Bob Dylan releases his 35th studio album, Tuesday. Called “Tempest”
Even though this amazing artist is 71, and has made music regarding so many inspiring and historic events, he’s still come to terms with this day and age.
Bob Dylan describes Tempest as a record where “anything goes and you just gotta believe it will make sense” (Rolling Stones). But he claims it isn’t the record he had originally planned to make “I wanted to make something more religious,” he says. “I just didn’t have enough [religious songs]. Intentionally, specifically religious songs is what I wanted to do. That takes a lot more concentration to pull that off 10 times with the same thread – than it does with a record like I ended up with.”
Regardless, it must have taken a lot of concentration to come up with his 14 minute track labeled “The Titanic” in which he describes the sights and scenes in his mind. Of course, he wasn’t there, so the events aren’t true, many were curious about this. Dylan comments on this by saying, “A songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth. It’s like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.”
Dylan’s mention of Shakespeare raises controversy.
The playwright’s final work was called The Tempest, have some questioning that Dylan’s Tempest intended as a last work by the now 71-year-old artist? However Dylan has publically denied this. Explaining, “Shakespeare’s last play was called The Tempest. It wasn’t called just plain Tempest. The name of my record is just plain Tempest. It’s two different titles.”
