The one song Bob Dylan thought should have been a movie
(Credits: Far Out / Bob Dylan Center)
The major thing all of these modern music biopics get wrong is trying to condense an artist’s life into a succinct 90-minute film.
How can the greatness of say an Elvis Presley, an Elton John or a Freddie Mercury be boiled down into an overly saturated run-through of their lives? The key moments of musical nuance are inevitably skipped, and moreover, specific albums that have shaped their careers are reduced down to chapters or even worse, an “era”.
That’s where the recent Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown seemed to differ, and gave me a surprising amount of cinematic enjoyment. In the film, it was but a slice of his career, as opposed to the whole pie, and it has the movie’s crucial space to dig into the subtlety of his early work and the subsequent turn into rock and roll in the following.
But the truth is, such is the complexity of Dylan’s work that, were a filmmaker more inclined to make something interesting and unique, they could have used one of his songs as a launch point. So dense and articulate are his lyrics that within each song are myriad avenues in which a wider, more cinematic story could be explored. And, there is one song in particular that he would give his blessing to do so.
“’Tight Connection to My Heart’ is a very visual song,” he explained, adding, “I want to make a movie out of it. I don’t think it’s going to get done. I think it’s going to go past on the way, but of all the songs I’ve ever written, that might be one of the most visual. Of all the songs I’ve written, that’s the one that’s got characters that can be identified with. Whatever the fuck that means. I don’t know, I may be trying to make it more important than it is, but I can see the people in it.”
He continued, “In most of my songs, I know who it is that I’m singing about and to. Lately, since ’78, that’s been true and hasn’t changed. The stuff before ’78, those people have kinda disappeared, ’76, ’75, ’74. If you see me live, you won’t hear me sing too many of those songs. There’s a certain area of songs, a certain period that I don’t feel that close to. Like the songs on the Desire album, that’s kind of a fog to me. But since ’78, the characters have all been extremely real and are still there. The ones I choose to talk about and relate to are the ones I find some kind of greatness in.”
It’s a shame Dylan’s social circle and memory have alluded him because in those records that preceded 1978, there are some of the most compelling characters, fit for a big-screen adaptation. ‘Girl From The North Country’ and ‘Desolation Row’ are just two songs that stick out in the mind as candidates perfect for the cinema, and ones that would easily be more compelling than the baseless biopics being churned out currently.
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