Bob Dylan and the Spirit of Wrestling

The main reason I post about wrestling so often on this blog is the obvious one: I genuinely, unironically love the professional wrestling. Its the only sport (alright, "sport") I've ever been able to follow with any real interest and for any prolonged period of time. It delivers all that "real" sports promise, such as drama, personality and, most of all, violence. I've never been able to fathom what it is that compells people to pay attention to any sport if not the possibility of a random, horrific injury. Isn't football haunted by the spectre of Joe Theismann? Aren't basketball fans secretly hoping for another "punch"? Don't even get me started on NASCAR.

And just so you don't think I'm a complete ghoul, the "drama" and "personality" I alluded to are every bit as important. How can any football fan pretend to distinguish between, let alone care about, a gang of 'roided-out delinquients made visually interchangable by acres of helmets, padding and protective gear? Team sports in general leave me cold anyway; deep down, I'm just not much of a joiner. If I'm going to let myself get swept away by some sporting event, its because I've bet all my emotional chips on one particular human. That being the case, what "legit" sports do I have to choose from? Boxing? No thanks - too arriviste, too mafia, too Trump.

So I'm left with pro wrestling (or, if I'm desperate, UFC-type brawls, which, I'll admit, is the next best thing). If I was writing a loooooong essay concerned only with the virtues of wrestling, this is where I'd drag out the Roland Barthes quotes. But! I've got bigger fish to fry! I've got to go from the squared circle to Bob Dylan and back again! And I gotta be at work tomorrow! So: for now, all you get is the a demonstration of the link between pro wrestling and great rock 'n' roll, Bob Dylan edition.

Richard Meltzer's notes for the Dictators' Fuck 'Em If They Can't Take a Joke LP (available now as a CD called New York, New York), "The Spirit of Wrestling", spells out the relationship between r'n'r and the One Good Sport more explicitly than anything before or since. It asks a question - what was so great about the Dictators? - and posits an answer - they had the spirit of wrestling!

"The Dictators knew what was missing and in their infinite generosity eventually they told us: THE SPIRIT OF WRESTLING. Elvis had it. Little Richard had it. God knows Jerry Lee had it. I mean shit, in those days teevee was an educational experience. Wrestling was on eleven days a week so it hadda osmose. The stoopid, bombastic grandeur of it all! Heppest showcase of wild 'n' krazy licks in the annals thereof! Sure it's fixed but so's chord progression!

"...Always two steps ahead of the pack, they also realized that in the world of goodguys and badguys it was the designated bad-asses who had all the great holds, all the creative dynamics of scattergun you-name-it, all the everlovin' PERSONA. Freddie Blassie, Killer Kowalski, Stan 'The Man' Stasiak - these were the 'Tators' touchstones of the great big buzz in the sky.

"...[T]hese inspired assholes of derring-do became the most fearsome five-man tagteam ever to venture 'tween the ropes, and certainly the first R&R combo to fully acknowledge the ropes that can't help but separate bands from, uh, paying customers. By early '74...the Dictators had already finely tuned an attitude of CONFRONTATION W/AN AUDIENCE that's still gotta be an all-time landmark of the genre. So intimidating was their presence that even when they were merely in the audience themselves they tended to catalyze this & that..."

Any readers sufficiently up on their Dylanology will be able to find examples for all of this. I mean, hello, "wild 'n' krazy licks?" "Great holds?" "Creative dynamics of etc.?" "PERSONA?" "CONFRONTATION WITH AN AUDIENCE?"

Okay, maybe. But did he really have the "spirit of wrestling?" Did he ever consciously seek out the approval of the great gods of the squared circle? I mean, okay, he probably saw his fair share of AWA matches on TV (he was from Duluth after all...), but he certainly didn't find any kind of aesthetic model or performative influence in the antics of Nick Bockwinkel or Otto Wanz or...or...hell, even Gorgeous George, did he? Did he?!?!?!???

From Chronicles, Volume One, pgs. 43-44.

"...There was a lot of halting and waiting, little acknowledgment, little affirmation, but sometimes all it takes is a wink or a nod from some unexpected place to vary the tedium of a baffling existence.

"This happened to me when Gorgeous George the great wrestler came to my hometown. In the mid-'50s I was performing in the lobby of the National Guard Armory, the Veterans Memorial Building, the site where all the big shows happened - the livestock shows and hockey games, circuses and boxing shows, traveling preacher revivals, country-and-western jamborees. I'd seen Slim Whitman, Hank Snow, Webb Pierce and a lot of others there. Once a year or so, Gorgeous George would bring his whole troupe of performers to town: Goliath, The Vampire, The Twister, The Strangler, The Bone Crusher, The Holy Terror, midget wrestlers, a couple of lady wrestlers, and a whole lot more. I was playing on a makeshift platform in the lobby of the building with the usual wild activity of people milling about, and no one was paying much attention. Suddenly, the doors burst open and in came Gorgeous George himself. He roared in like the storm, didn't go through the backstage area, he came right through the lobby of the building and he seemed like forty men. It was Gorgeous George, in all his magnificent glory with all the lightning and vitality you'd expect. He had valets and was surrounded by women carrying roses, wore a majestic fur-lined gold cape and his long blond curls were flowing. He brushed by the makeshift stage and glanced towards the sound of the music. He didn't break stride, but he looked at me, eyes flashing with moonshine. He winked and seemed to mouth the phrase 'You're making it come alive.'

"Whether he really said it or not, it didn't matter. It's what I thought I head him say that mattered, and I never forgot it. It was all the recognition and encouragement I would need for years to come. Sometimes that's all it takes, the kind of recognition that comes when you're doing the right thing for the thing's sake and you're on to something - it's just that nobody recognizes it yet. Gorgeous George. A mighty spirit. People said that he was as great as his race. Maybe he was. Inevitably, I would soon lose the band that was playing with me in the lobby of the Veterans building. Someone else had seen them and took them. I'd have to work on my connections. It was beginning to dawn on me that I would have to learn how to play and sing by myself and not depend on a band until the time I could afford to pay and keep one. Connections and credentials would have to become an irrelevancy, but I did feel good for a moment. Crossing paths with Gorgeous George was really something."

Happy birthday, Bob.