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.
No doubt. I'd love to ask him why he didn't.
Perhaps he should have written a song about this in protest.
"What Was it You Wanted?" fits.
Jimmy Carter did mean it and has authored several books on faith. That is unless he's trying to hijack Christianity...
This has always been one of my favorite Dylan tunes.
Maybe his inspiration for it was more than just Israel?
Neighborhood Bully
Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man
His enemies say he's on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He's the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive
He's criticized and condemned for being alive
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He's the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He's wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He's always on trial for just being born
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he could apologize
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, the chances are against it, and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, he got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep He's the neighborhood bully.
Every empire that's enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one's command
He's the neighborhood bully.
Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract that he signed was worth that what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He's the neighborhood bully.
What's anybody indebted to him for ?
Nothing, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed
He's the neighborhood bully.
What has he done to wear so many scars ?
Does he change the course of rivers ?
Does he pollute the moon and stars ?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully.
And the Clash was some sort of gun rights' activists after a run-in with the police.
In 1978, actually. His first "gospel" album was Slow Train Coming, released the following year.
Thanks - when was All Along the Watchtower written - it seemed to be pretty thick with Christian imagery?
Bump this for the evening shift
Restless Pilgrim bump!
You wrote:
"Add in the fact that he was tight with people like Joan Baez ( they lived together for a while ) and Allen Ginsberg ( no America lover ), and it is easy to form misconceptions of the man."
Good point, but I wanted to make a point in favor of Baez. After the Vietnam War was over and the north Vietnamese ruled the country, Baez protested the brutal actions of the Vietnamese Communist government. She took a great deal of criticism from fellow leftists on that point, but didn't back down. Thus, both Baez and Dylan had more principles that many conservatives realize.
" After the Vietnam War was over and the north Vietnamese ruled the country, Baez protested the brutal actions of the Vietnamese Communist government. She took a great deal of criticism from fellow leftists on that point, but didn't back down "
I was unaware of that . Thanks for the heads up !
Bob has said it isn't an anti-war song. It's an anti-war- profiteering song. Marine General Smedley Butler, who wrote the great book "War Is A Racket", would have liked it.
Bob's songs were more about right and wrong and being clean and decent than about irresponsible sex and drugs.
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