Tim Staffell Newsletter

[Q-Freddie]

2008: Tight Corner, (it's a bit of a squeeze...)
What if it's never going to be alright?
Tim Staffell
Mar 23

Like it or not (and to be honest, I’m not that fond of it) - I came from a rock tradition; an ENGLISH rock tradition, which produced some wonderfully idiosyncratic bands throughout the sixties and beyond, but employing principles which I nevertheless fell out of love with as the decade drew to a close. It seems much less important to me now, but a four month trip to America in 1971 pretty much changed everything for me… I became aware that there was this underpinning to much American music that was absent on this side of the Atlantic - except for those few players over here who recognised it, and held it up as a guiding principle to how they wrote, & played. It was mostly characterised by what has become euphemistically referred to as ‘The Groove’ - really a label for music that possesses a continuously accented rhythmic flow, which has a hypnotic adhesion to emphasising the rhythm, even across varying comlpexities of song construction. In the Bebop era and prior to it, it was called ‘swing’ - and the early days of American rock & roll were predicated on it.. (this was the ‘roll’)

‘…..a static charge, like you wouldn’t believe….!

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[Q-Freddie]

A Complete Unknown.....
If the title of the movie is viewed as referring to the insights we were treated to into the character of Dylan himself, then it makes perfect sense....
Tim Staffell
Apr 6

Who’s Gonna Throw That Minstrel Boy a Coin?
Of course I enjoyed the underpinning of reverence to Dylan that the movie drips with, but as the credits rolled after the Newport fiasco, I just felt short-changed, somehow…. I had expected some resolution or reference to the emotional tensions hinted at during the preceding two hours of cameos of his (already well-documented) life. Yes, I got a lump in my throat when he first played ‘Blowing In The Wind’, and ‘Don’t Think Twice’ - No, I didn’t think Chalomet played him especially convincingly - was Dylan really that dispassionate? and apart from the somewhat self-conscious art direction, I think the whole thing could have been a good deal better. Ed Norton’s Pete Seeger was, to me, the only convincing performance of the entire movie. The rest of the protagonists seemed thin and undefined… although Elle Fanning worked hard to bring her wife-substitute to life. I hadn’t heard of (or read) ‘Dylan Goes Electric’ by Elijah Wald - (the book that the movie is based upon) but the rather frivolous title would have immediately put me off. I guess the problem for me is in my expectations.. It was a perfectly serviceable, likeable, safe, uncomplicated, formulaic, sanitised biopic, with a fairly unremarkable screenplay, and a patchwork of performances. I think it was probably the narrative that let it down for me… I love the songs, and Chalomet does a sterling job of performing them… though he doesn’t have Dylan’s intensity in his eyes, and coupled with the rather safe script, it let his performance down for me. (but what do I know?)

‘Self Portrait’ 1969/70

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