I ain't lookin' to compete with you,

Beat or cheat or mistreat you,

Simplify you, classify you,

Deny, defy or crucify you...

Over the course of his seven-city, eight-show tour of the UK in April-May of 1965, Bob Dylan blazed an incandescent comet-trail stretching from Sheffield up to Newcastle and back down to the Royal Albert Hall, all the while simplifying, classifying, denying, defying and crucifying anyone who dared cross his path.

Tailing Dylan through hotel room jam sessions, limo rides, stage performances, meetings and confrontations with journalists, fans, and the High Sheriff’s Lady, was the fly on the wall, the all-seeing eye, the omnipresent lens of documentary filmmaker, D.A. Pennebaker. From this footage – over 20 hours shot on a hand-rigged camera – Pennebaker created Dont Look Back, one of the undisputed classics of cinéma vérité.

Raw, angry and immediate, it is the portrait of a young and conflicted artist in a state of uncertain flux, preparing to move far beyond the role the pop-folk universe would have him play, seeming as perplexed by the fawning fans and obsequious, celebrity-obsessed reporters as he is convinced of his own brilliance, regarding it all suspiciously, rarely allowing the mask to fall, and constantly trying to keep everyone slightly more off-balance than he.

He was very assured of who he was, but he was actually kind of inventing himself as he went along. He was like a person who had just stepped out of a Kerouac book, and there he was, in front of your eyes, and you were reading about him at the same time you were watching him. –D.A. Pennebaker1

Onstage, he is the pinnacle of hipster cool – brash, ferocious and without equal. Offstage, he is arrogant, petulant and completely insufferable. It is this, the unflinching gaze into the darker corners of Dylan’s persona that, in part, explains the film’s appeal. There are no concessions to mainstream palatability in this portrait, no smoothing over of the rough edges, no attempt to balance the spiteful outbursts against redeeming and sentimental peeks into the heart of the misunderstood artiste. Had Dont Look Back been a standard Hollywood bio-pic instead of a direct cinema documentary (say with direction by Milos Forman from a script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski), it might have become the beat version of Amadeus, with the British press cast as the uncomprehending court denizens and Donovan playing Salieri to Dylan’s Mozart. Fortunately, a true document survives.

When Pennebaker shot Dont Look Back in 1965, Dylan was already an international celebrity, the undisputed king of folk and protest music, and the undisputed heir to Woody Guthrie. At 23 years of age, he had entered a realm of celebrity reserved only for the select few, heights so lofty that only a cliché could capture them: “The voice of the counterculture.” “The voice of a generation.” “The most important artist of our time.”

And in the space of a year, he would be all but reborn. Still the growling, spitting prophet, but now snarling his sermons over the gloriously blaring, rhythm-driven cacophony of The Hawks’ blues-based rock-n-roll – alienating many and shocking most. It was a turning point of monumental proportions, and not just for Dylan.

Many of those he held in rapt awe at the 1965 shows would greet him in 1966 with hoots, jeers, and cries of “Judas!”, as he and the Band (the Hawks) blasted incendiary rock-n-roll straight into their teeth. The folkies couldn’t stand the noise. The Reds spoke suspiciously of a capitalist plot to co-opt Dylan and the folk movement. At Manchester, just before launching into Like a Rolling Stone, in the midst of whistles and slow-clapping, Dylan the Heretic would turn to the Band and sneer “Play it fucking loud...”

But that was next year.2

The change, however, was well underway. As Dylan arrived in England in 1965, his newly-released acoustic/electric album, Bringing it All Back Home, was receiving substantial airplay on London’s infamous pirate radio stations. Don’t Look Back pays homage to this early flirtation, opening with the now famous Subterranean Homesick Blues cue-card sequence, its rock-n-roll backbeat and Burroughs-like lyrics a clear harbinger of things to come. Although his live performances were all-acoustic in 1965 – just Dylan, his harp, his guitar and a spotlight – the electric revolution of 1966 seems to reveal itself unexpectedly and often in the cracks and crevasses of Dont Look Back.

Throughout the film, Dylan and the press carry on an uneasy pas-de-deux, he striking an anti-celebrity posture, arrogant and disdainful, while in turn courting, provoking and upbraiding those who throng about him. There is no chummy camaraderie between entertainer and entertainment press like that which would grow out of Rolling Stone magazine and MTV. There are no celebrity handlers, no spinners, no image-makers, no tacit recognition of the symbiotic relationship. Dylan answers all questions with either a retort or another

question, deconstructing, psychoanalyzing, abusing all comers, but occasionally seeming just on the verge of a sly grin or a wink of the eye. And when Dylan mocks himself and the significance of his songs, it is evident that he is really mocking those thrusting microphones in his face, searching for ever-elusive meaning.

These bouts with the press seem little more than a diversion to Dylan, a way to wile away the time between shows or a means by which to work out his pre-performance jitters and frustrations. He often seems distracted and distant, the spiteful patter fumbling along on auto-pilot. Occasionally, one sees him sense he’s gone too far. Pulling back, he warms his victim with eyes that hint toward a boyish smile, daring him to come for more… and then running roughshod over the first utterance.

Pennebaker’s hand-held camera is neither reverential nor antagonistic. Every now and then a particular framing wreaks faintly of composition, but there never appears to be any effort to sanitize the more sordid moments or glamorize the subject. The camera is unflinching, capturing the bad and the worse, the uneasy and the indefensible. There are no cutaways to talking heads rattling on about the meaning of it all. There are no shots of Dylan peering earnestly into the lens extolling the virtues of world peace.

Pennebaker, himself, is caught within the frame on several occasions, goofing around with Dylan, recoiling in horror, huffing mightily on a cigarette. He is not the invisible fly-on-the-wall, the hidden voyeur, and this is not candid camera. He has introduced himself into the environment and is interacting with his subjects. His presence is simply part of the equation.

No overarching theme or thesis is imposed on the action. The film is unnarrated and famous figures go unidentified. If you don’t recognize Marianne Faithfull or Allen Ginsberg or Alan Price, or even Joan Baez, you might not note their ephemeral presence (or odd disappearance.)

If there is a single narrative thread running the length of the film, it might be Donovan. Then an up-and-coming Scottish folksinger, he becomes something of Dylan’s foil and doppelganger. When his name is first mentioned, Dylan quips “Donovan who?”. As the film progresses, Donovan allusions pop up again and again, becoming something of a running joke. And when the two finally meet, it is during the film’s most tense and unsettling "scene".

A large group, including Donovan, had returned with the Dylan entourage to the Savoy Hotel. Drunken revelries commence. As we learn from the commentary, a glass is tossed from a window, shattering on a limousine parked below. The hotel is searching for the culprit and Dylan is on the prowl, none too happy about ‘being responsible for cats I don’t even know’. We see Donovan on the couch, abashed and feminine in a puppy-dog sort of way, very obviously distressed. When Dylan mutters to no one in particular, “I’ll clean it up”, Donovan all but leaps to his feet, yelping “I’ll help you!”.

But Dylan ain’t cleaning up jack-shit. Dylan is pissed. And the situation escalates further. Soused banjo-picker, Derroll Adams, intoning mellowly and calling for more drinks, gets between Dylan and an unidentified, self-proclaimed “small noise” who are standing nose to nose and seemingly about to come to blows.

Somehow, the situation is neutralized. Tempers recede. Dylan dismisses hotel security with a shrug and an apology. But the air has been sucked out of the room and a heavy unease hangs all about.

It is in this charged environment that Donovan is eventually asked for a song. He obliges with To Sing For You. It’s a catchy little diddy, but a light and fluffy one, sugar-coated, insubstantial, rather faux and obvious in its sentiments. (“…I’ll sing a song for you / that’s what I’m here to do / to sing for you…”) Dylan chuckles midway through and remarks, “Great song, man”, and you just don’t believe him for a second. When Donovan finishes, Dylan snatches his guitar and sings a deliberately strident, sneering, almost ugly version of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. Written as a piercing lament, a weary acknowledgment of the impermanence of all things, it usually reads a tad more bittersweet. Here, it sounds rather more like a rebuke. Somehow, it seems directed at the banality and sentimentality of the whole fey folkie world, at Donovan himself, who nods along, smiles, and occasionally seems to wince. And when Dylan sings “It’s all over now...” he seems to look right at Donovan, slouched in his chair across the room, utterly deflated.

The carpet, too, is moving under you,

And it's all over now, Baby Blue....

Gary Tooze

October 19th, 2015

Coming to Blu-ray in the UK by Criterion in August 2016: