Review: ‘A Complete Unknown’

♩ There are diamonds on the river,
diamonds floatin’ free,
there are diamonds on the river,
just a lookin’ at me ♩
Bim Bimbi Blues by Ian Curr

I owe this song accompanied on harmonica to Bob Dylan, at least in part. The words and the tune are mine but the idiom is down to Bob Dylan or, more correctly, to the band of musicians that surrounded Robert Zimmerman when he was becoming Dylan, when he was a complete unknown. Those musicians included Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.

I used to roam like Woody, sleeping beside the road, in dry creek beds, in the hills, and beside the ocean. Come the holidays, I would get my mother to drive me out to the highway out near Ipswich and begin hitchhiking south (usually). Australia is a big country, I never made it across the Nullarbor, but I hid in dark bushes in Tailem Bend in South Australia to escape a local copper. I helped a truckie get his load of molasses from Murwillumbah to Sydney down through Devil’s pitch, crunching the gears, him high on amphetamines and me trying to split the diff.*

Along the way I would keep myself from being lonely by singing Dylan songs like Mr Tambourine Man Like a Rolling Stone and “Times They Are a-Changin'”, even if they weren’t. Dylan’s hand-written lyrics of this song were purchased recently by a hedge fund manager for nearly a half $1 million.

“They dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand floating free, circled by the circus sands, silhouetted by the sea, forgetting about today until tomorrow” now comes to mind. Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine, I’m on the pavement thinking about the government is another one that I sang on the road. I can remember the coloured lights of semi trailers streaming along the road to Warwick, in the night time, as I tried to grab a lift to Sydney.

The film, A Complete Unknown begins and ends with Woody Guthrie. Dylan visits Woody in a hospital in New Jersey and sings Woody’s song that he made for such an occasion as this:

I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin’ a road other men have gone down
I’m seein’ your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings

Woody has had a stroke and he gives Dylan an harmonica. Witnessed by Pete Seeger, the baton has been passed. At the end of the film, Dylan offers the harmonica back to the dying Woody, thinks better of it, and keeps it as a gesture that he has accepted Woody’s legacy.

Between the beginning and end, Dylan forms relationships with Sylvie and Joan. Sylvie is a painter in Greenwich Village and Joan is already a famous folk singer. Joan brings Dylan into the limelight after she notices him perform in The Gaslight, a haunt of beatniks, dropouts, poets, stand-up comedians and folk singers.

Joan Baez captured her feelings about Dylan in her song Diamonds and Rust, a bit of a theme developing here.

Well, you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
…
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes, the girl on the half-shell
Could keep you unharmed

Dylan captured his feelings in It Ain’t Me Babe:

It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe
Go lightly from the ledge, babe
Go lightly on the ground
I’m not the one you want, babe
I will only let you down

Joan made her own choices, she did get to do a lot of Dylan covers. Both Joan and Bob sang at the civil rights march on Washington in 1963 where a quarter of million people heard Martin Luther King dream of racial equality, Free at last, free at last and the crowd sang

Oh we, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Just like a tree planted by the water
We shall not be moved

All this was happening at the time of the Cuban missile crisis when Kennedy took the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust. In response, Dylan penned Masters of War:

Let me ask you one question Is your money that good? Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could? I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul

He sang that song in the Gaslight where he was once again noticed by Joan Baez. Joan Baez never stopped calling out the masters of war. nor did Pete Seeger who died in 2014.

Encouraged by Johnny Cash, Dylan went electric at his third appearance at the Newport folk festival in 1965. Newport had reached its peak. He sang Maggies Farm and Like a Rolling Stone accompanied by organ and him playing a Fender electric guitar. The crowd was not amused, some booed. Later in Manchester he was called ‘Judas‘. By way of atonement, he sang It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue accompanied by acoustic guitar. I was enchanted by the organ and often tried to play one in a share house back in the 1970s.

If you’re travelin’ in the north country fair / Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline / Remember me to one who lives there / She once was a true love of mine / If you go when the snowflakes storm / When the rivers freeze and summer ends.

How does it feel to be a complete unknown like a rolling stone?

Pete Seeger tried to hold it all together, but it all went bad.

Playing with and delving into people’s private lives like this film does is very intrusive. We shouldn’t forget that.

Nonetheless, go and see it.

Ian Curr
24 Jan 2025

* ‘split the diff’ is a way of changing gears by keeping the axle speed at the same rotation as the engine speed. where diff refers to the differential.