Bob Dylan - Practicing in Public

I’m reading Bob Dylan’s autobiography ‘Chronicles’ - an amazing (and amazingly written) book. It’s hard to put down.

The other night I came across the part where he’s talking about touring in the 80’s with an eye to retiring. Feeling like he was all dried up and being fine with that. He knew that he had to get through his last big tours though (one with Petty and one with the Dead) and was feeling like he almost didn’t have it in him. It was taking it’s toll and when the Dead made some requests he felt he just wasn’t up to, he walked out with the intention of not coming back.

He had a couple of revelations though that did bring him back. Not only to the Dead gigs, but which made him want to tour intensely for the next three years, perfecting a technique of playing he’d discovered that liberated him and his songs. But he realised that if he was going to do this, if he was going to play this way and perfect this technique, he was going to have to find a new audience:

“… my audience at that time had more or less grown up on my records and was past the point of accepting me as a new artist… in many ways, this audience was past its prime and its reflexes were shot. They came to stare and not participate. That was okay, but the kind of crowd that would have to find me would be the kind of crowd who didn’t know what yesterday was.”

I like that he talks about the audience having to find him. And that despite - and likely because of - his immense fame, he was going to have to roll up his sleeves and work at building a new audience. He knew exactly how he was going to do it too - playing lots of gigs in towns across the world and then going back to each of those towns a total of three times over three years in order transform his audience from the old one that was dragging him down to the new one that would push him forward.

” I figured it would take me at least three years to get to the beginning, to find the right audience, or for the right audience to find me. The reason I thought it would take three years was that after the first year a lot of the older people wouldn’t be coming back, but younger fans would bring their friends the second year so attendance would be just about equal. And in the third year, those people would also bring their friends and it would form the nucleus of my future audience. “

“WORD OF MOUTH SPREADS LIKE WILDFIRE”

Like turning a reversible coat inside out, his old audience would bring him to the new audience. He would lean on them, even if they weren’t right - because he had a connection to them. That connection would peel away into the new audience - a more fitting one. One he could look to the future with. But he had to play. He had to turn up. Just get on with it. Play and play until people got it.

“I would have to rely on word of mouth. I’d rely on that like my life depended on it. Word of mouth spreads like wildfire, doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I wished I was at least twenty years younger, wished that I had just dropped on the scene all over again. But what could you do?”

And meanwhile, onstage, he’d be perfecting his new technique.The process of building the new audience and perfecting the technique would take about the same amount of time.

FINE-TUNED OR GOOD ENOUGH FOR NOW?

Similar to using the internet to build audience around work, the line between the stage (or screen) and the audience in their seats is blurred. The line between work-in-progress and fit-for-consumption is unclear. And once that changes, so does the whole artistic process. I’m personally still struggling with it all. Figuring out what’s right for me and building a process of working on my film that balances with everything else that needs doing. I’m even questioning the process of making long-form works. Sometimes it seems stilted and counter to a steady, long-term process of artistic growth.

WHAT DYLAN CAN TEACH US

I think the key is to have a target. And to understand what the relationship is that you’re seeking. For some, this’ll be the crowdsourcing we hear about. Putting rushes or rough-cuts up on the web and seeing what sits well with people - getting feedback. Or even getting them to directly contribute to the making of the product itself. For others though , this is the wrong approach altogether. Would totally interfere with what they’re trying to do - stifle them. But if you know what you’re after - both on a personal creative level and on an audience one, you’re much more likely to get where you’re going. Kind of like envisioning something, and then just walking into it.

SOON, IN THE HOW-TO…

In the ‘Keep’ section of the how-to, we’ll cover stuff around maintaining an audience once you’ve got one and I took a leaf out of the LOLCATS book when they talk about how, when your audience is split, to choose which side to run with. Their point is like Dylan’s - to go with the ones that like what you’re doing coz that’s going to be compatable with the direction your work is taking. And in the long run that’s going to be more fulfilling and more sustainable.