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."
Then you spent your life in a cardboard box. If you notice he would be very near to your age.
Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
My understanding is that Hurrican Carter was innocent of the charges in the famous case in question, but was guilty of so many other violent crimes that nobody really cared very much about the "injustice" of his conviction.
The communists saw them all as "useful idiots" and hijacked them and their symbols and presumed them within a larger communist global revolution.
I still, frankly, cannot see how a generation, who had rightly looked upon an intrusive, overreaching government, rife with laws, rules and regulations, as the beast to be fought, tamed and rendered marginal so we could lead lives of freedom; can now seek to employ that same (but infinitely larger and more powerful)intrusive, overreaching government, rife with laws, rules and regulations, as a mechanism to impose their morality on others.
THAT was what they had fought so hard against back then...and today, they have become that which they had so hated...
Abby Hoffman was probably correct! "Never trust anyone over 30." The ageing hippies are now all over 30 (by a lot) and they have become authoritarians! (But, of course, they view themselves as "good hearted" authoritarians...and who could be against that?)
Have you ever seen the Sam Peckinpah film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (starring Kris Kristofferson and James Coburn)? Amazing (and underrated) film. Dylan wrote the soundtrack and played a character in Billy's gang named "Alias" ....the only one that didn't pack a gun. His killing tool was a knife.
It's probably my sister's least favorite, too. When it was released, I was 16 years old and bought the 8-track. I played it over and over and over and over..........
Drove her nuts.
I still think it's his best. Simply brilliant. "Black Diamond Bay" is one of the most astonishingly well-written songs ever. And "One More Cup of Coffee" is deeply ingrained in my mind. Hypnotizing.
Check out the book "Song and Dance Man," I believe by Michael Gray. Its a really good look at the literary, Biblical, and folk influences he draws on. Dylan draws as much on William Blake and the Old Testament as he does from anything else.
I can almost buy into this, .... except when I hear the lyrics of 'Masters of War' in my mind. That song strikes me as stridently, and naively, anti-war.
Any comments?
-- Joe
Exactly! I was getting ready to ping you, then I read your reply above, agreed with it wholeheartedly, and started my response before seeing your name at the end of it.
His protest music was basically aimed at civil rights issues, and "Blowin' in the Wind" was recorded two years before the Gulf of Tonkin incident, so it could hardly be called an anti-Vietnam song. I love his response to a reporter who asked him what he's protesting against: "Whaddya got?"
Though, it is not the worst thing. That song is directed at the ones who never get their hands dirty, but do "increase their wealth at somebody else's expense."
He made several very deliberate moves to alienate the organized left, from switching to electric guitar at a major folk festival to pursuing a traditional marriage.
One particularly harsh and excellent detail was his song "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" with lyrics similar to popular communist anthem "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill." Dylan's ex-girlfriend Joan Baez, herself a Communist, had sung "Joe Hill" to great acclaim. She had basically made a living off being known as Dylan's ex and for covering his songs in a bland, syrupy way.
Dylan's song basically takes "Joe Hill" - a boring, trite song that makes a murdering leftist out to be a saint - and transforms it into a haunting lyric about a real saint.
He also put out a country album in the time period of "Easy Rider" when the hippy culture most mocked and hated country as a right-wing, regressive style.
And of course, his well-known phase of born-again Christianity shows that he does not share his 60s contemporaries bias against traditional religion.
While he is definitely not a Republican, does not interest himself in policy questions, etc. I think that Bob Dylan is not ashamed of being American and actually loves this country and the people who live here - even the people who live in rural Mississippi and Nebraska.
That alone places him in a very different category than anyone on the Left today.
"Masters of War" was written in '63 during his folksy phase, which ended quickly ......before the Vietnam War began. But for some reason he's defined by this (very) short period in his career more than 4 decades ago.
Just boggled the fanatics who were expecting Dylan (and the Beatles) to be sending them messages via album.
Can be found on the msnbc site.
listen to the song "Tangled Up In Blue."
I don't know if it's genius or what, but I have no idea how he can create such emotional, intense, original images with just a few seemingly vague or random words.
like this:
I lived with them on Montague Street
In a basement down the stairs,
There was music in the cafes at night
And revolution in the air.
or this:
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century.
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin' coal
Pourin' off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you,
Tangled up in blue.
What exactly is it that you prefer in Springsteen? And I don't dislike Springsteen's music despite his silly politics.
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