Dylan searches for a new soul mate
The enigmatic singer is back on form and keeping his fans guessing with a walk-on role for diva Alicia Keys on his new album
Caspar Llewellyn Smith
Sunday July 2, 2006
The Observer
It has been five years since the release of Bob Dylan’s last album, but any notion that the 65-year-old singer might have lost touch with the contemporary world is dispelled by the first verse of ‚Modern Times‘, the opening song on his new record.
‚Thunder on the mountain, fires on the moon, There’s a ruckus in the alley and the sun will be here soon,‘ it begins, before quickly skipping to the lines ‚I was thinking about Alicia Keys, couldn’t help from crying/When she was born in Hell’s Kitchen, I was living down the line/I’m wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be/I been looking for her even clean through Tennessee.‘
It is not known whether Dylan really is a fan of the soul singer 39 years his junior – ever the enigma, he has not discussed the new record yet. But the two of them are thought to have met at the 2001 Grammy awards, when Keys was a five-times winner with her album Songs in A Minor and Dylan won Best Contemporary Folk Album with Love and Theft. Dylan also seems to have done his research – Keys was indeed raised in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York.
‚I first heard through the grapevine that he’d mentioned my name in one of his new songs,‘ Keys told The Observer, the first newspaper to hear Dylan’s album, last night.
‚I just knew somebody had to be playin‘ with me! How could such a legend know me? And bigger than that, want to write about me? I haven’t heard the song yet – it’s top secret. But I’m crazy excited about it and I’m honored to be on his mind.‘
This is not the first time Dylan has introduced real characters into his songs – 1963’s ‚I Shall Be Free‘ featured Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg and Sophia Loren – and ever since the early Sixties his lyrics have been subjected to close scrutiny.
Debates about the autobiographical and political nature of his work will be revived with the appearance of this 32nd studio album. His last, Love and Theft, was released on 11 September, 2001, and the reference on the title track of the new record to ‚all the ladies in Washington scrambling to get out of town‘ might lead some to speculate that Dylan has been brooding on the events of that fateful day. Similarly, while the title of the song ‚Workingman’s Blues‘ pays an obvious debt to Merle Haggard, with whom Dylan recently toured, and his record of that name, it’s the line ‚I got a brand new suit and brand new wife‘ that will have the gossips‘ tongues wagging in the light of Dylan’s uncertain matrimonial status. But, inevitably, the songs elude strict interpretation, and instead the listener is left to contemplate the grander themes of nature and mortality.
The new album may be Dylan’s first for half a decade, but in the interim he has starred in the film Masked and Anonymous, written the best-selling Chronicles, appeared in the Martin Scorsese documentaries devoted to his early career and is currently hosting his own show on XM satellite radio in America. Then there is his relentless touring schedule, which this week brought him to Britain for two shows in Cardiff and Bournemouth.
None of the 10 new songs from Modern Times has been played live yet, but the expectation is that this will change after the record’s release on 28 August. Dylan rehearsed at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie, upstate New York, in late January and early February, before recording the album in a Manhattan studio.
Steve Barnett, chairman of Columbia Records, said that the company was ‚approaching Modern Times as the third release in an outstanding trilogy of recorded works along with Time Out Of Mind and Love And Theft‘. The new album certainly has a similarly rootsy sound to its predecessors. Among the 10 tracks are at least three pieces that many will see as masterpieces: ‚Working Man’s Blues‘, ‚Netty Moore‘ and ‚Ain’t Talkin‘, Just Walkin‘.‘
· Caspar Llewellyn Smith is the editor of Observer Music Monthly.
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