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The Political Bob Dylan
By Peter Dreier - May 24, 2011 Like
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Opening Taksim Square
Bob Dylan turns seventy today. The following ! June 7, 2013 !
essay is adapted from The 100 Greatest New Palestinian Prime
Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Minister—Same Old Stalemate
Justice Hall of Fame, which Nation Books will ! June 7, 2013 !
publish early next year.
Belabored Podcast #9: Who Stole My
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When the makers of Hollywood movies,
! June 7, 2013 !
documentary films, or TV news programs
want to evoke the spirit of the 1960s, they
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typically show clips of long-haired hippies
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dancing at a festival, protestors marching at
an antiwar rally, or students sitting-in at a
Spring 2013
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,
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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 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 Phil Ochs, another “protest” singer-songwriter, 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
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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
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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,”
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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 protestors 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
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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.
For further reference:
Sean Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America, New York: Doubleday, 2010.
Dorian Lynskey, 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, From Billie Holiday to Green Day, New York:
HarperCollins, 2011.
Will Kaufman, Woody Guthrie: American Radical, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011.
Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan, New York: William Morrow, 1986.
Michael Schumaker, There But For Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs, New York: Hyperion, 1996.
Anthony Scaduto, Dylan: An Intimate Biography, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1971.
Ronald D. Cohen, Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival & American Society 1940-1970, Amherst, MA: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2002.
Image: Bob Dylan at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (Rowland Scherman/National Archives and Records
Administration/Wiki. Com.)
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