Bangs v. Dylan

I spent the morning plowing through 457 pages of Dylan interviews, then picked up Thompson & Gutman's "Dylan Companion" and looked up of a favorite (very Pauline Kael) Lester Bangs riff, from March of '76:"'Desire' is a sham and a fakeout," Bangs wrote. "Ignoring the 'El Paso' rewrites and ersatz Kristofferson plodders like 'One More Cup of Coffee' (which is easy), we come at length (and it is a reflection of neither generosity or inspiration that side two of this album is almost 30 minutes long) to 'Sara,' wherin Dylan, masks off, naming names, rhapsodises over his wife in mawkish images (Sweet virgin angel... radiant jewel), cheap bathos (when in doubt, drag in the kids playing in the sand on the beach), simple groveling (You must forgive me my unworthiness), and most indicatively of 'Desire' as a whole, outright lies. To wit: 'I'd taken the cure and had jus gotten through/Stayin' up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/Writin' Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for you.'"Bullshit. I have it on pretty good authority that Dylan wrote 'Sad-eyed Lady,' as well as about 1/2 of the rest of 'Blonde on Blonde,' wired out of his skull in the studio, just before the songs were recorded, while the session men sat around waiting on him, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. It has been suggested to me that there are better things to do with albums than try to figure out what drug the artist was on when he made them, but I think this was one case where the chemical definitely affected the content of the music. Those lyrics were a speed trip, and if he really *did* spend days on end sitting up in the Chelsea sweating over line like 'your streetcar visions which you place on the grass' then he is stupider than we ever gave him credit for."