being a Dylan fan but also stress the emotional and ‘affective intensity’ (Grossberg, 1992) that lies at the heart of what it actually means to be a fan, opening up discussion to the areas of the subject and the subjectivity as well as heightening the sensibilities of identity, affect, relationship, belonging, meaning, values and knowledge as related to the fan experience.
To be continued....
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Note: I am indebted to the active members of the 'Expecting Rain' Dylan Fan site and online forum. The discussions, dialogue, music reviews, and even online ‘banter’ have all been part of the experience of being an ER member. I have learned a lot about Dylan, his fans and followers through reading literally hundreds of online forum postings and communicating with many online fans via personal emails. The identities/names of the fan participants have been changed for confidentiality reasons. (BW)
