Bob Dylan's Argument With A Leftist

In 1964, Bob Dylan released the album "Another Side Of Bob Dylan." While he later complained that he didn't pick the title - feeling that it was "overstating the obvious"(Biograph, 1985) - the album was a departure of sorts, with its unabashed emphasis on the exploration of the internal world, and its lack of obvious "protest" songs. (In fairness to Dylan, he had never released anything on record that was merely a finger-pointing protest song, and he had already written and released numerous and exquisite personal songs like "One Too Many Mornings" and "Boots Of Spanish Leather.")

This album contained a fairly direct kind of artistic manifesto, in the form of "My Back Pages," where Dylan clearly is relishing his maturation and his feeling of being liberated from the bonds of narrow political thought.

"Equality," I spoke the word As if a wedding vow. .... Good and bad, I define these terms Quite clear, no doubt, somehow. Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

"Is a play or a movie on our side or on the other side? That's a choked, suffocating way to view this life, for anyone."

Good point. If one is determined to discover a political component to anything and everything you'll surely find it, but what's the point? Dylan's carefully constructed political ambiguity has allowed the left to reflexively claim him as one of their own. It's high time someone approached his work from a different perspective.

I agree with you. And the whole idea of Dylan being a dyed-in-the-wool leftie rests on one big lie, long past time to be thoroughly refuted: that he spent the 1960s writing songs against the Vietnam war. All the songs that people associate with that (Blowing In The Wind, Masters Of War, on and on) were written when Vietnam was just a twinkle in JFK's eye. Dylan never wrote a song about that war during the '60s, and never came out against it in an interview, despite the often hysterical demands that he should. Confronted with the question by Nat Hentoff in late 1965, this is what ensued:

PLAYBOY MAG (Hentoff): How do you feel about those who have risked imprisonment by burning their draft cards to signify their opposition to U. S. involvement in Vietnam, and by refusing - as your friend Joan Baez has done - to pay their income taxes as a protest against the Covernment's expenditures on war and weaponry? Do you think they're wasting their time?

DYLAN: Burning draft cards isn't going to end any war. It's not even going to save any lives. If someone can feel more honest with himself by burning his draft card, then that's great; but if he's just going to feel more important because he does it, then that's a drag. I really don't know too much about Joan Baez and her income-tax problems. The only thing I can tell you about Joan Baez is that she's not Belle Starr.

- All this is not to imply that Dylan endorsed the war, per se. That would be (only) equally inaccurate to saying that he opposed it. Point is, he's kept himself above partisan frays (unlike Bruce and Co. right now) and written his songs at a more timeless level. And it's worth noting that at the height of the Vietnam protest era he was releasing John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline - albums which glory in Americana, instead of mocking it.

Hopefully this website will feature explorations of that and other topics as time goes by.

Yes indeed. The Arabs have been smarting about that one ever since. Seriously though, I fail to see anyone else who's approached that topic in song with anything like Dylan's perspective and clarity - or approached it at all. No problem finding a million songs about the rainforest though. And it's another case where Dylan did something that the left didn't like, so they have dismissed it as an isolated, misguided moment. A fundamentalist fit.

String 'em all together and you can call it a career.

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