Posted on 09/26/2004 9:13:49 PM PDT by naturalman1975
US folk legend Bob Dylan was an unwilling rebel who dreamt of a simple nine-to-five existence, his memoir reveals.
The icon of 1960s' counterculture also felt a prisoner in his own home, where he packed a Colt pistol and Winchester rifle in fear of "rogue radicals".
Excerpts from the memoir are published in Newsweek magazine, along with a rare interview with the singer from an unidentified motel room in the US Midwest.
The 63-year-old singer appears on the cover of the weekly magazine wearing a pearl-coloured cowboy hat and sporting a pencil-thin moustache.
The excerpts are likely to surprise, if not shock, many Dylan loyalists.
"The world was absurd ... I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of," Dylan says.
"I was fantasising about a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard.
"Roadmaps to our homestead must have been posted in all 50 states for gangs of dropouts and druggies.
"I wanted to set fire to these people."
Dylan tells how hordes of fans turned up at his family home in Woodstock. They would walk over his roof or try to break in and drove him and his family to seek refuge in New York.
Although the memoir presents Dylan as an unwilling son of the '60s, Newsweek says it is thin on landmarks in the singer's life.
"His famous 1966 motorcycle accident gets a single sentence, and there's nothing about his 1977 divorce, his 1978 conversion to evangelical Christianity or the origin and the making of such masterworks as Blood on the Tracks (1975), Slow Train Coming (1979), Infidels (1983)."
Dylan says he felt like a mannequin in a shop window as the '60s roared past.
He says his family was the most important part of his life and that "even the horrifying news items of the day, the gunning down of the Kennedys, King, Malcolm X ... I didn't see them as leaders being shot down, but rather as fathers whose families had been left wounded".
"We moved to New York for a while in hopes to demolish my identity, but it wasn't any better there. It was even worse. The neighbours hated us."
He blames his anointment as "the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Czar of Dissent" largely on the press who labelled him as the spokesman for a generation.
"The big bugs in the press kept promoting me as the mouthpiece, spokesman, or even conscience of a generation. I felt like a piece of meat that someone had thrown to the dogs.
"I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of."
He acknowledges that his lyrics "struck nerves that had never been struck before", but says he grated at the way his songs' "meanings (were) subverted into polemics".
As time passed and the '60s receded into the 1970s and then the 1980s, Dylan says he found happiness and inner peace.
"In my real life, I got to do the things that I love the best ... Little League games, birthday parties, taking my kids to school, camping trips, boating, rafting, canoeing, fishing ... I was living on record royalties."
Dylan's memoir, Chronicles, will be released by Simon and Schuster publisher David Rosenthal.
I guess this means that he's going to vote for Dubya, since they've both left all that behind.
Sounds like a Republican to me.
Looks like Bob is still dishing out horses**t to the press.
"The big bugs in the press kept promoting me as the mouthpiece, spokesman, or even conscience of a generation. I felt like a piece of meat that someone had thrown to the dogs.
"I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of."
His LP "Infidels" is still one of my fav's. He apparently has as much praise for the press as we do here :o)
A lot of my friends were crazy about Dylan. Personally he can't sing a note. I always call him , "oh, you mean that singer that talks his songs?" The guy cant sing as good as Kris Kristofferson and Kris cant sing at all.
Obviously he's doing it to fight the power and advance the course of the whole human race.
Larry Norman a voice of the 60's-70's on the Christian front also dreamed of house on a quite street too.
Howling laughter!
A lot of my friends were crazy about Dylan. Personally he can't sing a note.
For that matter, neither could Johnny Cash, but that didn't stop me from liking him either.
FWIW (for what its worth)...I think "Tangled Up in Blue" is one of the greatest songs ever written...and the Bela Fleck cover is my favorite...not that I don't like Dylans.
Soy Bomb
Delicious irony -- a major icon of the "counterculture revolution" was mostly just a big marketing gimmick.
Uh, Bob, you were a droput and a druggie. One thing you can bet on is that Dylan speaks not one word of truth to the press, who he despises.
Dylan is NO conservative. How many songs has he written about criminals being "unjustly" incarcerated?
Those words make me hear his voice.
(steely)
"SAVED" -- Bob Dylan
I was blinded by the devil
Born already ruined
Stone-cold dead
As I stepped out of the womb
By His grace I have been touched
By His word I have been healed
By His hand I have been delivered
By His spirit I Have been sealed.
I've been saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
Saved
And I'm so glad
Yes, I'm so glad
I'm so glad
So glad
I want to thank you, Lord
I just want to thank You Lord
Thank You Lord.
By his truth I can be upright
By his strength I do endure
By His power I've been lifted
In His love I am secure
He bought me with a price
Freed me from the pit
Full of emptiness and wrath
And the fire that burns in it.
I've been saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
Saved
And I'm so glad
Yes, I'm so glad
I'm so glad
So glad
I want to thank you, Lord
I just want to thank You Lord
Thank You, Lord.
Nobody to rescue me
Nobody would dare
I was going down for the last time
But by His Mercy I've been spared
Not by works
But by faith in Him who called
For so long I've been hindered
For so long I've been stalled.
I've been saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
Saved
And I'm so glad
Yes, I'm so glad
I'm so glad
So glad
I want to thank you, Lord
I just want to thank You Lord
Thank You, Lord.
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