What If a God Was One of Us? Joan Osborne on the Dylan Flick

She's been covering his song since her first hit album (three posted here), and now she raises questions but finds the value in the new bio-pic.

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books including “The Tunnels” “Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady” and “The Campaign of the Century” and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre.” You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free. Watch the trailer for his new film “The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero & The Forgotten Bomb.”

A few years back, we attended an intimate Joan Osborne concert on one of our trips to Mohonk, the fabled Catskills lakeside mountain house. It was staged in their historic parlor at 4 p.m. with maybe 60 other guests. A larger crowd gathered later that night at a more visitor-friendly 9 o’clock for Natalie Merchant. I had never seen Joan in concert but loved her debut album and knew she had just recorded an album of Dylan covers. Even back on her first record nearly 30 years ago my favorite cut (and one of the best ever Dylan covers by anyone, which I have highlighted here in the past) was “Man in the Long Black Coat.”

She did a great set at Mohonk, though with only two Dylan covers. Here are her versions of “Tangled Up in Blue” and “Ring Them Bells.”

Now, I recall all this, because this morning I came across a terrific “review” by Joan of the new “A Complete Unknown” movie in my Facebook feed. Yesterday in this space I revealed that after my numerous full or partial posts related to the movie in the past month (for example, here and also here), I would not be writing at length about it now because so many fine observers/writers had done a swell job already online. But I thought Osborne’s take was particularly honest and sharp. So I am reprinting much of it below, hoping that’s okay as I am linking here to her web site and urging everyone to consider catching her live and purchase her Dylan cover album or current lp “Nobody Owns You.”

Joan on Bob

Here’s my take on “A Complete Unknown,”,the Bob Dylan biopic out now:

I am happy it exists, even though all biopics of musicians I love are problematic for me, with the possible exception of “Ray.” Unless the filmmakers use the original recordings, as they mostly did in “Ray,” any actor trying to sing like the icon they are portraying will fall short of the magic no matter how well they do, and I think Timothee Chalamet does a wonderful job of approximating Dylan’s squirrelly, charismatic manner in the film. But only Dylan sings like Dylan….

I also know there are a lot of historical inaccuracies in “A Complete Unknown,” (and I dutifully whispered the correct biographical details into my sister’s ear as they went by), but who can fault the filmmakers for doing their best to pack a huge, sprawling story into a multiplex-friendly time slot? No, Pete Seeger wasn’t at Woody’s bedside when Dylan visited him, nor was Suze Rotolo (given a different name in the film) at Newport in ‘65 when Dylan went electric, but I’m not bothered by that. I could complain that the hundreds of nights playing gigs in the Village, the hard work of Dylan becoming who he was through trial and error and hard work were not acknowledged and that it seems in the film as if he were born like Athena out of his own skull completely formed. As someone who knows about the years and years of effort that go into an ‘overnight success’, that was a disappointment.

But I like that Suze Rotolo’s influence on Dylan, the political and artistic consciousness he absorbed from her, was given its due. And I love Ed Norton’s heartbreakingly earnest Pete Seeger, his subtle rendering of the thrill of witnessing Dylan’s genius unfold as those early songs were born, his quiet paternal grief as he watches Bob slip away from the folk scene into the wider world (was he getting intravenous infusions of Jimmy Stewart’s DNA into his bloodstream during the shoot?). That to me is the film’s great pleasure: to imagine yourself a fly on the wall at the moment this musical phenomenon detonates. If I let Norton’s Seeger be my guide, if I squint and suspend my disbelief, I’m happy to be led by the hand down a fantasy MacDougal Street for a couple of hours.

The main reason, though, that I’m happy about the film, and that I’m glad it has at least one Oscar-bait performance and is doing well at the box office, is that it will likely lure a lot of folks into the Wonderful World of Real Bob Dylan. Sixty years on from the events of the movie, there are a lot of people who live in ignorance of this titan still in our midst, and of why music was so important then, and they will be all the better for knowing. Teen girls (or boys or genderqueers) who moon over Chalamet can swoon afresh over how beautiful and sexy and compelling the real young Dylan was as they listen to those lyrics or mine YouTube. Folks unfamiliar with the incredible lives and tireless activism of Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and of the ideals of the folk movement can educate themselves. People who love or hate the movie will dive into their Dylan albums or streams.

Personally, I’m going to use these quiet days at the turn of the year to go back and revisit some other Dylan material that’s out there, and if you want you can join me. My first stop will be “Chronicles,” Dylan’s own poetic memoir of his early years. Maybe next I’ll watch the Scorsese documentary “No Direction Home,” a longer and more faithful view of Dylan’s rise. “I’m Not There,” the Todd Haynes movie in which Dylan is played by six different actors including Cate Blanchett, is also in my queue, as is “Masked and Anonymous,” the deeply weird fiction film starring Dylan himself and featuring some musical performance footage which should not be missed by anyone who cares about art or beauty or depth. I’m not kidding.