When Bob Dylan Was 42

Wednesday is about books. And/or writing. Today, a short piece about a favourite Bob Dylan album. And song.

It was about five years ago now, but I started to think about the album Infidels a lot. Bob Dylan was 42 when he wrote and released it. And I guess I must have realised it when I reached that age as well. The album had been a favourite, briefly, when I was a teenager – in fact it was one of the first Dylan albums I ever heard. Some greatest hits were in the mix ahead of first hearing Infidels – but that was the first original album, the first complete set of songs I heard.

Bob Dylan had made 21 albums ahead of it, so this was no case of beginner’s luck. Some people talk about it as if it was a comeback, but he had never (really) gone away. Perhaps he took his material to some places that people weren’t as interested in, but that was either their loss or it wasn’t, it certainly was not his fault. He was just doing his job. Just as he's always done. (Doing the work).

Infidels is where he strips the artifice though. It is where he aims (right) for the heart. Twenty-one albums before it. Many of them better than albums anyone else has made. But never on any of those albums did he ever sum it up quit so simply or so brilliantly as when he said, and possibly even sung:

“Don’t fall apart on me tonight/I just don’t think that I could handle it/Don’t fall apart on me tonight/Yesterday’s just a memory/Tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be/And I need you”

That’s the heart of it all right there. Nearly the best thing he ever wrote.

And that’s saying something. Which is what Bob Dylan does almost all of the time. But mostly he does it best when no one’s looking – when fewer fans are listening. That is his sneak-attack.

Don’t fall apart on me tonight/I just don’t think that I could handle it/Don’t fall apart on me tonight/Yesterday’s just a memory/Tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be/And I need you, yeah.