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."
I bet a lot of aging hippies are getting deeply depressed even as we speak.
Dylan is one of my all time favorites. If you listen to a lot of his songs, you have to wonder why all the peaceniks were so enamored with him. Cardgames, gunfights, fighting, all were prominent in Dylan songs. The Dead to a lesser extent were the same way. I have always thought Dylan was a closet conservative..
Never heard of him. I was born in 1946.
Are you listening, John Edwards?
Did you say "stillborn" in 1946!!
I never liked Dylan, never got him. I always thought his music was basicly devoid of meaning, even when I was a hippy radical. In the sixties, my college friends would spend hours analyzing his poetry. I thought it was mostly meaningless rhymes.
I may have to take another look at him.
Bob Dylan Ping!
Thanks for posting this BLL!
I've known this about Dylan for a long time. The guy never protested the Vietnam War -- all his so-called "protest" albums were released pre '64. At about that time he saw that he was being adopted by the folksy hippie-dippy types and abruptly changed course with Bring it all Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited (1965). .....all-time rockers. He's always been a rebel.
BUMP FOR BOB DYLAN!
"Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen."
Or "Shot a man named Grey, and took his wife to Italy...?"
Check out the albums Time Out of Mind ('96) and Oh Mercy ('88).
LOL.... i'm not sure that's a statement that makes you appear "well read". It's one thing to like or not like Dylan.... it's a completely different one to say you never heard of him....
Saw Bob in Concert in Birmingham, AL last year. He looks like death warmed over (Think Kieth Richards on a bad hair day), but played for almost 3 hrs and brought the house down. One of the best concerts I have been to in a long long time.
While you're at it, check out his lyrics for the song "Property of Jesus":
Go ahead and talk about him because he makes you doubt,
Because he has denied himself the things that you can't live without.
Laugh at him behind his back just like the others do,
Remind him of what he used to be when he comes walkin' through.
He's the property of Jesus
Resent him to the bone
You got something better
You've got a heart of stone
Stop your conversation when he passes on the street,
Hope he falls upon himself, oh, won't that be sweet
Because he can't be exploited by superstition anymore
Because he can't be bribed or bought by the things that you adore.
He's the property of Jesus
Resent him to the bone
You got something better
You've got a heart of stone
When the whip that's keeping you in line doesn't make him jump,
Say he's hard-of-hearin', say that he's a chump.
Say he's out of step with reality as you try to test his nerve
Because he doesn't pay no tribute to the king that you serve.
He's the property of Jesus
Resent him to the bone
You got something better
You've got a heart of stone
Say that he's a loser 'cause he got no common sense
Because he don't increase his worth at someone else's expense.
Because he's not afraid of trying, 'cause he don't look at you and smile,
'Cause he doesn't tell you jokes or fairy tales, say he's got no style.
He's the property of Jesus
Resent him to the bone
You got something better
You've got a heart of stone
You can laugh at salvation, you can play Olympic games,
You think that when you rest at last you'll go back from where you came.
But you've picked up quite a story and you've changed since the womb.
What happened to the real you, you've been captured but by whom?
He's the property of Jesus
Resent him to the bone
You got something better
You've got a heart of stone
btt
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