You happened onto one of my expert subjects-—I really have no excuse now that I’m retired to actually write and submit a book I’ve been researching on Bob Dylan. Last time I counted I had 110 books on him and many on related topics. That started with the first 2 books on him in the early 1970s. I of course do not agree with his spokesman of the left early days and neither does he.
I probably could bore anyone into tears and then peaceful slumber talking about the subject. Sort of like my usual posts on politics here on FR.
My favorite Bob Dylan quotes: (after lovingly describing his early guns, 2 Colt pistols and a Winchester rifle) in 1981 he said on gun control: “I don’t think gun control is making any difference at all. It just makes it harder for the people who need to be protected.”
When told my the local sheriff that the crazed druggies who actually broke into his house several times and one threatened his wife when home alone, and two others had just had sex when discovered in his bed, the Sheriff said if Bob Dylan did anything to the intruders he would be arrested—he reassured everyone but the sheriff: “If anybody tries anything again I am ready for them.”
He took it seriously that George Harrison and his wife were almost killed by a knife attacker. One woman Bob Dylan stalker eluded police for months and managed to come up into his recording studio by a rear freight elevator and had to be tackled.
I could give you my whole theory about how Dylan inadvertently and unintentionally brought about the co-opting of rock and roll culture by the Left, who started out hating rock music in the late 50’s and early 60’s.
The Commie folkies, like Pete Seeger, hated the early rock of Chuck Berry and Elvis, because they correctly understood that rock and roll was a by product of American post war prosperity and the emerging suburban teenage culture. Chuck Berry wrote songs that celebrated this new culture, while Seeger mocked it with songs like “Little Boxes”.
Dylan got into folk music because he loved all forms of American music, and fancied himself as a poet, but he loved early rock music too. Once he became the king of the Commie folkie crowd, more pressure was put on him to be a political activist. He resented this, and after digging the Beatles and the Stones, he decided to go electric.
His electric stuff combined the earthy music of the American heartland with the intellectual lyrics of the Ivory tower. The Beatles and the Stones, and other rock songwriters were blown away and completely intimidated by his lyrical prowess. So they all started writing songs with “meaningful lyrics”, thus opening up the door for an electric version of Joan Baez’s scolding sermons about society’s ills.
In the mid 60’s, the kids who were getting a kick out of pissing off their parents by growing their hair long and listening to Get Off My Cloud were basically rebels without a cause. But once Dylan went electric, and other rock artists wanted to follow suit by writing songs with more serious subject matter, the Commie folkies saw an opportunity to turn these kids into committed Leftists.
And the end result was Dylan fleeing Woodstock to escape the hippies.
The biggest mistake Conservatives made was to assist the Commie folkies by turning their backs on rock and roll, because they didn’t like long haired, pot smoking hippies, and allowing the Left to claim it as their own.
I happen to believe that the main reason that Jann Wenner started Rolling Stone magazine was to rewrite rock and roll history, and convince people that the true spiritual home of rock and roll is not the Bible Belt, where it was invented by patriotic and religious performers, but rather, at the intersections of Haight/Ashbury in San Francisco, and Bleecker/MacDougal in New York’s Greenwich Village.
I’m a proud pot smoking, rock and rolling, hardcore Conservative.