The Political Bob Dylan
huffingtonpost.com | May 24th 2011 6:03 PM
Bob Dylan turned seventy on Tuesday. The following essay is adapted from The
100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame,
which Nation Books will publish early next year.
When the makers of Hollywood movies, documentary films, or TV news programs
want to evoke the spirit of the 1960s, they typically show clips of
long-haired hippies dancing at a festival, protestors marching at an antiwar
rally, or students sitting-in at a lunch counter, with one of two songs by
Bob Dylan--"Blowin' in the Wind" or "The Times They Are a-Changin'"--playing
in the background.
Journalists and historians often treat Dylan's songs as emblematic of the
era and Dylan himself as the quintessential "protest" singer, an image
frozen in time. Dylan emerged on the music scene in 1961, playing in
Greenwich Village coffeehouses after the folk music revival was already
underway, and released his first album the next year.
Over a short period--less than three years--Dylan wrote about two dozen
politically oriented songs whose creative lyrics and imagery reflected the
changing mood of the postwar baby-boom generation and the urgency of the
civil rights and antiwar movements.
At a time when the chill of McCarthyism was still in the air, Dylan also
showed that songs with leftist political messages could be commercially
successful. Unwittingly, Dylan laid the groundwork for other folk musicians
and performers of the era, some of whom -- like Phil Ochs, the subject of a
wonderful new documentary -- were more committed to the two major movements
that were challenging America's status quo, and helped them reach wider
audiences.
By 1964, however, Dylan told friends and some reporters that he was no
longer interested in politics. Broadside magazine asked Ochs if he thought
that Dylan would like to see his protest songs "buried." Ochs replied
insightfully: "I don't think he can succeed in burying them. They're too
good. And they're out of his hands."
Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman and raised in Hibbing, a mining town
in northern Minnesota, in a middle-class Jewish family. As a teen he admired
Elvis Presley, Johnny Ray, Hank Williams, and Little Richard, and taught
himself to play guitar. In 1959, he moved to the Twin Cities to attend the
University of Minnesota but soon dropped out. He stayed in the area to
absorb its budding folk music and bohemian scene and began playing in local
coffeehouses and improving his guitar playing. A friend loaned Dylan his
collection of Woody Guthrie records and back copies of Sing Out! magazine,
which had the music and lyrics to lots of folk songs. He read Guthrie's
autobiography, Bound for Glory, and learned to play many of Guthrie's songs.
By then young Zimmerman had changed his name (apparently after Welsh poet
Dylan Thomas) and had adopted some of Guthrie's persona. He mumbled when he
talked and when he sang, spoke with a twang, wore workman's clothes
(including a corduroy cap), and took on what he believed to be Guthrie's
mannerisms. At first Dylan seemed to identify more with Guthrie as a loner
and bohemian than with Guthrie the radical and activist. Soon after Dylan
arrived in New York City in January 1961 at age nineteen, he visited
Guthrie, then suffering from Huntington's disease, in his New Jersey
hospital room.
At the time, New York's Greenwich Village was the epicenter of the folk
music revival, a growing political consciousness, and (along with San
Francisco) the beatnik and bohemian culture of jazz, poetry, and drugs. The
area was dotted with coffeehouses, some of which charged admission fees and
others which allowed performers to pass the hat while customers purchased
drinks and sandwiches.
Dylan made the rounds of the folk clubs and made a big impression. His
singing and guitar-playing were awkward, but he had a little-boy charm and
charisma that disarmed audiences. Dylan's initial repertoire consisted
mostly of Guthrie songs, blues, and traditional songs. At the time, he began
weaving a myth about his past, including stories about being a circus hand
and a carnival boy, having a rock band in Hibbing that performed on
television, and running away from home and learning songs from black blues
artists. He was, as he continued to do throughout his life, reinventing
himself.
Dylan got a huge break when music reporter Robert Shelton wrote a flattering
review of a performance at Gerde's Folk City in the New York Times on
September 29, 1961 under the headline, "Bob Dylan: A Distinctive Stylist."
Shelton said that Dylan seemed like a "cross between a beatnik and a choir
boy" and referred to four of the songs he performed that night: the
traditional "House of the Rising Sun" and three humorous songs Dylan
wrote--"Talkin' Bear Mountain," "Talkin' New York," and "Talkin' Havah
Nagilah." Shelton made no mention of any topical or protest songs. He did
write that Dylan was "vague about his antecedents and birthplace," which
contributed to the singer's myth-making. The review put Dylan on the map and
landed him a record contract, although his first album, Bob Dylan, wasn't
released until March 1962. None of the album's thirteen cuts (including two
original compositions) could be considered political, protest, or topical
songs.
In July 1961 Dylan met seventeen-year-old Suze Rotolo, the daughter of
Communists and a leftist herself. They soon moved into a Village apartment
together. She introduced Dylan to writers and poets (especially Bertolt
Brecht and Arthur Rimbaud) that expanded his own lyrical horizons. She also
raised his political awareness. Rotolo was working as a secretary at the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) office and each night gave Dylan the
latest scoop about the civil rights movement. The sit-ins had erupted the
previous year. By the spring and summer of 1961, the Freedom Rides were in
the news. The Village folk scene was abuzz with singers writing and
performing songs ripped from the headlines.
In January 1962, hoping to be asked to perform at an upcoming CORE benefit,
Dylan wrote "The Ballad of Emmett Till," about a fourteen-year-old African
American who was beaten and shot to death in Mississippi in 1955 for
whistling at a white woman. It was Dylan's first "protest" song. Within a
year, he wrote several other topical songs, including "Talkin' John Birch
Society Blues" (poking fun at the right-wing organization), "Let Me Die in
My Footsteps" (a critique of the Cold War hysteria that led Americans to
build bomb shelters), "Oxford Town" (about the riots when James Meredith
became the first black student admitted to University of Mississippi),
"Paths of Victory" (about the civil rights marches), and "A Hard Rain's
a-Gonna Fall" (about the fear of nuclear war, which he premiered at a
Carnegie Hall concert a month before the Cuban missile crisis made that fear
more tangible). These songs were published in a new magazine, Broadside,
that sought to encourage topical songs as part of movements for change.
In April Dylan wrote what would become his most famous song, "Blowin' in the
Wind," which appeared in the May issue of Broadside and the June issue of
Sing Out! He took the tune from "No More Auction Block," an anti-slavery
Negro spiritual. Dylan performed the song at Gerde's Folk City before it was
published or recorded, and soon there was a major buzz around the Village
about the new composition. Unlike "Emmett Till," "John Birch," and "Let Me
Die," "Blowin' in the Wind" was not about a specific incident or public
controversy. The lyrics reflected a mood of concern about the country's
overall direction, including the beating of civil rights demonstrators and
the escalating nuclear arms race.
By avoiding specifics, Dylan's three verses achieve a universal quality that
makes them open to various interpretations and allows listeners to read
their own concerns into the lyrics. "How many times must the cannonballs fly
before they're forever banned?" and "How many deaths will it take till he
knows that too many people have died?" are clearly about war, but not any
particular war. One can hear the words "How many years can some people exist
before they're allowed to be free?" and relate them to the civil rights
movement and the recent Freedom Rides. "How many times can a man turn his
head pretending he just doesn't see?" could refer to the nation's
unwillingness to face its own racism, or to other forms of ignorance. The
song reflects a combination of alienation and outrage. Listeners have long
debated what Dylan meant by "The answer is blowin' in the wind." Is the
answer so obvious that it is right in front of us? Or is it elusive and
beyond our reach? This ambiguity is one reason for the song's broad appeal.
Before singing "Blowin' in the Wind" at Gerde's, Dylan explained, "This here
ain't a protest song or anything like that, 'cause I don't write protest
songs...I'm just writing it as something to be said, for somebody, by
somebody." Dylan may have been being coy or disingenuous, but it didn't
matter. The song caught the wind of protest in the country and took flight.
Dylan recorded "Blowin' in the Wind" on his second album, The Freewheelin'
Bob Dylan, released in May 1963, but it was the version released a few weeks
later by Peter, Paul, and Mary that turned the song into a nationwide
phenomenon. The single sold 300,000 copies in its first week. On July 13,
1963, it reached number two on the Billboard pop chart, with over a million
copies sold. Millions of Americans learned the words and sang along while it
was played on the radio, performed at rallies and concerts, and sung at
summer camps and in churches and synagogues.
The song's popularity turned the twenty-two-year-old Dylan into a celebrity
and confirmed his image as a protest singer who voiced the spirit of his
generation. Dylan cemented that impression when, on July 5, he and Pete
Seeger performed at a SNCC-sponsored voter-registration rally in Greenwood,
Mississippi. Dylan sang "Only a Pawn in Their Game," about the assassination
of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers, which occurred just the previous
month. Dylan also sang at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom, where Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.
That year Dylan also wrote "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" (based on
a news story from early 1963 about the death of a black barmaid at the hands
of a wealthy white man), "Who Killed Davey Moore" (about a black boxer who
died after a brutal match), "Talkin' World War III Blues" (about the threat
of nuclear annihilation), "Masters of War" (a protest against the arms
race), and "The Times They Are a-Changin'," which was not about a specific
event but rather challenged the political establishment on behalf of Dylan's
youth cohort. The finger-pointing song is addressed to "senators,
congressmen," and "mothers and fathers," telling them that "there's a battle
outside and it is ragin'" and warning them, "don't criticize what you can't
understand." Dylan's lyric "For the loser now will be later to win" sounds
much like the biblical notion that the meek shall inherit the earth, or
perhaps that America's black and poor people will win their struggle for
justice. Like "Blowin' in the Wind," "The Times" became an anthem, a
strident warning, angry yet hopeful. It came to symbolize the generation
gap, making Dylan the reluctant "spokesman" for the youth revolt.
Dylan's third album, also called The Times They Are a-Changin', was recorded
between August and October 1963 and included the song "North Country Blues,"
which draws on Dylan's Minnesota upbringing and describes the suffering
caused by the closing of the mines in the state's Iron Range, turning mining
areas into jobless ghost towns--a theme that Bruce Springsteen would reprise
years later. Remarkably, Dylan tells the tale from the point of view of a
woman.
Dylan's ambition for success sometimes conflicted with his political and
artistic principles. In 1963, when CBS told Dylan he couldn't sing "Talkin'
John Birch Society Blues" on the popular Ed Sullivan Show because the song
was too controversial--an indication that McCarthyism hadn't completely
faded--he walked out of the rehearsal and refused to appear on the Sunday
night show. Yet Dylan was never comfortable being confined by the "protest"
label. He disliked being a celebrity, having people ask him what his songs
meant, and being viewed as a troubadour who could represent an entire
generation. "The stuff you're writing is bullshit, because politics is
bullshit," Dylan once told Phil Ochs, who continued to write and perform
topical songs and identify with progressive protest movements. "You're
wasting your time."
In December 1963, a few weeks after the Kennedy assassination, Dylan
reluctantly agreed to accept the Tom Paine Award from the Emergency Civil
Liberties Committee at a fancy event at the Americana Inn Hotel in New York.
Nervous, Dylan got drunk and gave a rambling, semi-incoherent speech to the
1400 liberals and radicals in the audience. First he insulted their age:
"You people should be at the beach. It's not an old people's world...Old
people, when their hair grows out, they should go out." Then he insulted
their politics. "There's no black and white, left and right, to me anymore.
There's only up and down, and down is very close to the ground. And I'm
trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial, such as politics."
Then he mentioned Kennedy's killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, and said, "I saw some
of myself in him." Some of the audience booed. Dylan later sent the group an
incoherent letter of mock apology that was more a long prose poem defending
his new anti-political mood. He no longer wanted to sing about "we," he
said. He wanted to write about "I."
By his fourth album, the aptly titled Another Side of Bob Dylan, he had
decided to look both inward for his inspiration and outward at other kinds
of music. He began to explore more personal and abstract themes in his music
and in his poetry. He also became more involved with drugs and alcohol. His
songs began to focus on his love life, his alienation, and his growing sense
of the absurd. In subsequent decades, Dylan would reinvent himself several
more times. With occasional exceptions, he abandoned acoustic music for rock
and roll, country, blues, and gospel. His hit "Like a Rolling Stone" from
the 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited revealed his talent as a rock musician.
Several times he discovered Jesus. For a while he claimed to be an Orthodox
Jew.
Even after 1964, however, Dylan occasionally revealed that he hadn't lost
his touch for composing political songs. His 1965 song "Subterranean
Homesick Blues" references the violence inflicted on civil rights protesters
by cops ("Better stay away from those/That carry around a fire hose") but
also reflected his growing cynicism ("Don't follow leaders/Watch the parkin'
meters"). The extremist wing of Students for a Democratic Society took their
name-- Weatherman--from another line in that song ("You don't need a
weatherman to know which way the wind blows"). Other songs, such as "I Shall
Be Released" (1967), the Guthrie-esque "I Pity the Poor Immigrant" (1967), "
George Jackson" (1971), "Hurricane" (1975), "License to Kill" (1983), and
"Clean Cut Kid" (1984) indicate that Dylan still had the capacity for
political outrage.
Dylan performed at several concerts to raise money for liberal
causes--hunger in Bangladesh in 1971 and in Ethiopia in 1985, and the Farm
Aid concert to raise money for U.S. family farmers later in 1985. In 1991,
upon receiving the lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Recording
Artists and Performers, while U.S. troops were fighting in Iraq, Dylan
performed his "Masters of War." On election night 2008, Dylan was playing a
concert at the University of Minnesota. As Barack Obama's victory was
announced, Dylan said, "I was born in 1941. That was the year they bombed
Pearl Harbor. I've been living in darkness ever since. It looks like things
are going to change now." Then, deviating from his usual live encore of
"Like a Rolling Stone," Dylan played "Blowin' in the Wind."
Dylan's off-and-on engagement with politics is intriguing. But his peace and
justice songs have had a life of their own. "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The
Times They Are a-Changin'" in particular will forever be linked to the
progressive movements of the 1960s and used to rally people to protest for a
better world.
Peter Dreier teaches politics at Occidental College. This essay was
originally posted on the DISSENT magazine website.
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