John Sellers - Perfect from Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life

Life was something you dominated if you were any good.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, THE CRACK-UP

Youre stupid, Sellers. Sellers, youre stupid.

MILDLY RETARDED KID ON THE AUTHORS SCHOOL BUS, 1982

Youre finding out that its way too late to be happy around your friends.

I hate Bob Dylan.

Not with the kind of white-hot anger reserved for the asinine personalities of American Idol or the talk-to-the-hand disdain whipped out for the guy who replaced Michael Hutchence in INXS. This is no ordinary hate. Its primal. Its absurd. It makes me look bad. I mean, who doesnt like Bob Dylan?

Only a fool would resist the notion that Dylan might be a genius, would be reluctant to praise any of the 450-plus songs hes written, would fail to recognize that taking potshots at someone almost universally regarded as a living legend is a waste of energy. But until very recently, all of those fools were me. Every so often now, I find myself regretting my intense negative feelings toward him. There are times when I see images of him, especially as a young man, with his rats nest hairdo and fluttering eyelids, and I feel bad not to be part of the club, many millions strong, that considers him a Martin-strumming Mozart. And then I imagine shaving off his hair and gluing his eyelids shut.

This is terrible, of course. But Ive been moaning about Dylan almost since birth. Infrequently discussed, however, is the why. Why do I despise Dylan? Why do I want to press mute whenever I hear his incoherent bleating? Why am I tempted to seek out and club defenseless old ladies whenever someone plays that song about shit blowin in the wind? The reason: I was abused as a child. Not in a way that will make this book a best-seller. There are no touchy-feely priests here, no overfriendly clowns, no despotic transgendered soccer moms. What I can offer you is a dad who took whacks at me every single day for nearly two decades. Only his weapon of choice was Bob Dylan.

The next time you hear Like a Rolling Stone, try to picture a man in his early forties with a Tom Selleck mustache, clunky metal-frame glasses, and tufts of curly brown hair sitting shirtless in a cigarette-tortured, baby-shit-colored rocking chair. Hes perched Indian style, a position that strains his threadbare denim cutoffs beyond their limit, revealing areas of skin that no kid should be made to witness. Now crank up the volume: In a deeper voice and with far better enunciation than Dylans, hes singing emphatically along, occasionally puffing on a Carlton 100 or suckling at the Jar of Death, which contains a lukewarm admixture of Sanka, curdled milk, diet cola, and Carlo Rossi Chablis.

This is my dad. Or at least the version of my dad that slaps me when Dylan comes to mind. The image is seared into my brain: I saw him in this guise, or variations of it, nearly every night during my childhood. What I didnt realize then was that he was obsessed with Dylan. Totally. Actually, total obsession doesnt quite sell it. My dad was Bob Dylans willing thrall. If Dylan had ever put a backwards message on one of his records urging people to take off their clothes, don their best blue bonnets, and skip like nancys across the Mackinac Bridge, my dad would have been the first to be arrested.

Sure, he listened to music by other artistsJohn Denver,but specific examples stick out only because of their rarity. We were force-fed Dylan at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and when my dad really got going, there were Dylan aperitifs. My mom, a high school English teacher with a preference for Chopin, the Carpenters, and nonconfrontation, had long stopped protesting by the time my memories kick in; she retreated to safe zones out of earshot of the living room record player, the epicenter of the problem. She knew what my two brothers and I eventually learned: No matter how many times you ask for air-traffic-controller earmuffs, you arent going to get them. Better just to run.

There was a time when my dad viewed us kids as potential converts, blank slates upon which to etch the scripture of Dylan. Starting first with my older brother, Mark, then with me, then with Matt, hed tell us, usually over marathon sessions of canasta or Yahtzee, about living in New York City in the mid-1960s and sitting in cafs where Dylan once performed. The lyrics of Maggies Farm were explained. (Sticking it to the man, essentially.) There was a lot of Listen to this next songI think youll like it. We never did. After a while, when the blank slates proved to be far more interested in Top 40 music, he just played the records as we rolled dice or bitched about magpies, and we limited the conversation to mutual interests like baseball and chili. He might have been more successful if hed pretended to be really into James Taylor or something. I mean, next to the unparalleled earnestness of Youve Got a Friend, anything by Dylan would have compared favorably. After slapping us around for years with Taylor, he could have pulled out The Freewheelin Bob Dylan and it would have sounded as enchanting as the coos of baby Jesus. But my dad is incapable of insincerity where Dylan is concerned. He is a true believer.

Now, I dont hate Dylan because I have anything against my dadwell, aside from being denied a childhood of telescopes and Lamborghinis, a financial impossibility due to the extreme lack of demand for unambitious freelance herpetologists in west Michigan during the late 1970s and early 80s. We still get along very well. No, I hate Dylan because the music was crammed down my throat. Its like a guy getting plucked off a desert island after twelve years of eating mostly coconut. Theres no way hes eating that crap again. Instantly after my mom, in 1983, finally pulled the plug on the marriagenot even Stephen Hawking could have theorized a more unsuitable matchthe absence of Dylan in our lives was gleefully apparent: We were four shipwreck survivors gorging at a Chi-Chis. Gorging, salsa-faced and happythat is, until an unfortunate incident a few days after we moved out. The four of us had driven back to the old house to pick up a television set, the last of my moms remaining junk. The return trip was profoundly, disturbingly silent, apart from the sounds coming from the radio, which was set to a station that played a lot of Billy Squier and Styx. As if the deejay had conspired with my dad on a parting shot, the car suddenly filled with the opening electric chords of Like a Rolling Stone, and we alleven Matt, age sixlunged for the dial before that voice could kick in. Minutes later, just after we stopped laughing, my mom barreled into a drunk jaywalker, causing ridiculous amounts of mayhem. (No one died, thankfully.) Although we didnt say as much to the policemen who arrived on the scene, it was the curse of Dylan.