Three Songs and the Truth

Bob Dylan eschews photographers, but I love him anyway

Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Madison Square Garden. Photo by Chris X Carroll

In the late seventies, a man called Miles Copeland managed his brother’s band. He started a record label to put out music by that band and his brother’s mates. The brother was Stewart Copeland, the band the Police, and the label IRS Records. Copeland was a genius at picking and packaging talent. REM, the Bangles, Dead Kennedys, and the Go-Go’s were all in the stable at IRS. 

While managing the Police,Copeland noticed that photographers planted themselves in front of the stage for the entire show and began to rankle—both bands and management.  The block of shlubs sitting statically in the front row ruined the rock and roll energy of the thing. But their cardinal sin was publishing images that Copeland couldn’t control. So he invented the vaunted three-song rule: photographers were allowed in his bands’ shows for three songs, and three songs only. Then a team of publicists whisked everyone holding a camera right on out of the venue. 

Other record and management companies quickly adopted this approach, and before you knew it, it became industry standard. This was merely the first step toward corporate interests wresting more and more control of the rock and roll experience. Now the corporations controlling the arenas (funny how they’re all actually named after corporations nowadays)  have made a deal with other corporations to only allow their own photographers access to events. 

Bob’s in the basement, mixing up the medicine.

SPIN didn’t run many live rock shots anyway, so this change didn’t really affect me as an editor. I didn’t have much interest in shooting live shows myself so, again, not really much affected by this newly enacted stricture. However, I would occasionally use my position as a photo editor to request a press pass to “shoot the show.” In one case, this meant sitting on a blanket in front of the crowd in Giants Stadium for twelve hours and several-score acts at a benefit for Amnesty International. I occasionally reached languidly for my camera to capture Joni Mitchell,  Miles Davis, Lou Reed, Muhhamed Ali, or, oh look, Sting. But mostly, I just enjoyed the show. 

This is almost certainly why I requested and was granted press passes to photograph Bob Dylan (accompanied by the opening band, some outfit called Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers!) at Madison Square Garden. My clever plans to catch a free Dylan show were thwarted when the publicist invoked the old three-song limit. Oh, and no sitting in the pit with elbows on stage. No, Dylan was insisting all press be allowed no closer than twenty-five rows out. Floor seats, but only barely. I rented a 300 mm lens, pushed the film a couple or three stops. Shots are fine I suppose.. Compared with a portrait or pictures made with modern equipment, they are terrible. Can’t lie. 

But I’m here to tell you: those three songs (or five, actually – my trusty diary don’t lie), those five songs comprised the best freakin’ Dylan show I’ve ever seen by far. Absence indeed makes the heart grow fonder. I was desperate to hear the rest of the show (which I did the next night,) but somehow that short stretch, those five tight little numbers, were like a glass of the rarest champagne. 

Everyone had big hair back then. Everyone.

The internet is amazing. Of course, not only can I find the set list from that night, but clicking on the songs yields not just audio, but video, from that very night. Dylan opened with “Shake a Hand”, a cover I’d never heard. But I busied myself with shooting and was basically finished by the time the Heartbreakers slammed into “Positively Fourth Street” (“You’ve got a lot of nerve…”). Dylan was generally either terrible or amazing; that night (and the next) he was the latter. Petty and his band were backup par excellence. “Clean Cut Kid” was next, just a rollicking tight rock number right at the top. Then a super-sad number that was rendered so beautifully by the Heartbreakers; it was just the best: “I Remember You.” I like to style myself a happy-go-lucky guy, but I’ve come to understand that all the best art has tragedy, pain, and sadness shot through it. So then I was packing my gear and being shooed out during “Shot of Love,” which I’m not that partial to anyway. Nonetheless I was just glowing, wanting to be back there, but also marveling about how intense a short burst of anything can be— better than a long slog. My wife gets mad at me when I want to leave Shakespeare shows at the intermission (and I split from a “farewell” Dead and Co. show just after the break, to good effect). But what can you learn in two hours that you haven’t gotten in one?

And having said that, I risk hypocrite status, because I sat enraptured through the whole two-and-a-half hour-plus show the next night, without my camera. Dylan has a deep catalog, Petty and his band are fabulous, and there was a ton of material from both songwriters. Still, five-song Dylan is the best Dylan; that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. 

I think maybe I could rock those pants.

Here’s a hot tip and lesson: go watch the We Are The World documentary on Netflix. It is utterly, jaw-droppingly amazing, on so many levels. But perhaps the greatest moment comes towards the end. Bob Dylan has been hanging on the periphery, clearly uncomfortable around all these musicians. He sees himself as a poet. He’s standing on a riser with Dionne Warwick, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder and literally a score more of the best musicians and singers of the era. 

Stevie Wonder is many things germane to our story—a mimic foremost among them. You all can picture that Dylan break in We Are the World. “We are the world, we are the children…” in that voice that’s like a parody of himself. On tape you actually see Dylan sidle up to Stevie Wonder. And damned if he, Stevie, doesn’t sing that line just like we all know it. “Bob, try it like this, (breaks into Dylan) We Are The Wo-orld…”  Bob tries it a couple times, Stevie approves,  they hit Record and Dylan does Dylan, by way of Stevie. We all need a Stevie in our lives, don’t we?