Chronicles: Volume One

In January 1987, Dylan severely damaged his hand in a freak accident. He thought he might not be able to play music again, especially after years of “exploiting whatever talent [he] had beyond the breaking point” (145). Dylan had already been struggling to capture the “intimacy” of his music in live performances, though he felt that listening to him play was probably “like going through deserted orchards and dead grass” (146), despite finding some new techniques to “call [his songs] up from the grave” (146). Dylan was “whitewashed and wasted out professionally” (147). He felt as if he had sunk into “the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion” (147) and struggled to find inspiration or relevance. On tour with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Dylan felt as if his discography was like “a package of heavy rotting meat” (148); he could no longer relate to or understand most of his songs, so he stuck to playing the same ones over and over. On one of the tour’s breaks, Dylan was set to play some shows with The Grateful Dead. When The Dead wanted to play some of his “seldom seen” songs, Dylan “couldn’t see how [he] could get this stuff off emotionally” (149) and left rehearsal.