Posted on 12/27/2004 11:51:13 PM PST by goldstategop
just read a fascinating book – "Chronicles, Volume 1" by Bob Dylan.
There are some real surprises in this book.
Most of us baby boomers thought of Dylan as a man with a political agenda. It turns out Dylan wasn't trying to lead anyone anywhere. He just wanted to be a singer-songwriter.
It's quite a revelation, and Dylan has an interesting way of telling the story.
Dylan was a private man who tried to put his family first. He didn't want to get caught up in the '60s activism. He was conspicuously absent from Woodstock, Altamont and all the other big festivals and protests of the era.
He writes of an introduction he received at the Newport Folk Festival that made him shudder.
Ronnie Gilbert, one of the Weavers, told the audience: "And here he is ... take him, you know him, he's yours."
"I had failed to sense the ominous forebodings in that introduction," writes Dylan.
Elvis had never been introduced like that. "Take him, he's yours!" What a crazy thing to say! Screw that. As far as I knew, I didn't belong to anybody then or now. I had a wife and children whom I loved more than anything else in the world. I was trying to provide for them, keep out of trouble, but the big bugs in the press kept promoting me as a mouthpiece, spokesman, or even conscience of a generation. That was funny. All I'd ever done was sing 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 goes on to talk about just how estranged he was from the values of that generation while trying to live a quiet life in Woodstock, N.Y. He sensed people wanted him to lead the charge against the Roman Empire.
"But America wasn't the Roman Empire and someone else would have to step up and volunteer," he writes. "I really was never any more than what I was – a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze. Now it had blown up in my face and was hanging over me. I wasn't a preacher performing miracles."
When Dylan and his family first moved to the quiet, rural town of Woodstock, it offered a sanctuary for them. Later, intruders started breaking in day and night.
"Tensions mounted almost immediately and peace was hard to come by," he writes.
At one time the place had been a quiet refuge, but now, no more. Roadmaps to our homestead must have been posted in all 50 states for gangs of dropouts and druggies. Moochers showed up from as far away as California on pilgrimages. Goons were breaking into our place all hours of the night. 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.
Dylan had a few firearms, but the local police cautioned that if he used them to defend his property and family – or even fired warning shots – that it would be he who found himself in jail. He was also worried that "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. These gate-crashers, spooks, trespassers, demagogues were all disrupting my home life."
Dylan wanted to get away. And the place he wanted to go might surprise many of his fans.
"I don't know what everybody else was fantasizing about, but what I was fantasizing about was a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard," he writes. "That would have been nice. That was my deepest dream."
It wasn't that Dylan was apolitical. He was just so out of step with those around him that he didn't feel like he could talk about it.
"I had a primitive way of looking at things and I liked country fair politics," he writes.
My favorite politician was Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, who reminded me of Tom Mix, and there wasn't any way to explain that to anybody. I wasn't comfortable with all the psycho polemic babble. It wasn't my particular feast of food. Even the current news made me nervous, I liked old news better. All the new news was bad.
It turns out Dylan was more iconoclastic than any of us ever realized.
His book is a great read for anyone who lived through the '60s. You'll never look at Dylan or his generation the same way again.
He was no fundamentalist, that is for sure.
the press kept promoting me as a mouthpiece, spokesman, or even conscience of a generation. That was funny. All I'd ever done was sing 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.
I find this hard to believe. Are we talking about the same Bob Dylan? Not really, he is forty years older now and he sees things differently. But, I still remember.
I believe you are wrong about that.
Interesting, thanks; Thanks!
Very interesting article. I know that GA Jimmy also tried to ride the Bob Dylan popularity in the political sphere.
"He's up for a Nobel Peace Prize this year in Journalism for his songwriting"
If he did he wouldn't have had people all over his roof.
I don't know what you remember but what I remember is the attempts of every Leftist to claim Dylan as a fellow traveler and his determined silence outside his songs. Many a anti-war rally advertised his upcoming presence and every one was disappointed when he never showed.
His early songs were of a social protest nature generally associated with Leftism but which also appealed to those who just had a concern about Justice and Injustice eminently American concerns.
Then you dont know what a Fundamentalist is.
Welcome to the online home of The Fundamentals. This site will eventually contain all four volumes of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, published by Baker Books. The site is intended to serve as a resource for and defense of essential Christian doctrine, as was intended by those men who authored The Fundamentals and those who funded the work.
http://www.xmission.com/~fidelis/index.html
I thought him to be a radical. I am a child of the 60's. Couldn't stand his voice. did enjoy many of his songs (or poems). Maybe I'll take a look at it. Thanks.
Now that is quick information. He converted to Christianity I believe in the late 50s early 60s and the references and allusions start to make a heavy presence.
Here's an excerpt.
For those hoping that Dylan’s fanaticism was only a one-shot deal, Saved was proof that his convictions were real. "By His grace I have been touched, by His word I have been healed, by His hand I've been delivered, by His spirit I've been sealed" went the title song and the rest of the album followed suit.
While it contained a few of Dylan’s best "gospel" songs—"Solid Rock" and "In the Garden" stand beside any of his best—the album seemed uninspired.
His next album Shot of Love contained songs that were not explicitly Christian—although most were along the lines of "Property of Jesus" and "Every Grain of Sand"—and by Infidels in 1983, with only one song, "Man of Peace," directly religious in content, the rumors began to fly. A New York magazine headline read, "Dylan Ditching Gospel?"
Today, the general opinion is that Dylan flirted with Christianity the same as he did with amphetamines or country music in the ‘60s, abandoning them for whatever his next phase was.
But in Restless Pilgrim (Relevant Books), Marshall argues that Dylan has maintained his Christian beliefs. "I think he’s mellowed, but it’s a reasonable conclusion that Dylan has maintained his faith in Jesus, as expressed through his songs," says Marshall. "I don’t think I’m projecting my personal beliefs on Dylan, because I listened to Dylan before I was Christian, and I didn’t even listen to those records, I guess because I thought they were too religious, maybe. And once I had my experience, I was curious as to what happened to Dylan, and when I heard those songs, I was like, ‘Whoa!’ I knew something had happened to him when I heard those songs, they were right to the heart."
Dylan is one of my favorite songwriters. As you said, His early songs were of a social protest nature generally associated with Leftism. He may say that he was doing what good writers do, reflecting the mood of the times, which he was. As a matter of fact, he was doing it so well and even seeing what the rest of us could not see yet, that sure looks like leadership to us uncomplicated types.
Masters of war mp3 file:
http://praxeology.net/mastersofwar2.mp3
oops...sorry! My mistake.
Perhaps he should have written a song about this in protest.
Now Jimmy Carter was one politician who was not harassed for talking about being Christian...
The left have tried time and time again to annoint a Pied Piper to bring people over to their side. Why is it any surprise that they tried to co-opt the songs of Bob Dylan when they co-opted Rock and Roll and have rewritten the history of punk rock to say that IT TOO was political; if anything punk was a response against hippie/liberal political correctness.
www.rightwingbob.com
Democrat Presidents that regularly attend church and invoke God in their speeches do so completely unmolested by the left, while Presidents that do exactly the same thing get crucified. I mentioned this to a lefty friend of mine who responded "that's because we know that the Democrat Presidents don't mean it."
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