Anger is an energy. Per Johnny Rotten and Richard Meltzer, though I couldn’t recall where/when Meltzer mused on animus in rock ‘n’ roll attitude so I asked him for a steer…
I’m sure—I know—I’ve said it…and things much like it…in lots of places over the years, but I couldn’t give you a GPS on it…it’s just in multiple creases and cracks in the rock-roll road.
I’m sure I’ve said, specifically, that SECOND-PERSON HOSTILITY is an omnipresent aspect of rock all the way back to its Delta Blues origins, much deeper than anything as benign as “attitude”: I dislike, detest, abhor YOU. Add gender hostility to the package (usually, but not always, as “misogyny”) and you got one throbbing heap of reliably functional HATESTUFF.
Anger isn’t quite the same…no…but…well…good luck in your search.
The search is over! Though I wasn’t just trying to tease out quotable Meltzer. I hope, by the way (and this is on point) Meltzer will write on Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song. (He’s demurring but let me know if you want the author of The Aesthetics of Rock to take up Dylan’s Philosophy and I’ll tell him there’s a First clamor for more Meltzer.)
In the meantime…
I checked out Spotify’s list of songs Dylan talked up in Philosophy before he published the book. There are a few stiffs on the list but one track is surely up to Dylan’s history of song-catching (as well as the imperishable litany on “Murder Most Foul”). Johnny Paycheck’s “Old Violin” can’t be overpraised. (Not that Dylan doesn’t try!) It’s easy to imagine Dylan — the never-ending tourist — locked on this song by another singer who also changed his name before finding his true self on stage)[1]. (Paycheck was born Donald Eugene Lytle.) Consider “Old Violin’s” recognition scene; Paycheck has already peered at his own reflection but he takes another hard look…
So one more time, just to be sure
I said “John, where in the hell do you go from here?”
You know there wasn’t a nickel’s worth of difference when I looked in the mirror‘Cause there I was seein’ an old violin
Soon to be put away and never played againAnd just like that, it hit me
Why that old violin and I were just alike
We’d give our all to music
And soon, we’d give our life
Here’s the original:
There are a bunch of good live versions of “Old Violin.” I like this one with Merle Haggard (forgive the blurry picture):
Haggard and Paycheck had a tight connection as I learned when I was nosing around Paycheck’s catalog after being blown away by “Old Violin.” I came upon Paycheck’s fine album, Mr. Hag Told My Story.
Paycheck covers ten Haggard songs. His buddy duets on most of the tracks and Haggard’s backup group, The Strangers — what-a-fuckin’ band (hear that sax player!) — help take every song home.
Paycheck’s tribute album includes recitations where he lauds Haggard. Those verbal hugs remind me Dylan came hard at Haggard in his spiky 2015 MusiCares speech. Dylan spiced his good lessons on modern song with HATESTUFF directed at Lieber & Stoller, Ahmet Ertegun, Tom T. Hall and Haggard, who was hurt by mean Dylan, though he played it off. (Someone asked Haggard what was behind Dylan’s dis. “Dementia,” said Hag.) A recent biography of Haggard traces Dylan’s Hag-hate to something that went down when the two men toured together in 2005. Dylan is famously standoffish, as is Haggard. There weren’t many back-and-forths between them, though Dylan paid his respects by covering (repeatedly) Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home.” Haggard didn’t add a Dylan track to his own set list, but they seemed to be cool with each other. After one show, however, Haggard suggested Dylan might come through to audiences more if he came out from behind the piano and played electric guitar. While Dylan grasps the risks of surrounding himself with ass-kissers, Haggard’s refusal to treat him like an early Roman king seems to have abraded Dylan’s royal ego. Dylan got back at Haggard in the MusiCares speech. And it’s likely rage at a real or imagined slight back in 2005 lies somewhere behind over-the-top passages in Philosophy where Dylan has Johnny Paycheck schooling George Jones and out-doing every other country balladeer. (Haggard goes unmentioned.) Dylan’s stretch here isn’t an outrage. Truth is, when it comes to “writing and singing” a country song[2], Haggard is beyond shade…
Dylan is wrong to scorn Haggard but my aim here isn’t to expose him as just another hater. His paean to Paycheck chimes with his long — inglorious yet positively wondrous — history of taking artful offense. Dylan may have inflated Paycheck’s gift but his praise of “Old Violin” concentrates attention on a great American song that should be a national resource. Would that we were all large enough to find such a noble use for our own lowest motives. Dylan is a jealous guy (like all us?) but his envy is, as ever, an end and a beginning.
Notes
1 “Old Violin” must really come through to the pirate looking past 80, but Dylan picked up on it earlier too. The song first appeared on Johnny Paycheck’s 1986 album, Modern Times. Dylan took that title for an album he put out in 2006.
2 “Like a master painter now,” to quote Paycheck on “Mr. Hag Told My Story.”