Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet

Prophet, Mystic, Poet is loaded with revelations and is essential reading for any serious Bob Dylan fan.

One of the reasons Bob Dylan’s entire body of work has been the subject of discussion for what is fast approaching five decades is that his work is loaded with references, musical, literary, to film, history and religion. To like or appreciate Bob Dylan one doesn’t necessarily have to know about these references — some may simply view him as another folk or rock singer. However, to understand what Bob Dylan has been saying in his music all along, those references take things to a whole other level, or to quote Joan Baez in the Martin Scorcese documentary, No Direction Home, “He goes way deep.”

Prophet, Mystic, Poet is neither biography or totally song analysis, but rather a little bit of both. Rogovoy makes no claim, in fact disavows any claim, to this being the definitive word. Instead he uses the biographical aspects of Dylan’s life, from his childhood on up, which for the most part are fairly well known facts (especially to Dylan fans) to set the tone or more accurately the stage for why certain songs may have been written at a specific time.

The book for the most part is written chronologically though occasionally skips forward and back, particularly when Rogovoy wants to point out how a song foretold an incident that would happen later in Dylan’s life, or how a song would forecast a later song. As the book goes on, he also shows how later songs point back to earlier songs. For the most part Rogovoy does this successfully. I say for the most part because a lot of the time, when you try to tie a specific Dylan song particularly to a specific person (or in some cases a specific incident), you’re on dangerous ground. However, Rogovoy is well aware of this and usually qualifies such connections as speculation.

However, sometimes when something is revealed, and it is so clear cut, it becomes evident that no other interpretation makes any sense. Case in point and what I am about to describe is gone into in this book. Three decades ago, (and right about this time of year), I decided to read The Bible cover to cover beginning to end. While reading Leviticus, in The Blessings of Obedience, I came across the following:

I will make your heaven like iron. (Leviticus: 26:19)

Though you eat, you shall not be satisfied. (Leviticus: 26:26)

Bells went off big time because I immediately recognized variants of these as lines from the song, “I Pity The Poor Immigrant,” on John Wesley Harding, a song I’d been pondering the meaning of for 12 years, and no review, article or book on that album or Dylan that went into that song had an interpretation made any sense. It was a true revelation, and also in line with comments Dylan had made in various interviews about that album saying, “I’m not in the songs,” (which may or may not be the case with all the songs on that album), as well as the “I” is another. In the case of this song it became startlingly clear that the “I” was not Dylan, but God commanding Moses, and the Immigrant represented the Jews in the desert during Exodus. I have not been able to accept any other interpretation of the song since.

A few years later I had a similar experience. Watching The Hustler one night, Piper Laurie said to Paul Newman, “I’ve got troubles, you’ve got troubles, maybe we better leave each other alone.” I immediately recognized this as a line from “Seeing The Real You At Last” on Empire Burlesque. Ten years later, when I got in the Internet, and joined various Dylan discussion forums, I discovered that almost that entire song was composed of lines from various movies.

Prophet, Mystic, Poet is loaded with such revelations and as such is essential reading for any serious Bob Dylan fan. That said, the book is not without an agenda which is made clear from the start, which is to show not only how Judaic tradition and custom, but how much of what is commonly referred to as “The First,” or “Old Testament” informs a large part of Dylan’s work. In showing this, Rogovoy succeeds beyond admirably and does so in a more coherent fashion than any previous attempt. Many of his discoveries are not only interesting, but surprisingly mind-blowing such as linking “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window” to David, the warrior King.