Dylan and Young on the Road

By JAY COCKS

The master gets drubbed with a disciple's reputation

Take my head and change my

mind

How could people get so unkind?

--Neil Young, Human Highway

Are you gonna stake your

reputation

Are you gonna make your

observation

Are you gonna turn your back on

that lost sheep now?

--Bob Dylan, Bowling Alley Blues

Bob Dylan holds a lot of markers.

There isn't a musician writing or playing rock 'n' roll today who does not owe him, not a songwriter who hasn't passed through--even sometimes settled in--territory that Dylan explored and posted years ago. All Dylan has been collecting on his debts lately, however, is puzzled, sometimes indifferent concert audiences and a critical bloodying for his latest album, Street-Legal.

Neil Young has spent over a decade writing finely shaded, sometimes frighteningly intense personal music that dances right around the edges of Dylan's long shadow. Young, a firm Dylan loyalist, also has a new record out, Comes a Time, and last week he completed his most extensive tour in years. Dylan continues on a three-month barnstorming blitz, playing St. Paul in his home territory of Minnesota this week. Earlier both converged on New York City at the same time. Young played to wildly partisan crowds, while Dylan kept his audience at arm's length and flummoxed even the aficionados. The inevitable result of this near collision on what Young calls "the human highway" has been Dylan's getting drubbed with his disciple's reputation.

Dylan's reputation, in historical perspective if not current application, is immense, possibly unrivaled. Young is a more insular artist whose stormy tenure with Crosby, Stills and Nash brought him his first fast shot of celebrity. Twelve subsequent solo albums have sold erratically but, all together, form a body of work hard to beat for reckless honesty and his own kind of compound romanticism, which can veer sharply from sentimental to sulfuric at the bend of a lyric. Dylan both mocked and gloried in his informal ordination as a generation's prophet. Young, fully as ambitious in his music, kept closer to the ground than Dylan and sneaked into rock's pantheon like a highwayman.

Comes a Time is a choice Young album; also, like all his records, it is inconsistent. A relaxed and cozy mood prevails, similar to the previous Harvest but pitched lower than the disconcerting brilliance of On the Beach and Tonight's the Night. Whether at his peak or just marking time, Young is an incessant worker; he has about 200 songs recorded but unreleased. The tunes all share a rough, unfinished quality that is often disarming, sometimes just rushed. Young works best at the full pitch of his feelings, does not seem to wait around for second thoughts. Comes a Time contains deft insights ("I can't believe how love lasts a while/ And looks like forever in the first place") and the occasional turns of phrase ("In the field of opportunity/ It's plowing time again") that grate and shudder like bad brakes on a heavy rig.

The best songs on Dylan's undervalued Street-Legal are heartbroken ballads, wounded, surly and defenseless by turns. Dylan delivers them in typically left-field fashion, backed by three women singers as he lets the songs rip like some Bleecker Street parody of a Vegas lounge lizard. In concert, with billowing shirt, plunging neckline and a crooner's microphone calisthenics, Dylan works his way through his standard repertory and sometimes looks as if he is auditioning for The Gong Show.

Young's act, on the other hand, runs more smoothly and looks more elaborate, takes a strong shot at bridging the cultural tides that have flowed through his decade of writing. Crowd noises and p.a. bulletins from Woodstock are the chosen souvenirs of the high '60s; roadies dressed as the Jawas from Star Wars, complete with monks' cowls and eyes flashing like Evereadys, take matters up to the minute. Young sings several of his unreleased songs. Two of them--a rock-'n'-roll anthem called Out of the Blue and into the Black ("The king is gone but he's not forgotten/ This is a song about Johnny Rotten") and a long, spooky tune called Powderfinger -- are among the best things he has done. But Young is not immune to the coyness and irresolution that plague Dylan. Roadies from Star Wars and sound mixers in wizard regalia can get as tiresome as Dylan's mocking show-biz turns. The difference is that Young continues to write well and grow, while Dylan seems stalled right now. Times have not gone past him so much as Dylan has put himself into a kind of precarious suspension. Instead of making the music an intimate form of expression, Dylan seems to be estranged from it, and from himself too. It is this conflict that turns his concerts into renegade raids on his own riches. Young, more fixed and focused, goes on hoarding his highwayman's treasure and enhancing it. -Jay Cocks

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