Bob Dylan's best work
Bob Dylan's best work
Playing status games near the end of the line
It is rumored that when you're backstage at a Bob Dylan concert, no one is allowed to look him in the eye before the show. Bob has been playing a status game for a while. Most of the time, the story in his head tells him that he’s winning.
He’s given himself special status. He’s won a lot of status games. In order to satisfy his needs for more status, he has had to create more games. “Don’t look Bob in the eyes before a show” is a status game. It doesn’t matter if poor Bob has a panic disorder or whatever reason for this game. It’s merely a game. It’s a game set up for Bob to win.
Conform to the game and you get status. You get to be backstage at Bob’s show. Ignore the game and be banished to the great unwashed crowd on the concert floor.
When we constantly win at status games, our demands for more status can become absurd. Steve Tyler from Aerosmith apparently wanted m&ms but with no red ones. So some poor backstage slob would have to go through a kilo of m&ms, picking out the red ones. It's quite ridiculous.
Because Bob Dylan played this status game, his work has suffered. Sure he gets adoration and worship and status from people who love him already. But his work is kind of self absorbed. He’s been convinced by his own publicity.
Bob Dylan's best work was when he was with the Traveling Wilburys. Think about it. He’s there with some of the best songwriters of his generation. Tom Petty, the best Beatle, Jeffy Lynd and the velvety Roy Orbison were all on equal footing with Cranky Bob.
I’m sure there were status games between them. Those status games was really likely on uneven footing. So when you listen to the Traveling Wilburys Volume One, what you're actually hearing is Bob Dylan with a bunch of his buddies. They were joking around. They were having fun.
Best of all, they all had enough status to put each other in their places. No one was too big for their pants. Any pissing contests had well established rules and clear winners. They all had the gear required to hang in with each other.
I think it comes through in the music and makes better work. Do you disagree? Well, tell me what you think Bob Dylan's best work. Is so I can ignore you, dismiss you and maintain my high status here.
What seemingly irrational and odd behaviors have you seen? How could the lens of status games change your understanding of them?
I have to correct the record here. The M&Ms story is that Van Halen didn't want any *brown* M&Ms backstage. And the reason is not a status play (although David Lee Roth is not immune to or unaware of his status-taking actions- he tells the joke, how many lead singers does it take to change a lightbulb? One- to hold the bulb, while the rest of the world revolves around them). The real reason was because as their fame quickly mounted and their tour requirements grew into things some venues had not experienced before, they were running into safety issues that endangered their crew, esp. concerning lighting trusses. So the ryder item about no brown M&Ms was to alert them to the fact that other more important items on the ryder may have been overlooked and to be thorough and cautious about the stage set up. And I provide this info as a sort of hair metal nerd which gives me a certain status. Also, Sheryl Crow isn't indie.
I had a woman ridicule me for my "domestic" skills while visting my home. To be clear, they were commenting at how wonderfully domestic I was. Gag. It was a good play. They didn't have them. There were reasons they didn't have them and I do. I was raised without money and learned to make money stretch. I had a husband and two children, one with special dietary needs. I was a caretaker. I had people to take care of. As a result of coming from a homesteading mentality family and having a family of my own, yes, I have domestic skills. It wasn't meant as a compliment. They were putting me down. I didn't hit them. Kind of wish I did. But, I have domestic skills, a family to practice them on and I am blessed. Happiness is the best revenge. I am sure someone else has hit them by now, or worse, they have just been ignored because their opinion doesn't matter.