“Bob is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his
name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception.”
- - Joni Mitchell
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| Bob...before he became 'Dylan', man |
The irony was apparent to those who chose to see the rickety,
stove-piped legs that supported the façade. Here was a middle-class mid-western
Baby Boomer folky transmuting Woody
Guthrie Depression-era socialism into 1960s societal angst.
Anti-government. Anti-corporation. Anti-status quo.
However, few entertainers ever had such an intuitive gasp of
personal branding as Bob Dylan. In this pursuit, he is a genius. The untamed
hair, the defiantly off-key singing, the poison pen lyrics, the confrontational
attitude, the up-all-night pallor – Dylan created a powerful, pliable persona
that was as original as Old Glory itself, and just as American.
He made it ok for teenagers to be thoughtful, intellectual,
and skeptical. Goodbye Frankie and Annette, hello Mr. Jones and our
Sad-Eyed
Lady of the Lowlands.
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| Pre-lingerie commercial |
When he tried to shift his brand - he
lost exposure. Finally, he stopped trying. If he couldn’t grow outward, then
inward it would be. The angry teen became a millionaire hobo, the squatter’s
camp fire now a cluster of stage lights, the rail car a stretch limo with women
he would immortalize and forget.
He did a lingerie commercial as it would
strengthen, with back-handed condescension, his personal brand. He was right.
We never knew Bob because Bob didn't exist. The most
talented poseur of them all – laconic, jaded, detached, trailing in the wake of his own myth with
no direction home, like a rolling stone.
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| The Bard of Branding |
In the end a beautiful trickster, the Tambourine Man, one who sang the spell
as a generation danced around him thrice and drank the milk of paradise.