Definitely Dylan

In his memoir, Chronicles Volume One (2004), Bob Dylan reveals that he suffered a severe hand injury in the late 1980s. Little is known about the circumstances of his incident that Bob Dylan seems to ascribe a symbolic meaning. One of our listeners was intrigued and so were we, so let's talk about it.
The Fred Bals article we refer to a few times can be found here.
You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.
Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.
Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.
Rebecca’s bootleg version is here.

Laura talks to Graley Herren about his new book, Dylan in Cincinnati, the challenges of writing about performance, and our shared love for Paul Williams.
Order his new book Dylan in Cincinnati here.
His book Dreams and Dialogues in Dylan’s "Time Out of Mind" can be found here.
Some essays of his that I love and mention in the episode:
"Young Goodman Dylan: Chronicles at the Crossroads”
"Gender Performance in Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song"
“Dylan and the Kennedy Assassination”
For more, head to his Substack Shadow Chasing.

You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.
Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

In today’s Bob Dylan Hotline we talk about Bob Dylan and gospel music – the ties he had to the genre before his conversion to Christianity, and the enduring impact it had in the decades that followed.
Check out the trailer for the documentary Say Amen, Somebody here.
You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.
Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.
Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.
Rebecca’s bootleg version is here.

Happy Equinox! What better day to look back on summer and that's exactly what we're doing in this conversation. What do you think? What are your favourite Bob Dylan summer songs? Or do you associate his music with another season entirely?
And of course we had to talk about the new upcoming Rolling Thunder Live 1976 box set!
One correction: Fort Collins is in COLORADO, I have no idea why I said Florida. I’m sorry about that.
You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.
Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.
Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.
Rebecca’s bootleg version is here.

In this episode of the Bob Dylan Hotline, we give our opinion on Bob Dylan ~as women~. Is that different from other episodes, you might ask? Not really, but this time we're talking about talking about Bob Dylan as women. The conversation took us in many different directions because we had a lot to say.
You can find our earlier conversation on Women and Dylan here.
A few notes:
00:18 - A note on the almost impossible popularity of Dolly Parton. The phenomenon of a woman becoming very popular very quickly until the public turns on her and starts tearing her down has now been dubbed as “getting womaned”, since it rarely happens to men to this extent.
00:22 - There are luckily a few examples for “kookie” women, from Björk to Kate Bush to Erykah Badu to name just a few, but I think Rebecca’s point was more regarding how willing the public is to accept that kookiness as part of Bob Dylan's character, while female artists are more likely to be reduced to their kookiness.
00:35 - I’m really interested in how some of Dylan’s early songs challenge the conventional gender dynamic. “It Ain’t Me Babe” is a rejection of romantic stereotypes, but songs like “Hero Blues” and “John Brown” are about women encouraging a harmful masculinity rooted in violence and aggression. For more on this, check out my talk on Bob Dylan’s Heroic Masculinity here.
00:51 - In this context, also consider the re-written lyrics to “To Be Alone With You”, where he sings about wishing to be back in his “true love’s arms / She likes older men, they can’t resist her charms”. Here he directly writes from the place of an “older man”. The same is true for “Spirit on the Water” where he resist the accusation that he’s “over the hill” or past his prime and insists that, given a chance, he’s show her a “whoppin’ good time”.

You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.
Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.
Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.
Rebecca’s bootleg version is here.