oh mercy

Bob Dylan’s sagacity is very present in his memoir Chronicles, Volume One. I particularly liked recounting the Oh Mercy sessions with Danny Lanois, who urged Dylan to delve into weightier themes. Dylan reflects how such moments, though intense, do not define his existence in an enduring manner. He observes that today, it’s the realm of rap artists. I liked how he nonchalantly notes if Lanois fails to grasp this evolution, it’s his loss. I liked it the first time I read it but now was searching for it in order to quote that part for an upcoming article on song craft that explores unexpected narrative twists. This is how he put it, “Danny asked me who I’d been listening to recently, and I told him Ice-T. He was surprised, but he shouldn’t have been. A few years earlier, Kurtis Blow, a rapper from Brooklyn who had a hit out called “The Breaks,” had asked me to be on one of his records and he familiarized me with that stuff, Ice-T, Public Enemy, N.W.A., Run-D.M.C. These guys definitely weren’t standing around bullshitting. They were beating drums, tearing it up, hurling horses over cliffs. They were all poets and knew what was going on. Somebody different was bound to come along sooner or later who would know that world, been born and raised in it…be all of it and more. Someone with a chopped top head and a power in the community. He’d be able to balance himself on one leg on a tightrope that stretched across the universe and you’d know him when he came-there’s be only one like him. The audience would go that way, and I couldn’t blame them. The kind of music that Danny and I were making was archaic. I didn’t tell him that but that’s how I honestly felt.