March 16, 2009

Together for Life

From Pitchfork:

If I were Bob Dylan, I would spend my days in sweatpants watching "The Price Is Right", eating fresh strawberries and cream, and maybe getting up to sign off on a few official bootlegs every few months.

It's a good thing I'm not Bob Dylan. After revising what it means to be a rock star, bringing the idea of rock'n'roll to something close to high art, and becoming the legend among legends, Dylan is still going at age 67. As previously reported, he's coming out with a new studio album-- his 46th-- called Together Through Life. The LP comes out April 28 via Columbia. That picture of an old-school couple making out in the backseat of a giant car is the sure-to-be-scrutinized cover.

The self-produced affair (under Dylan's Jack Frost alias) follows 2006's Modern Times and was inspired in part by French director Olivier Dahan's upcoming film My Own Love Song with Renée Zellweger, Forest Whitaker, and Nick Nolte. Dylan wrote the new song "Life Is Hard" for the road trip flick and then Together Through Life "sort of took its own direction," according to an interview with the songwriter now up on his site.

In the chat with longtime rock journo Bill Flanagan, Dylan talks about the heavy influence of Chess Records on the new album and how his recent artistic resurgence has changed his creative viewpoint: "If there's an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it's not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up."

Dylan invented and then figured out how to break almost every rock stereotype there is, so it's only right that he continues to age with striking grace.

Dylan's never-ending tour continues this spring with a six week trek through Europe.



I'm giddy.

2 comments:

Ben Stein said...

Outstanding!

Anonymous said...

to not be giddy at this point would be a shame