Before the Pearl Jam concert became my football game commercial flip of choice I was flipping to the classic Dylan documentary I’ve been known to rave about along with many others here, Don’t Look Back. Have any of you watched that thing since aging from 22 to 44? I appreciated how much of a dick Dylan was when I first watched it, and to some extent I still like seeing him in full-on dick mode, but I’m now an adult. Large chunks of the film are nauseating and embarrassing. How ’bout that scene in which he dresses down the blond, tortoise shell glasses-wearing “scientist?” Or the one above, with the guy from Time? On a developmental level, these are necessary stages in the modern notion of adolescence and young adulthood, but really, who’s Dylan think he is, Richard Lloyd? Two other questions emerged from the scenes I’d revisited after all these years:
- Is it any wonder Dylan bypasses this part of his life in Chronicles, Vol. 1?
- Although I’ve long loved Dylan, I’ve never spent any time investigating his crowd of hangers-on. Who’s the guy who looks like a cross between Roger McGuinn and Robert Pollard? Is that Bob Neuwirth? Man, what an ass kisser! Who’s the black dude who’s often sitting quietly in the background, not seeming to engage in any of Dylan’s shenanigans?
The concert scenes are still strong, but I’m thinking we should file this documentary under Watch before you’re grown up.
That’s Bobby Neuwirth allright. Isn’t he a nerd?
Real fuckin sycophantic scenester shit.
Joan Baez isn’t in that movie, i don’t think, but she’s the same thing to me, a real hanger on…gag.
Dont Look Back is the only Dylan I really feel I “get”.
That’s like his 1st 3 albums right?
No band, just him and the songs and the words.
I like it.
Remarkable clip; I haven’t seen this movie in years. It’s a sign of time passing that I now see that the Time magazine guy actually carves Dylan up into little pieces. The number of times Dylan clearly has no clue what he’s talking about are astounding.
Thanks.
oh yeah, I like his manager too. Just like Klein in Gimmee Shelter. what a schkeeve!
My in-laws consider Bobby Neuwirth worthy of a special section in hell: among his other failings as a human being, he had a bad habit of getting people hooked on smack.
people like Edie Sedgewick, right?
I saw I’m Not There Wednesday night, and then taped the ‘Dylan marathon’ off of VH-1 Classic the next day. I spent the next few days making my way through No Direction Home again, and I haven’t made it to Don’t Look Back yet.
I think seeing Dylan be an asshole is instructive, but I think the context of seeing it in No Direction home is helpful, in that it clues you in on some of the reasons he’s being an asshole.
Neuwirth does not come off well in I’m Not There. I very much liked the movie, but I’m a Dylan geek, and I got the references. If you don’t know much about Dylan I suspect you would be completely mystified by it. As everyone says, Cate Blanchett’s performance as the Don’t Look Back era Dylan is amazing. I also liked Richard Gere, looking every day of his age and not at all like a former pretty boy, playing the lost 90s Dylan on the cusp of getting his mojo back.
So BigSteve, was the soundtrack NOT a distraction? I’d like to see this movie, but the soundtrack seemed guarantee disappointment. I’m hoping the takes work better in the context of the film.
By the soundtrack you mean the 2 CDs with versions of the songs by other artists? These are in the movie only intermittently, and there are Dylan version’s of some of the songs in there too.
Sometime the new versions really work. Richie Havens sings Subterranean Homesick Blues in character as a poor black man on a back porch sounds really great. In one of the weird scenes that takes place in Basement Tapesville (i.e., Riddle MO in the movie) that guy from My Morning Jacket (I think) sings Going to Acapulco in whiteface on a gazebo accompanied by members of Calexico, and it’s really excellent.
As with most movies, the soundtrack is heard in snatches as scenes change or way in the background. For the most part actors do not lip-synch to the performances on the CDs, and most of the performances on the CDs don’t seem to be in the movie at all.
As
Great clip, Mr. Mod. I actually just saw this movie a few years ago… for me, even seeing clips now, it’s like watching a train wreck. I loved it, and sent it to a friend as well. It’s an interesting documentary. Pince nez on Shawn for wondering if Joan Baez was in the film –she was. I guess her later scenes were edited in after the part where she walks out of Dylan’s hotel room, and apparently she’s since admitted that that was pretty much when she walked out of Dylan’s life:
“In 1964 she was in London, accompanying Bob Dylan on his tour, in what she described as the “the most demoralising experience of my life”, as the last embers of their relationship fizzled out.”
Awesome. And more:
“Baez helped make Dylan. When he was a nervous, dirty, puppy- fatted nobody, she recognised his talent, took him on tour with her, and told her adoring fans that this was one to watch. Dylan told his biographer, Robert Shelton: “She brought me up. I rode on her, but I don’t think I owe her anything.”
Here’s more from the article entitled “Joan Baez – why I’m not nuts anymore” double-awesome;) Interesting reading…
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20030907/ai_n12584616
Sure Dylan overtries to act cool in Don’t Look Back, but you’ve got to admire the way he deals with being seen as a rock prophet. I don’t think anyone else (not Lennon, certainly not Bono) has come close to Dylan, in this respect.
In No Direction Home she says she tagged along on the Don’t Look Back tour assuming because she had brought him along to sing with her on her previous tours that he would do the same. Looking back, she says “Of *course* he wasn’t going to ask me to sing with him.” She realized she had unwittingly passed the torch, and in the long run she took it rather well. Julianne Moore does a good job in I’m Not There of playing the older and wiser ‘Joan Baez.’
No, normal people.
Mr. Moderator, I feel a *very* strong bond of kinship with you on this topic. Whether you like it or not. Kudos to the Time magazine reporter for not rising to Dylan’s bait. What a little prick.
HVB
Could someone explain to me why Dylan is acting like a “prick”? Because it’s not at all evident to me.
Let me just vent/clarify a bit here:
You know that scene in the Lennon biopic where some chick from the New York Times tries to explain why sitting in bed “for peace” is a kind of stupid thing to do? Lennon comes back at her in a patronizing, slightly idiotic fashion, lobbing half-baked assertions about “AD-vertising” at this chick in an effort to explain why he and Yoko were engaged in their whatever-it-was-they-were-doing.
Well, as much as I roll my eyes when that scene hits the screen, I always give Lennon major props for at least trying to explain, in some rational fashion, exactly *why* he and Yoko are sitting in bed. He’s not above providing reasons for his actions, and he’s smart enough to know at least one thing about AD-vertising: namely, that if you’re famous and do something outrageous, the world’s media will want to know *why*.
But the real point here isn’t whether the bed-in for peace succeeded or not (it didn’t, but it was a noble effort); it’s that — in contrast to Lennon — Dylan is just a double-talking little twerp who uses semantical parlor tricks to try and trip up people who have simply come to either a.) kiss his ass, or b.) understand him better. Instead of meeting these folks as friends, or taking them on as enemies, he bellows, blusters, prances and gambols around the “conversation” in a mean-spirited, exclusionary, holier-than thou fashion. Seriously, the global community of influence-peddlers and professional opiners should have hoisted Dylan by the short and curlies right about the time this documentary was made; a lot of generational lunacy could have been averted. There are times when I wonder if he was secretly *hoping* someone would call bullshit on his empty posturing ’round this time — but I mostly think he was clueless at best, and at worst, in desperate need of a swift kick in the groin.
Anyway, Mod, you’re on my team whether you like it or not.
HVB
HVB, no need to apologize for feeling like I do on this matter. Your comparison to Lennon is perfect!
And no, Dr. John, I don’t see how Dylan functions as Rock Prophet better than anyone else in this film. Musically? Certainly. There’s also a lot I do like about his pose at this time, his throwing questions back at people, etc, but I guess I’m younger than that now. That’s really what I’m getting at. That aspect of his persona is not aging as well. I still prefer his music back then to what he does now, but I like the glimpses he gives of himself as a person in Chronicles and rare interviews these days, that’s all.
As for the Rock Prophet thing, I think Lennon did it best. He embraced people while pissing them off, if need be. He showed love and humor along with anger.
Wow. That is some mighty fine missin’ o’ the point there, HVB.
It cannot be clearer that his mindset is “These fuckwits are so desperate for me to be The Voice Of A Generation that I can say absolutely any bullshit thing that comes to mind, and they’re going to treat it like gospel.”
Don’t look at Dylan during these scenes: look at the reporters. Look at them fail to understand that every single thing he’s saying is a put-on. Look at all the opportunities he gives for someone to call bullshit — which he plainly knows everything he’s saying to be — and how no one ever does.
Seriously: it’s the music press in these scenes who are clueless and in need of cockpunching here, and I say that as a member of the music press. He’s fucking with them. And they’re letting him.
G48 sez:
He’s fucking with them. And they’re letting him.
I ask:
Why is this not assholish behavior? And what is its point?
For the record, I think you’re being overly generous in your assessment that he’s pulling some kind of reverse-reverse-psychology bullshit on the world at this point. And even if he was, I’d still studiously ignore him if I met him at a dinner party.
Great 48 nails it. The need of the reporters to turn Dylan into a myth is so overwhelming that it makes any possibility of real conversation impossible. They want him to “say something important” and he rightly refuses, and in such a way that they’re still searching him for profundities while being blind to the ridiculousness of the situation, which Dylan only seems to understand.
Lennon’s bed-in is entirely different; he really is trying to get something specifically done.
Dylan refused the “voice of a generation” mantle, and he didn’t even set himself up as a voice of leftist protest, outside of his songs. Some people alive at that time still hate him for it while idolizing the brave artistry of Joan Baez.
Now, you can say “he had no right to write protest songs if he wasn’t going to protest.” Or you can say “he should have been nicer to those dumbass reporters.” But please don’t be so stupid as to think that Dylan is under the impression that he is making profound statements.
But hey, the reporters certainly prove that for some people, the world really does remain a blur.
Remember that Dylan is just a kid in his early 20s here. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he knows for sure that he doesn’t want other people nailing him down. So he acts immaturely, which is not exactly a big surprise.
Also, the journalists in question are ‘establishment’ journalist types, old enough to be his father. There were no rock critics then, so there’s even less understanding of what he’s about, even after you grant that he himdelf is still trying to work out what he’s about.
He’s playing the trickster, and the people who make and/or enforce the rules don’t appreciate tricksters. It’s just one of his guises, and I understand where Mr Mod is coming from on this — I find it hard to cheer him on in these scenes. On the other hand he’s heading for a fall (actually a series of them), and he doesn’t even realize it.
Hold on there, HVB. Yes, he would be a jerk if he were indeed making fun of people who were trying to understand him. But, I don’t see anyone doing this. They’re patronizing him. And he’s trying to point this out.
Think about what’s going on at the time politically. And they’re more worried about what he thinks?
That example you gave of Lennon speaks volumes about the way he was treated differently. The reporter is trying to understand him and is asking him intelligent questions. But you never see that in Don’t Look Back.
Your point about how you wouldn’t talk to him at a dinner party speaks more about your hangups than his.
When you’re right you’re right, Dr. J. I can just see HBV at that party now, snubbing Dylan. Hilarious.
Alright, DUDES. I’ll play along. We’re all at that dinner party. I sidle up next to you two, beer in hand, and say, “have you met that Dylan character? What a fucking know-it-all asshole!” You reply: “Dylan is here? Man, where is he? I gotta go talk to him about…”
?
That’s not a snub. That’s talking behind his back. To snub him, when Dylan tries to start a conversation with you, you gotta look at him like he’s an asshole and say nothing, or something brief and cutting so that he’s wounded by your dislike.
Mwall:
Who said I’d snub him? I ain’t no eye-for-an-eye guy! I said I’d ignore him. I inferred from what you said that you’d find him a fascinating conversationalist. So put up: what would you talk to him about?
(Side note: Townsman mwall and I go way back; I happen to know *for a fact* that he’d find the Dylan as seen in the above clip just as irritatingly shallow, obvious, pompous, pretentious, and assholish as I do.)
Good stuff, so far.
BigSteve, thanks for getting what’s at the heart of my thoughts here: How does this Dylan seem to you 20+ years after you first came across him.
In addition to remembering that Dylan was only in his early 20s at this time, it’s well to remember that he was also stoned a lot of the time. Not that either of those are an excuse but they do set the environment.
When I watch these now, I’m mostly struck by how much pressure Dylan was under. The Beatles were under similar pressures but they at least had each other to “share” it with.
Imagine constantly being asked the questions they were asked. Questions where people really expected some greater truths to be revealed. Whereas Dylan insisted he was just a song and dance man. And as Dylan reveals more and more of himself over time (in Chronicles, his radio show, interviews) it becomes more apparent to me that that definition was not anywhere near as disingenuous as it seemed at the time.
For all the hyper-popular musical artists to come along since (people like Michael Jackson, Springsteen, Cobain) none of them were viewed as (potential) messiahs in the way that Dylan or the Beatles were.
It’s not surprising that Dylan retreated after his motorcycle accident or that the Beatles left the road. How could anyone face that attention, that scrutiny, those expectations? Unless they were really the messiah…
Well you could tell from the songs that he could be mean. He specialized in the put down song. But after listening the these songs for years, it seems like the scorn is not always directed outward. There’s disappointment with himself mixed in with the superiority.
And it’s interesting to me that he somehow knew in his bones not to grab at the ‘voice of a generation’ thing. Part of it is that he had gleaned that the protest thing was passing, but his ambition was to take in more than any other musician of his era. In Chronicles he tries to explain this, but that’s hindsight. What amazes me is that his ambition somehow gave him the strength to shit on people who might have appeared able to help him get somewhere. It’s just that he had a different (though still gestating) idea of where he was going.
John Doe said that when he first met Dylan they talked about fishing and had a nice little chat. I suspect that trying to talk to him about anything important, anything that sounds like an interview, would go nowehere.
Well, that anecdote about John Doe and Dylan kind of gets to my point about Dylan (I mean my BIG point): he’s either the Voice Of a Generation or he’s not. If you believe *him*, he isn’t. If you believe Mwall, Dr. J and all the other Town Ballers who make excuses for his assholish behavior (“it’s funny because he’s *pretending* to be the messiah, and everybody is believing him!”), he isn’t. So… if he’s not the voice of a generation, and the things he says and sings don’t actually mean a whole heck of a lot, then… isn’t he just a skinny, bright Jewish kid from the sticks who wrote a handful of great folk songs? And if that’s the case, then why do so many of you spend so much time obsessing over every fart that wafted over from his general direction — and why do I spend so much time explaining why he’s just not worth the trouble?
I like Dylan’s approach to an unwinnable situation. He’s a songwriter and musician. Why should it be assumed that he has all the skills of a politician to answer trite, repetitive questions with great wit and clarity?
I love when Andy Reid gives his boring, worthless answers at post Eagles game press conferences. He’s a coach! He’s good at football, not necessarily talking about it. The fact that the NFL mandates that you make yourself available to answer the same stupid questions after every game can only lead you to want to be as boring as possible. What a stupid dance! They ask, Do you think if you did more of X, you would have won the game? And he has to answer that with something intelligent??
Explain why people like you. Do you think you’re the generation’s spokesman? Dylan went nasty instead of boring. Interviews are part of his profession’s dance, but that doesn’t mean he should be forced to respond with anything enlightening or witty. Imagine being forced to submit to an interview at your own job by people who barely have a clue about it, or who are purposely trying to trip you up. Who can blame him for giving a bad news conference maybe in hopes that no one would ask him to do it again.
Well, number one, I still think that your opinion of Dylan is being strongly colored by your hatred of Dylan fans. Which, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of musicians I can’t get behind because I find their fans unbearable. But speaking as a fairly neutral observer here — I like Dylan roughly to the extent that I like, say, the Rolling Stones, which is to say I own a couple of anthologies and most of the key albums but there are entire swaths of the man’s career I’ve never heard a note of — I can say that if I was surrounded by condescending journalists on one side, would-be acolytes on another, Fat Al Grossman looking at you and licking his chops like you’ve just turned into a chicken leg on feet like in the old WB cartoons on the third, and people demanding that you write a broadside ballad about this one guy in Alabama who’s in the county lockup for overdue library book fines on the fourth…I gotta assume you’d be a little pissy too.
But mostly, dude…seriously, you really have to let your hatred of the ’60s go. You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack.
You’ve missed the point of the John Doe story, obvioulsy. One of the points is that he’s not a messiah; he can have a normal conversation. Another point is that you don’t get to be a great artist/songwriter without knowing about lots of different things, like say fishing.
Actually Dylan is notoriously taciturn and I suspect he probably does more listening than talking, which is another way to become a great songwriter.
So much of the Dylan ass-kissery and rationalization around these parts reminds me of the SCTV “Jerry Lewis, LIVE From the Champs Elyssee!” sketch. You may remember the relevant bit, where Jerry berates his bandleader, Louie Le Peu, for missing an entrance in his French-lish butchering of “Walk On”:
Jerry: Louie, that’s your cue! When I do the cry, you do the cue! Cry, cue, CRY, CUE! You like your job? Do it!
(Jerry storms offstage in a fit of pique)
Louie Le Peu (still cowering on the bandstage): He is a GENIUS!
(crowd showers Jerry with baguettes, cheering. Jerry briefly turns around, disgusted)
Here’s a subject I’ve been waiting to come up, if it hasn’t been previously done to death in the past: which act has the worst fans? Maybe to clarify – since I can think of a few terrible bands with bad or worse fans who would end the discussion early – a useful follow-up question would be: which band/performer has a fanbase that has kept you from potentially embracing/exploring their work more fully?
So I take it that some of you are as fine with Dylan’s pose in Don’t Look Back as you were with it when you first saw it, 20+ years ago. That’s cool with me. I just wanted to run it up there for discussion. Don’t count me in with HVB’s Dylan disgust and all that. It’s strictly the pose that I now find embarrassing, despite any of the hundreds of rationalizations you’ve thrown out there. I know them all, and I understand them. For me, this thread was simply a matter of gauging how YOU feel about seeing these scenes today. Many of you answered my question, and for this, I thank you.
I have always said that I would like the Cure much more than I do if Cure fans weren’t such wankers.
I don’t know, does mean I have to believe TIME does tell the truth?
5I’ve never been as irritated as other people are by Dylan in DON’T LOOK BACK but I’ve found it better not to be too judgmental about young people acting youthful in hopes that they won’t be so irked when I act old.
I probably didn’t even see Don’t Look Back until I was at least 20 years older than Dylan was then. It’s not like it ever played in normal theaters. It was probably not until the age of Netflix.
From this advanced age I find it hard to take seriously anything someone that age might say. This happens at work sometimes, and it’s a struggle I’m not proud of.
Dylan had already written some good songs when these interviews were filmed, and I do take those songs seriously, but his best work was still ahead of him, a lot of it waaaay ahead of him.
The talk about Lennon reminds me that some of these Dylan interviews seem to have been set up to be like the early Beatles interviews, where they won everyone over with their lovable moptoppery and cheeky humor. Some of the other interviews in DLB have a similar breeziness, but Dylan can’t sustain it, the times have a-changed, and the drugs are rapidly frying his brain.
And hvb, your issues here are really out of control. It’s only ass-kissing if you want something out of the other person. Anyway an artist’s personal behavior is pretty much irrelevant to their art, so what’s all the fuss about? Powerful criticism of his attitude at that time could have “averted a lot of generational lunacy”? On what planet?
You know, I think the world would be a better place in Van Halen had never existed, but I don’t foam at the mouth every time they come up in conversation or start threads trying to force people to confront their insidious evil.
Your issues lie elsewhere, and Dylan is just the biggest and most convenient field to trot them out onto.
Dylan expresses his spot on understanding of Time in a rudimentary form, and with adolescent energy that makes him appear less authoritative, less right to us.
Plus, we live in a totally different age, when critical thoughts of this stripe regarding mainstream media channels are now a dime-a-dozen.
But at the time when he was saying it, it was a revelation. Not even Marshall McCluhan, relatively obscure compared to Dylan, had published his thoughts on the media yet.
It’s easy to make fun of the “teen-age-rebellion” vibe in his attempt to stand up to “the man”. As Mod says, the pose is embarrassing.
But given the context, that all of Dylan’s entertainment contemporaries would have simply sucked up for the kind of exposure Time offered, his tone is easier to understand.
And in content, what he’s saying about Time is pretty much true.
Plus, don’t forget, he was 25 at the oldest when this was filmed…just a baby. Pretty good for a 25 yr. old. Hell, I’ve been teaching kids around that age for ten years now. They don’t have a sliver of the awareness he expresses in this clip.
There are probably very few on this list, average age 40, who could muster Dylan’s level of perception and clarity in a discussion with a senior writer from an international media outlet, let alone muster it for an interview with the City Paper.
And besides it’s like buskirk suggests: laugh at Dylan if you must, but TIME still blows huge chunks.
Kilroy, Baez *is* in “Don’t Look Back”. She’s the rather annoying chick in the background of almost every scene, attempting to sound operatic. Ugh.
FWIW, I think that Springsteen and Cobain HAVE been viewed in that respect, though perhaps by not as many people and not in as universal of a sense (though that’s highly debatable and I would disagree with that assertion). Michael Jackson, umm, not so much but that’s partly because he was considered a “pop” singer unlike the others I mentioned and partly because he’s a walking freak show now as he has been for many years.
That’s highly debatable, too. Am I the only one here who thinks his ass should get fired after this season, mainly because of his awful play calling (what was that BS in the last play on the Eagles’ drive the other night) and the fact that his house is a breeding ground for hardcore juvenile delinquency?
As for the issue at hand, I think the great48 and dbuskirk (among others) have nailed it nicely, so I have nothing more to
add.
Oh and Big Steve, I work with a bunch of kids in their early 20s, too. I’m only in my early 30s myself, but if only I could maintain the smae attitude when one of them says something I find really ridiculous (which is usually every day at least once here).
Re. Reid:
i find it remarkable that only days after he did what no other coach has been able to do this year except for Dungy (who had the best QB in the game playing for him, not a career backup), Reid is being called on the carpet.
i may think his coaching has become stagnant, but
on Sunday night he was impeccable.
After the came, AJ came clean and said that the play called in the huddle was not to Curtis. Curtis was *not* the primary receiver on that play, but LJ Smith, stationed about 3 yards past the first down marker was. According to AJ himself, it was his own decision to go for broke, and as soon as the ball left his hands he knew he made a mistake. If he had hit LJ in the flat and moved the chains, we’d likely be talking about an overtime game, at least.
Matt, would you *fire Reid’s ass* if he was the CFO of a record label that he had rescued from the depths of obscurity and turned into one of the most successful over hte last ten years, just because his the label’s best earnings were in ’04 and his sons are dope addicts?
This bullshit really fucking irks me.
If he was your neighbor, and he wasn’t the coach of your local NFL team, you’d be as meek as a lamb in his presence. You *might* politely ask about the kids, but ONLY IF HE BROUGHT IT UP, and in general, you would kindly leave him to deal with his own personal tragedy in his own way.
But just because his job is to go to the Novacare complex every day and do the best he can to make our football team win, EVERYBODY thinks they have a right to know what’s going on with his kids, and a right to exercise their own opinions (based on garbled information) about what he should do with his job and his life.
And what does his demeanor at press conferences (which I also find to be a hilarious weekly “fuck you”) have to do with ANY of this?
Give the guy a fucking break.
Say what you want about HBV, but his “Thank God we’ve returned to the sanity of corporate control and Republican wars” anti-Dylan attitude leads to some really great Dylan commentary on this list. Seriously, behind most of the best discussions on this list lies some tool spouting nonsense, and I for one am grateful to HBV’s willingness to take on this persona.
Most of your points are well taken, especially the ones about his kids (and after all, I always say it’s the art and not the artist anyway and I would extend that to football coaches; I also think that stuff should be left private; it does make me wonder what the hell’s going on there; regardless, I have nothing but contempt for those rich pricks, so I admit that my analysis is skewed by that, too).
With that said, I think you give Reid way too much credit. Sometimes I think that the Iggles (who still have a losing record, despite the heroic effort on Sunday night; then again in the NFC that might be good enough for the playoffs this year) win despite his ineptitude, not because of it. I think they stayed in the game and led through part of it for 2 reasons:
1) The performance of AJ Feeley, aside from those 2 interceptions at the beginning and end of the game, not to mention the receiving corps and offensive line, of course.
2) The blitzing and pressure they put on Tom Brady.
Reid, from my understanding, at least, doesn’t really have much to do with the defense, so you’ll have to credit the defensive coordinator for coming up with a strategy to keep the Pats off-balance. No one else, not even the Colts, put that kind of pressure on their offense this year.
Oh and one more thing. This QB controversy shit is really pissing me off, so maybe I’m more vindictive towards Reid than I would be usually, but if he doesn’t start Feeley on Sunday, then he really should be fired.
thanks for the responses, matt!
i don’t think as highly of reid as you seem to suspect.
as i say, he has stagnated. making adjustments over the short and long term has been his downfall.
but it’s hard cheese trying to determine where coaching ends and talent begins. it’s an abstract, non-objective pursuit.
if you’re going to give all the credit to aj for the good things he did, then you have to concede that aj did the bad things, too. once the ball is snapped, aint nothin’ a coach can do but sit and watch while his players execute the play. fat andy wasn’t the one who checked down off the primary receiver, decided to go for paydirt, and put the wrong touch on the ball to curtis to effectively end the game.
and if you’re going to praise aj for his play on sunday night, you also have to acknowledge that no coach has had more of a bearing on aj’s development as a qb than reid has.
i do think reid called a remarkable game that night, and he hasn’t called many. he’s not a great game day coach. only the nfccg vs. the falcons in ’04 was a more airtight game plan, execution, and adjustment scenario than what we saw on sunday.
and of course i know andy’s not responsible for the defense, and said nothing that would suggest i was giving him credit for their defensive performance.
but shit, dude, you con’t tack that many points on the new england patriots with a career backup under center and not deserve *some* credit.
with the exception of tra thomas, who was drafted by ray rhodes, reid put that entire offense together himself. every one of those guys was either a reid draftee or a free agent acquisition. and that offensive line is one of the best in the game.
regarding the qb controversy, my suspicion is that he really regrets having hitched his wagon to mcnabb over the long term, and, since garcia came in and ran his system more successfully last year, he’s been making arrangements to move on. his comments today were the most candid (by his sliding scale) that i’ve ever heard. he was arguing that mcnabb still isn’t 100 percent. it really sounded like he wants to go with aj. we’ll see.
sorry rth’ers. resume with your dylan talk.
Responding a little late, but whatever.
I first saw Don’t Look Back in college and of course thought Dylan was a riot. Subsequent viewings have resulted in a more caustic view of his behavior, But I agree with those who pointed out how ridiculously young he was to have all this “truthteller” and “generational spokesman” shit thrown at him. Is it just me, or does this not happen much anymore? Could it be that Kurt Cobain’s suicide scared the U.S. mainstream press from anointing any future little-boy-lost guitar players this way?
Anyway, I thought I should comment on this thread since I’m going to see I’m Not There tonight after work and I’m psyched.
I don’t remember you saying that before, but in any case, I completely agree and this is at the root of my previous argument for his resignation/firing.
Yes I know all this, but my beefs have more to with what you wrote below.
Again this is completely on-point. It’s just that I think the momentum would be ruined with Donovan starting the next game. It’s clear that both Garcia and now Feeley run the West Coast offense much better. Plus, they’re less injury-prone.
OK this really gets to the heart of what I was complaing about before. For the sake of the Eagles’ playoff hopes, I really, truly hope you’re right here. I just hope he makes the right decision.
I just happened to come across this tonight. Alex Ross writes a fine classical music blog called The Rest Is Noise (also the name of his new book). He’s a music critic for The New Yorker, and he writes about pop music sometimes too. He wrote a very interesting article about Dylan in 1999 (http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/09/bob_dylan_artic.html), and some people here might find his outsider view illuminating in light of our recent discussion.
I added the Andy Reid point to the Dylan post just because I found it similar to Dylan (as you wrote Saturn)as his hilarious weekly F you press conferences!
Rag on Big Red all you want this year. It’s all about wins and losses each year. Still the criticism he frequently gets seems really short-sighted to me. I love the “he can’t win the big game” complaint. How do you get to 4 conference championships without winning lots of “big” games??
DBuzz, your point about not making fun of young people acting young reminded me of another funny parallel to Dylan acting like a brat. I think it was MTV awards or Grammies a few years ago when a really young Fiona Apple was accepting an award and she gave this really lame accusatory speech about not following the herd and being yourself, and I remembered Dylan and thinking, Man she is going to look back on this and think “How did I possibly think at that age I had the experience or right to tell anyone how to live?” Just cause you have the mic, doesn’t mean you have anything meaningful or beneficial to say.
That was a very interesting article, BigSteve. Thanks for passing it along.
Coupla points:
Quiet black guy – Tom Wilson
Disc 2 of the new Don’t Look Back set shows the other side of Dylan on the tour, including some genuine goofy affection and pleasant bemusement with his young fans, really.
And all you Baez Hatas, sure she has that sanctimonious reputation but if you watch the No Direction Home documentary, you get an entirely different feel for her. She has a sense of humor about herself and, as opposed to for instance Maria Muldaur in the same documentary, she is very comfortable talking about Dylan and never plays that ploy where she turns every story back around to herself. I first noticed her lack of self-absorption in interviews and clips from the Rolling Thunder era, but she really comes off well in the No Direction Home interviews.