Anti-War Dylan

Comments

1. 

   December 4, 2005

   RWB

   The odd thing is that it is one of the very few songs where Dylan has gone on the record, multiple times, disputing how people interpret it. As recently as fall of 2001, he said to Rolling Stone, “I’ve said before, that song’s got nothing to do with being anti-war.” Yet, of all the things that Dylan may be, he’s not stupid. He knows that a large segment of his audience hears that song as just that: a blanket condemnation of war-making in all circumstances. Doesn’t that imply to him that the song is quite flawed? Whatever. I think he’s been so misinterpreted his entire career, in so many ways, that he just doesn’t care. He sings the songs he feels like singing and lets the chips fall where they may.
   He probably knows that there are enough nuts out there to argue about this for him …

   Reply
2. 

   December 4, 2005

   Mick H

   Perhaps he allows himself a wry smile now and then, as the arguments swirl around him…

   Reply
3. 

   December 17, 2005

   jeff_johnston

   That performance– the grammies, 1991– was almost certainly not as simple as Griel Marcus makes it out to be. I don’t know, however, that it’s as simple in this case as him singing “the songs he feels like singing.” Though Bob nowadays doesn’t try too hard to be incisive or biting, he just plays what he feels like, that grammy performance is interesting for reasons Griel Marcus either didn’t percieve or didn’t mention. See this link for some background:
   “With this career performance behind him, Dylan took his trophy from a beaming
   Jack Nicholson; he squinted, as if looking for his mother, who was in the
   audience.
   ‘Well,’ he said, ‘my daddy, he didn’t leave me much, you know he was a very simple man,
   but what he did tell me was this, he did say, son, he said’
   – there was a long pause, nervous laughter from the crowd –
   ‘he say, you know it’s possible to become so defiled in this world
   that your own father and mother will abandon you and if that happens,
   God will always believe in your ability to mend your ways.’
   Then he walked off. He had managed to get in and out without thanking anybody,
   and this night it really did seem as if he owed nobody anything.”
   …
   “I went back to the sources and discovered that Dylan’s remarks were
   almost a verbatim account of the commentary of Rabbi Shimshon Rafael
   Hirsch (the spiritual leader of traditional Jewry in Germany in the mid
   19th century) on that verse…”
   http://www.expectingrain.com/dok/int/grammiesspeech.html
   So, Dylan quoted some old Rabbi’s comments on a verse in the Torah, without saying that was what he was doing, after playing the song. It seems to be about redemption for him. Or something more. But it’s almost certainly connected to the war at the time, too. It’s just not as simple as people like to make it… ‘people’ meaning those on the right and the left of the issue. Everybody wants Bob on their side. He’s sort of beyond that, I think.

   Reply