{"id":513391,"date":"2021-05-16T05:05:51","date_gmt":"2021-05-16T09:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=513391"},"modified":"2021-05-16T05:05:53","modified_gmt":"2021-05-16T09:05:53","slug":"not-just-a-voice-of-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/not-just-a-voice-of-protest\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Just a Voice of Protest"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">12<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnot-just-a-voice-of-protest%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=513391&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-807907-scaled-e1621031781461.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>I remember exactly when I first heard Bob Dylan. I was living in a first-year dorm at the University of Virginia. The UVA radio station was on. As I walked out the door, I heard this: &#8220;So long, New York. Howdy, East Orange.&#8221; I\u2019ve been a Dylan fan since that moment. It was 1963.<\/p>\n<p>Dylan\u2019s first album had come out a year earlier, but I\u2019d never come across it. My favorites as I grew up were Ray Charles, Jimmy Reed, and Johnny Cash. I still like them, but once I learned the name of the guy I\u2019d heard as I left my dorm room, he became not quite an obsession, but close.<\/p>\n<p>In that first snip, he wasn\u2019t even singing. He talked and played the guitar. The song, which he\u2019d written, was &#8220;Talkin\u2019 New York.&#8221; I still listen to it. Dylan was seen as a folk singer in those days. I heard him in person at Carnegie Hall in 1963, though it might have been 1964. It\u2019s hard to remember that far back.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d never had much interest in the Newport Folk Festival. I got there in 1964 solely to hear Dylan. He was the star of the show. Pete Seeger introduced him. Dylan was followed by Odetta, a real folk singer, but the audience began to thin out after Dylan left the stage.<\/p>\n<p>With Dylan, there\u2019s a question that many people find hard to answer: Why is he so appealing? He doesn\u2019t have a memorable voice. He\u2019s not a great guitarist. He\u2019s not particularly charismatic. But what\u2019s overwhelming is that they\u2019ve never heard anyone like him before. That was my first reaction. Decades later, it hasn\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n<p>This might be a stretch, but Dylan strikes me as like a few politicians I\u2019ve known. They\u2019re not heartthrobs or presidential material. They seem to be wise and serious and ambitious.<\/p>\n<p>Dylan is also witty. One of his lines in &#8220;Talkin\u2019 New York&#8221; is about seeking to perform at a coffeehouse. He isn\u2019t hired. &#8220;You sound like a hillbilly,&#8221; the owner says, &#8220;we want folk singers here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a final question to deal with before I turn to reviewing Clinton Heylin\u2019s impressively reported book, <em>The Double Life of Bob Dylan<\/em>, covering his career in the early 1960s as he emerges as a superstar.<\/p>\n<p>How could a conservative, like myself, fall head over heels for Dylan, who specializes in left-wing protest songs? It\u2019s true he also wrote and sings Christian songs, but they don\u2019t dominate his concerts the way some of his leftie songs do.<\/p>\n<p>Dylan, however, is not primarily a protester with a political message. He sings far more about freedom, sorrow, and love than politics. For me anyway, themes of protest fade when I listen to &#8220;A Hard Rain\u2019s A-Gonna Fall&#8221; or &#8220;Blowin\u2019 in the Wind.&#8221; Heylin, by the way, disputes Dylan\u2019s explanation in &#8220;Only a Pawn in Their Game&#8221; of how the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers came about.<\/p>\n<p>For his part, Dylan hates to be labeled or typecast. I don\u2019t blame him. &#8220;I\u2019m not writing Folk Songs, Protest Songs, Freedom Songs or any other category,&#8221; he told Boston Broadside. &#8220;I have things that just have to be said. People can judge my songs in whatever way they want and get out of them whatever they see in them.\u2026 But these are just the thoughts that are honest and real to me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But that\u2019s a poor excuse for &#8220;Masters of War,&#8221; a regular on the Dylan playlist. The crowd at concerts I\u2019ve been to goes wild as if Dylan\u2019s greatest song has arrived. In truth, it\u2019s his most crude and pitiless.<\/p>\n<p>While Heylin doesn\u2019t seem to mind this song, he finds plenty about Dylan worthy of complaint. Dylan makes life difficult for everyone at recording sessions. He balks at leaving mikes in the position his advisers choose. He thinks he knows better, and maybe he does.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone interested in Dylan\u2019s love life won\u2019t be disappointed by Heylin. The tales of romance with Suze Rotolo are endless. He was unhappy when she was traveling in Europe.<\/p>\n<p>But the stories about him and Joan Baez are sad. Baez went out of her way to promote his career, bringing him on stage with her. Heylin leaves the impression Dylan not only didn\u2019t reciprocate, he criticized her sharply. For example:<\/p>\n<p><em>The night before the Baez sisters were due to depart, suddenly Dylan began laying into Joan about her appearance and he would not let up. No one quite knew where that person came from, unless he crawled out of the second bottle of Beaujolais, but the result was predictable: Joan in tears.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Dylan has many friends, and Heylin appears to have quoted nearly all of them. Baez was frank. Dylan &#8220;was rarely tender, and seldom reached out to anticipate another\u2019s needs, though occasionally he would exhibit a sudden concern for another outlaw, hitch hiker, or bum,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Not that anyone asked, but here are my 10 favorite Dylan songs: &#8220;Pretty Peggy-O,&#8221; &#8220;Bob Dylan\u2019s Dream,&#8221; &#8220;Mr. Tambourine Man,&#8221; &#8220;Walls of Red Wing,&#8221; &#8220;My Back Pages,&#8221; &#8220;Love Minus Zero\/No Limit,&#8221; &#8220;Every Grain of Sand,&#8221; &#8220;A Hard Rain\u2019s A-Gonna Fall,&#8221; &#8220;Chimes of Freedom,&#8221; &#8220;The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>The Double Life of Bob Dylan: A Restless, Hungry Feeling, 1941-1966<\/em><br \/>by Clinton Heylin<br \/>Little, Brown, 528 pp., $30<\/p>\n<p><em>Fred Barnes retired recently after a half century in Washington journalism. His wife Barbara\u2019s favorite Dylan song is &#8220;Highway 61 Revisited.&#8221; They live in Alexandria, Va.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I remember exactly when I first heard Bob Dylan. I was living in a first-year dorm at the University of Virginia. The UVA radio station was on. As I walked &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1893642,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-513391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1893642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}