Posted on 09/27/2004 5:38:26 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
It's not easy being a counterculture icon - just ask Bob Dylan.
The unwitting voice of the Make Love, Not War Generation has written a memoir chronicling the agonies of fame, which include a plague of peaceniks so intrusive that he kept guns in his house and "wanted to set fire to these people."
In an excerpt from "Chronicles, Volume I" published in the current Newsweek, Dylan bemoans the consequences of writing "songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful new realities."
"I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of," Dylan writes.
In fact, Dylan says he had two pistols and a rifle in his upstate Woodstock home to protect his family from his rowdiest fans.
His home was once a quiet refuge, but after his success, "road maps to our homestead must have been posted in all fifty states for gangs of dropouts."
"At first, it was merely the nomadic homeless making illegal entry - seemed harmless enough, but then rogue radicals looking for the Prince of Protest began to arrive - unaccountable-looking characters, gargoyle-looking gals, scarecrows, stragglers looking to party, raid the pantry," he writes.
"Not only that, but creeps thumping their boots across our roof could even take me to court if any of them fell off. This was so unsettling. I wanted to set fire to these people."
All he ever wanted was "a nine-to-five existence" - not to be some "Big Bubba of Rebellion."
"In my real life I got to do the things that I loved the best and that was all that mattered - the Little League games, birthday parties, taking my kids to school, camping trips, boating, rafting, canoeing, fishing," he writes.
But his genius for penning songs that spoke to a generation torn apart by the Vietnam War apparently turned him into "a scapegoat - someone to lead the charge against the Roman Empire."
For Dylan, 63, the soon-to-be-published book seems to mark the recovery from what he describes in Newsweek as a 25-year "downward spiral."
He spent three years writing this first installment, but says he didn't enjoy the process.
"I'm used to writing songs," he tells Newsweek, "and songs - I can fill 'em up with symbolism and metaphors. When you write a book like this, you gotta tell the truth and it can't be misinterpreted."
Can't we keep Kerry out of this thread?
No it's not: Skooz had it right. The Beatles and the Stones are both really, really good. Dylan is really, really good---Springsteen is really, really mediocre at best. Springsteen is an inexplicable mid-Atlantic phenomenon, like Billy Joel and Bon Jovi.
Very interesting - thanks.
LOL! Well said.
He almost always sings "Christian" songs at his concerts-mostly not released on cd: "I Am The Man Thomas, City of Gold, Ain't Going To Hell For Anybody" are just a couple that come to mind.
I beleive he is Saved.
"Masters Of War" is one of the very few songs where Dylan has come out and taken issue with people's interpretations of it. He's said directly on a number of occasions that the song has "nothing to do with being anti-war," (most recently in Rolling Stone November 2001 issue) but was inspired by Eisenhower's warning about the military/industrial complex.
You can take issue with the clarity of his expression in the song - obviously it does strike most people as a simple anti-war song - but that wasn't his intent. Somehow his protestations to the contrary have always been swept under the rug. Helps keep the image of him intact as a knee-jerk lefty balladeer - which is what the good old mainstream media want to preserve. It looks like his book is going to make that harder for them ...
Everyone has written an antiwar song, even Black Sabbath! Keep in mind, Dylan wrote over 300 songs, and Master of War is the only one I can think that is radically antiwar..
I saw that same Biography, excellent job!
That alone places him in a very different category than anyone on the Left today.
Agreed. All he wanted to be is a singer. Still today, he'll sing anywhere. The man is a poet extraordinaire ..
LOL!
This reminds me of something. Remember that parody of John Lennon........?
*********
"Look! I'm not your F*ckin' parents
I resent the fact ......you come knockin' at my door, trampy clothes, peace symbols..........all I've got to say is f*ck you, the sky is blue."
That was funny!
The song ends just as cool as it begins:
I was sittin' home alone one night in L.A.
Watchin' old Cronkite on the seven o'clock news.
It seems there was an earthquake that
Left nothin' but a Panama hat
And a pair of old Greek shoes.
Didn't seem like much was happenin',
So I turned it off and went to grab another beer.
Seems like every time you turn around
There's another hard-luck story that you're gonna hear....
LMAO!
Thanks for the ping!
I read this earlier and was laughing!!
Where in the hell have you been?
My mom (born in 1933 was the first in the house to listen to him), I was born in 1958, and have always known who he was, and took my oldest daughter (born in 1985) to see Dylan in 2001. I took my wife the year before.
What have you been up to that you could not even hear of the guy?
(not that there's anything wrong with it, just puzzling)
(Like that pun?)
In honor of Bob:
Changin' With the Wind
How many dollars must George Soros spend,
deepening the muck and mire?
And how many smears must CBS lend
before Dan is finally fired?
How many polls will point out a trend
that Terry will spin 'til the end?
The answers, for Kerry, keep changing with the wind.
The answers keep changin' with the wind.
How much supply must our troops do without
before John supports our GI's?
And how come Germany and France should count,
while he insults our brave allies?
Don't actions determine where the blame should fall,
and show who is truly our friend?
The answers, for Kerry, keep changing with the wind.
The answers keep changin' with the wind.
How many victories must John cast as a loss,
invoking the quagmire of Nam?
How many biotoxins must Saddam possess
to equal the threat of a bomb?
When the Winter Soldier lied as he testified,
were his means justified by his ends?
The answers, for Kerry, keep changing with the wind.
The answers keep changin' with the wind.
You could put together a great poker playing mix with just the songs that mention cards from those 2.
It sounds like you're a Blood on the Tracks guy. Before Lilly Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts there was the times they are a changin', and blowing in the wind.
Excellent.
Dylan is not the author of that lyric you quote, Folsom Prison Blues was penned by none other than Johnny Cash.
I have a bootleg of Cash and Dylan together, what a hoot when they try to harmonize.
Listen to "Concert for Bangladesh" side 3, I think it is. The version of "Just like a woman" sounds great. While it is still Dylans voice, you can see he had potential for singing better. That whole side really sounds good..
I own just about every Bob Dylan album ever released and with a few exceptions (like "Self Portrait), he seems to put out compelling music year after year after year. I always liked Dylan's attitude. Even when he was hailed as a liberal icon (back in the early 60s), he never seemed to embrace that role wholeheartedly. Dylan always had a cynical, stand-offish way of dealing with all those flower children who worshipped the ground he walked on.
I liked the way he handled these fans when he stopped writing protest folk songs and "went electric" back in '65. He didn't give a hoot what they thought about it, even as they were showing up at his concerts and booing and throwing stuff at him.
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