James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown takes its title from one of the most famous rock songs of all time and most of its information from Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties . Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone” has been covered by artists as disparate as Bob Marley and the Wailers, Green Day and the actual Rolling Stones, while Wald’s book uses 368 pages to explain the cultural significance of just 24 hours in Bob Dylan’s storied career. A whole industry has grown up around Dylan, with followers collecting books about him, bootleg recordings and, in one case, even rooting through his trash can (a stunt that crossed a line for more serious “Dylanologists”).
He has been touring regularly, all over the world, for 60 years, and yet he remains a riddle wrapped in an enigma. His lyrics are indelible but slippery; arguments still rage about the subject of “Like a Rolling Stone”; some say it’s about Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol’s doomed superstar and allegedly an old flame, but while the actress might seem a perfect fit, the timeframe doesn’t quite match. Some have even said that “Like a Rolling Stone” might even be about Dylan himself, and his uneasy relationship with fame (on “Idiot Wind”, on 1975’s Blood on the Tracks LP, he sings, “You’ll find out when you reach the top, you’re on the bottom.
”) It’s this restlessness and endless need for self-deconst.
