Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb
Love Minus Zero/No Limit
from DA Pennebaker's 1967 documentary 'Don't Look Back'

It's interesting how in this clip Dylan directs the song at just one person in the room - a poet, I think, who requested it. Everyone else is ignored, including a rather uncomfortable looking Donovan Leitch who, of course, had been modelling himself on Dylan in roughly the same way as Cliff Richard had tried to emulate Elvis for the British market. Elsewhere in the film you can see Dylan making sure Donovan knows who's the boss, and he cracks a joke during his concert - 'I looked in the closet - Donovan was there' - which might suggest that the bisexual Donovan had been coming onto him. Who knows? Dylan remains studiously enigmatic throughout the film. But apart from capturing the 23 year old folksinger at the top of his game, 'Don't Look Back' paints a vivid and unusually accurate picture of the social and cultural upheaval which was the real backdrop to the 'Swinging Sixties' in Britain. There's a lot of humour in it, especially the hilarious confrontations between Dylan's gruff, hard-nosed cigar-chewing manager Albert Grossman and the old-style Jewish London music promoter trying fruitlessly to put one over him; or the excruciatingly embarrassing scene when the Lady Mayoress of Nottingham introduces her sons to Dylan and gives him an open invitation to visit them at their Country Manor. All credit to Pennebaker for being in the right place at the right time to capture this priceless material, and for weaving it into such a compelling documentary. His intimate, hand-held style of filming spawned a thousand imitators, but has rarely been bettered.