Wait hold on
http://theredlion.wordpress.com/2007/03/29/bob-dylan-closet-conservative/ Bob Dylan: Closet Conservative?
29 03 2007
“Did I ever want to acquire the Sixties? No. But I own the Sixties I’ll give ‘em to you if you want ‘em. You can have ‘em.” – Bob Dylan, in a recent Rolling Stone interview.
John over at Last Train Out of Hell directed me to this interetsing article about Bob Dylan entitled “What Dylan Is Not: Poet Laureate of the Left, for one” at the Weekly Standard.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/012/727xwxao.asp?pg=1 [T]he Vietnam war is the seemingly unbreakable link that ties Dylan to the left in the popular consciousness. Consider: Dylan wrote no songs about the Vietnam war during the 1960s. Zero. The songs Dylan wrote that antiwar protesters later seized upon (from Blowin’ in the Wind on down) were written when the Vietnam war was little more than a twinkle in John F. Kennedy’s eye. A close study of those songs would also reveal, as Dylan himself has stated in so many words, that they are not “antiwar” songs, as such. Just as with all his best work, they are based upon an almost unerring sense of human nature and a remarkable ability to ask questions that provoke revealing answers in the listener.
Dylan took a lot of flack for not being outspoken about the Vietnam war. He even had protesters outside his house who “were unhappy with the records their ‘leader’ was making” (a country album in 1969? How dare he.) It makes me think of the lesbian backlash against Ani Difranco when she revealed she was dating (gasp!) a man (emphasis added). How dare she go against the lifestyle of her self appointed followers?
Despite the heat he took, he backed down not one bit. In an interview in Sing Out! magazine in 1968, Dylan was pressed on how any artist could be silent in the face of the war. Dylan talked about a painter friend of his who was in favor of the war, and said that he “could comprehend him.” Pressed further on how he could possibly share any values with such a person, Dylan responded: “I’ve known him a long time, he’s a gentleman and I admire him . . . Anyway, how do you know that I’m not, as you say, for the war?”
Granted, the writer is not making the point that Dylan is a “conservative” (perish the thought), but that he is potentially at the very least not a leftist/liberal/progressive/whatever they’re branding themselves these days, as has been assumed all these years. Have a read.
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